Double Yellow's Company Driver to Independent Thread

It's good money for the time and effort invested. I worked six months last year, and this year it will be closer to 5. I'm not setting the world on fire with huge numbers. But by the time it's all said and done, I'm left with a very good net income. Tho I will have to work harder this coming spring when things pick up a bit. My family has out grown our vehicle so need to pick up a minivan.

 

Kids are expensive.

 

This is very well said. Dy is a much better communicator than me.
That's why most of us do this. Work when I want, how I want. Take off for a couple weeks, or even a full month whenever I want, a few times a year. However the world is changing and every year it starts to feel more like a "real job". So far I've been able to combat that ugly feeling by occasionally taking a load to the Rockies, which by the time I dead head out ends up being a 1.50.

 

I don't think your posted numbers are as bad as you seem to think. Which is why I usually scroll past the rate per mile discussions. Those usually represent an extraordinary moment in time, surrounded by a lot more not so great moments. Few people ever post about profit, and then of course the peanut gallery second guesses all their cost calculations. Additionally, nobody ever mentions the value of cash flow.

At the end of the day you only need to satisfy #1 with your performance. If you feel like you did the best you could, given all constraints (self imposed and otherwise), and made a profit at it, then good for you. If not, you know what you need to do, or are at least smart enough to figure that out.

The hardest thing to do is make a change. I faced that during my second year in business. Plan A was clearly not working, as evidenced by my vanishing bank account. At the last minute, I pulled the trigger on Plan B. Aside from the obvious relief at a more promising outlook, it turned out I had been my own worst enemy. I should have done what I did months earlier.

This. Only project management, not engineering. My main qualification for my last job (Siemens) was holding a valid passport and personal finances to fund reimbursable expenses for a one week trip to Munich, minus the airfare. Let me think about that a minute.

Yes, I'll take that contract at $60/hr and be at the airport tomorrow. Auf Wiedersehen.

There was a mental turning point for me about a month before I resigned to operate the trucking business full time. One of my project sponsors was a freshly promoted junior VP out of NJ, and already getting a bad start by throwing weight around he hadn't earned yet. He demands I participate in a stupid workshop he's hosting at the local office, despite my role being nearly nothing and me having crisis erupting on my other projects. I don't need this distraction, nor have time to entertain it.

I'm sitting in a conference room with about six others, all of us doing about the same thing: working on other stuff in silence. VP leans in the door and tells me (not ask, not request, but orders as-in now) to immediately join him in some other break out meeting with another group. OK, give me a minute as I'm wrapping up something else. That wasn't good enough.

He actually came in the room, pulled my chair away from the table, and escorted me out. I really didn't see that coming, so was a little surprised and of course kept my HR-approved game face on. Until we left the room and were alone with no witnesses.

Me: Mark, you do that again and I'll be leaving in a police car, you in an ambulance, and we'll both be unemployed, I don't care who you are.

Mark: You seem to forget who's signing your paycheck.

Me: What makes you think you're the only one paying me?

Right then and there, I was thinking WTF am I doing here? It doesn't matter if you're making minimum wage changing urinal cakes, or $100k+ in a profession. There's always someone like that with control over your income. I decided that day I was done. At least for a while LOL.

There's still the fact that you just can't beat the miracle of money magically appearing in your bank account for doing something that (maybe to you) is so dead easy you feel almost guilty about what you're earning. Almost LOL.

 

This week on ice road truckers. Can double yellow get 9mpg while climbing the pass? Watch and find out.

 

If you let the ELD mandate hasten your exit from trucking and the government already took away your online gambling income, would you think it would be less burdensome to cultivate some recreational drugs for legal distribution in California? Of course with non polluting emissions controlled vehicles driven by well vetted Syrian refugees using electronic logs.

 

I delivered a year or two ago up to Washington State out in the middle of nowhere. I got directions and looked on Google Maps then called him back. I said all I see is a house and that's it. He said that's it and park on the front lawn.

The sun comes up and I see it's a nursery farm out back. The guy was like 80 years old. He sold all is nursery stock and was now growing pot. A 20 something year old kid showed up. He was the grower previously growing pot and selling it illegally. Both the guy and the kid were really stoned. They rented a fork lift and had to pay the driver of the truck to offload me cause they were too wasted. I was laughing the whole time. I grew up in the 70's and did my fair share.

Didn't know this but not anyone can grow pot in WA. You have to have some special training or something, can't remember but having a nursery qualifies you so it made sense for him. He said he was making money hand over fist.

 

I guess the value of my 1999 Pete just went up.