Am I the ONLY one that actually wants to go OTR?

Until you step out the door, geesh people hate to walk out of the airport far enough to get to the cab there. lol
I know it is a dry heat, but at some point, who cares, hot is hot. lol

 

It is hot on the strip because the buildings block the breeze.
I can see the strip from where I live and it's comfortable here. I'm in a residential area and no tall building anywhere near.
Yeah, it's hot at the airport because you walk out of the terminal and there's a multi-story parking garage; no breeze. I'm about 15 minutes from the airport. My next door neighbor has two son's that are commercial pilots.

 

Yea, I have been there many times, prefer winter. lol
Wife will be there in a week or so, it is not a place I personally would ever consider living, but it is fun to visit at times for SHORT periods. lol Just not my kind of country, and I have done some asphalt work in the past and hauled a whole lot of hot mix and hot oil both, that is not where I would want to do it at all.
I don't think even in my younger days and working with it I could have took Vegas heat working on a paving crew.

 

Heat doesn’t bother me and I like big cities.

I’ll probably switch to a laborer instead of driver soon. Better pay and pension. But I can drive or run any machine except a mill. Never done that so finding a job shouldn’t be too bad.

 

If you can run a laydown machine, you could run a mill easy enough.
I worked several years with Valentine (now defunct) and the old man was the first to build a recycle train.
We worked a lot in Nevada, but never actually in Vegas.
When they went out of business a couple of guys went to work for some outfit in vegas, but at least the ones I kept up with didn't stay there long.
One came to Alaska to run a mill and he had never run it before, he ran the pug mill for valentine, he wound up the foreman and stayed up here several years.

 

Actually running the mill doesn’t seem hard.

Being good at it does, or maybe the paving crew just always cries about the mill operator.

Either way I told them to put me on it if they ever need. Only one way to learn... plus most guys I work with can only tow pintle hitch. Apparently if you test on a pintle hitch you cant pull a 5th wheel. I’m one of the few guys who can pull the low boy legally.

We just do small jobs. Like 2000 tons tops so I’ve never seen a recycle train work. Our jobs are grocery stores and housing developments and stuff like that. No highway work for us.

 

The recycle crew I worked with was a blast, they were younger, but old school in the way they worked, heck the super would actually get in the dirt with one of the hands every once in a while, but they would be friends again before the day was over.
It did not stop for any reason unless it had too, they figured it was running 3 grand an hour while moving, we hooked up on the go, and when I was hooked in line, it was over 400 feet long.

 

Yeah this whole company is pretty young except the guys who do all the grading.

I’m one of the oldest at 32 and we are a super small company so you have to do more than one job. A lot of times I’ll bring mix and park and get right in the skid steer.

I want to work on a highway job just to see how it all works. We operate so much differently. Half the time we’re dumping mix in the paver with a skid steer because it’s too tight to get a truck in.

I get a lot more experience though this way. No other company is going to have a teamster on a roller, skid, loader and paver all in the same day. Plus I do a ton of hand work so I was the lute man half the day today.

It’s a good place for me because I don’t want to sit in a truck very long.

 

Back when I had a 10 wheel dump truck, I worked for a small paving outfit like that. I wound up working for him exclusively, and would run some of his equipment, like a loader and such, while drawing truck wages, it was a good gig, and a lot of fun too.

 

Haha we got an owner op like that too, only works for us, he hauls material from our pit to our plant all day every day.

I’m actually lowest paid, being a teamster so if I wanted to be a douche I could just sit in my truck. But everyone starts in the truck/laborer and you get promoted to operator and make the big bucks. No one starts here as an operator. But they wont promote you if you never leave your truck.

I’m also one of the few guys who works in the rain. I just bring material to our plant on rain days while everyone else is home.