Describe the OTR lifestyle

Beautiful

 

Cool thing about trucking is you don't have to be OTR forever. I started out like you in my late 20's did 5 years long haul. Wanted nothing to do with local. Was pretty hardcore about being OTR. Then I decided wanted to go local been local for 6 years now. Do I miss OTR? Hell yeah I do. But local and other obligations now keeps me local. But many drivers dip to local and go back OTR. Means you got to change jobs but there's another freedom you have in trucking. Many drivers go back and forth all the time. Buddy of mine came off the road being an O/O came into linehaul. He was so happy said he won't ever go back. 5 years later he's back on the road as an O/O and happy as a clam.

 

I took two a year OTR break after a killer trip up the old AlCan Hwy (Alaska Hwy) in 1973. I was driving for Beard Transport and had just finished three Pacific to Atlantic returns without a break and was promised a week's rest over in LA if I made one more one way haul. It didn't happen. Got to LA at 4:30 in the morning and was ordered to haul an emergency load to Fairbanks. I had visioned an adventure that it would be like a week off. Wow, the legendary Alaska Highway! Nothing could have been further from the truth. What a nightmarish hell hole of a road the old highway was. Three thousand miles of rain and potholes. I never got that K100 over 40 MPH. I have to give Kenworth a ton of credit though, that rig held up beautifully after a 3000 mile pounding. I didn't! Got a job hauling gravel for two years.