Don't need home time, love the NYC area, have a rice cooker.

First off, thanks everyone for contributing to this great resource. I've learned a lot about the industry and I'm looking forward to joining it, and being a nearly full-time "tourist" for 3-4 months at a time.

I have my CLP in hand, and I'm contemplating signing up for an 80 hour (I'm told mostly behind the wheel) course at West Michigan CDL. Reading through here, I'm pretty convinced that there's no substitute for actually going to school before taking the skills test.

Aside from that, I pretty much violate every other norm of people going into trucking:

• I don't need home time at all. I'd prefer to be out making money and seeing the country as often as possible. (Yes, I actually need to experience OTR life before making a bold claim, but I've got no wife, no kids, no responsibilities other than debt to pay and friends all over to reconnect with.)
• I actually love driving in the NYC area. I drove a lot of 24' box trucks in/around the financial district before and after Hurricane Sandy, down streets that aren't even 24' wide and somehow backed them into loading docks they weren't designed for, all while I was a finance ops guy. I avoid the parkways even when I'm in a regular passenger vehicle.
  
• From a few trips hauling trailers from NY to CA with an E-250, I know how to cook & clean myself on the road and what to watch out for with Truck Stop showers.
• Catch: From Jan - May, I usually pick up a job as an accountant. Can't really do more office time than 5 months out of the year.
• I have a few other obligations that I do remotely, just logging in 3-4 hours a week. Perfect off duty work.

So, all that being said: What are your recommendations? Trolls? etc?

 

Hey @Chinatown! I didn't even have to page you into this thread. I'm going for 80 hours mostly just because of the cost and that's the minimum for their job placement. I can afford that one in cash, I don't want to lock myself into a year of constant driving. If I can't learn what I need to in 80 hours, I don't think I'm cut out for this. I'm in MI, from here and I could never afford to buy property in NYC. But it was great living in NYC and getting into lots of random adventures. (Having seen it and talked to drivers, @mhyn I might learn to hate it if I have to drive CDL-A down there).

Ideally, I'd like to be OTR for a few months at a time, then head back when a contract comes up in my first career (Accounting & Finance)

My mistake (mostly from Youtube Truckers) was that I could find someone willing to let me learn how to shift on their 10 speed. I did not appreciate how much different it was from a car manual transmission or how the industry has shifted.

Like @buddyd157 and many others have alluded to, it doesn't matter what you think you know, you don't know how you'll react until you're actually out there. I know I can stick anything out to live up to my commitments, but I don't know what it's actually like until I know what it's like.