Driving a Truck vs Mowing Grass.....

Well you asked for advice,
If you have young children I would definitely not be looking into trucking of any kind.

Right now you set your schedule .
If a family emergency comes up and you need to be with your family you can do that.

You can set your schedule so you can attend your kids games and concerts and go swimming etc .

plus your business should allow plenty of deductions for tools and vehicles etc,
My brother has a small biz and he gets a new top of the line 4wd crew cab whenever his accountant tells him to pay the car dealer or pay the IRS.

As your child gets older you don’t want to be be thousands of Miles away and gone for days or weeks at a time and miss your kid taking their first steps.
Or at their first little league game or forgetting their lines in the Christmas play.


I was an owner operator and I sold my truck and stopped driving when we started a family.

Being there for your family is far more important than earning another $20 or $25k.

I’d look into slowing raising your rates and
Figuring out how to increase your profit margin. Some customers will drop out , but if you can increase the price enough to make up for the lost customers , you will make the same money for less work .

Find some other landscaping stuff that’s highly profitable like planting flowers every quarter at churches and medical facilities or mowing softball and soccer fields or something.

you have a lot of competition because the barrier to entry mowing isn’t that high, so you need to investigate how to find a niche market that pays better , but trucking is the same way, plus there is a reason trucking companies have 130% turnover every year.

If your local hospital had 130% turnover in their staff every year it would be a crisis.
If the average length of employment for teachers at the local elementary school was less than 6 months it would be a major crisis and they would be figuring out how to stop the turnover. but in trucking it’s just a normal cost of doing business, for the employees to be so unhappy they leave after a few months.


Plus you mentioned you take eight weeks off?
That’s awesome !
If you do need more income I’d look into ways to make money during those weeks.

If it’s right at Christmas you might could make good money delivering packages for Amazon or something.

if you want to work as many hours landscaping as you do truck driving , you could easily earn as much or more than a truck driver.
Just work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, live in a sleeper that’s smaller than the king size mattress currently in your bedroom, and only see your family a day and a half per month.

And as a driver if you get a couple of traffic tickets or have an accident , even off duty in your family minivan , you’re fired and looking for a new career.

if you have some mechanical skills you can make good money as an hvac tech or apprentice to be a licensed plumber or Electrictian, and once you get your state license , it’s basically a license to print money .
If you’ve ever had to pay an Electrictian or plumber or hvac company to fix something at your house , you know how much money they make.
Or look into seeing if you can get hired as a fireman, most places they work 24 on and 48 off. So you’d still have time to run your mowing biz.

 

You're established.

You have a home life.

Keep mowing.

 

Go for the trucking; you can quickly double your current pay and at the same time work in air-conditioning truck and have a full benefits package. I stayed away from the drivers in the break room and TV lounge with all their griping and complaining and kept my eye on the goal.
When I started, I had a wife and 4 children of which all were still in school. No complaints; we lived a good life with a good standard of living.

 

That's Big Maud from the Love's fuel desk ain't it?!

 

Yeah, and she knows she's hot.

 

OP, don't get in to OTR trucking. There are LOTS of kinds of trucking, and by trucking most mean OTR. It isn't all OTR.

I strongly urge you to not even consider OTR with a newborn at home. Here's how this typically goes. A few years down the road you'll have a kid who doesn't know you and an ex-wife who you pay monthly while you get the luxury of trying to afford a cheap apartment you're never at while living in a 20 sqft. rolling jail cell. Sounds nice, eh?

If I had to do it all over again and I had to choose trucking or mowing grass, well, I'd choose neither. But, from the seat of this truck mowing grass sounds pretty nice right now.

 

Yeah, and the irony should be punching us all in the face. OP goes trucking OTR and the next thing you know, someone else will be keeping the lawn mowed at his place, if you know what I mean. lol

 

Well no matter where you go you'll net 37k your first year (that's what you said you netted for 2020).

OP I would suggest thinking about your end goal. It can obviously change, but think about what you're ideal trucking job would look like:

1. Sector - Flatbed, Food & Beverage Service, Tankers, LTL, Refrigerated, Dry Van, Hotshot, Car Hauler, Construction, etc. etc. (these are the main ones though)

2. Geographic Location - Over The Road (OTR, driving nationally, out for a minimum of 2 weeks at a time but probably 3-4 weeks at a time), Regional (Out 5 days, home 2 or some similar variation of that), or Local (home every day).

3. Shift Hours - Daylight, night time, 1st shift, 2nd shift, 3rd shift

4. Physical Labor: Touch Freight or No Touch Freight

5. Carrier Size: Small Company, Mid-Sized Company, Large Company

6. Hometime & Hours Worked - How many days off per week do you want and how many hours do you want to work each week

7. Pay

Once you think about these things, then you can start researching more into what types of jobs will provide what you're looking for. Most likely no job will check off every box that you have, but you can at least try to get a job as close to what you're looking for as possible.

I mention this so that you come into the industry with a plan and you don't waste your time. Good luck to you OP.

 

Two of those companies I posted are not OTR.
The third one, Lynden, has 3 divisions; OTR, Regional, Local.

 

Look into local Beverage Delivery jobs. Many will train you. You may need to work as a merchandiser or dock hand for awhile, but, if you can handle hard bust ### work, which it appears you can, you can make good money and be home daily. Many of these companies also offer a 4 day work week, although it normally isn't 3 days off in a row. Good luck