If you could do it all over again...

if i could live life all over i'd go get my CDL 28 years ago, hit the road for about 10 years, just enough time to save up enough cash for several machines, (track hoe, dump truck, dozer, farm tractor, hay equipment) and then invest in a couple production greenhouses. Then quit trucking and start selling the good food we know how to grow.

Yup! God provides the opportunities, we gotta jump on them and go to work. Invest some brain power, find a better way to do it.


If you treat trucking as if it's a boring ho hum job, that's all it'll ever be. If you keep hunting for better ways to do it, it'll retain a good bit of interest. There's two ways to boost income in the business. Increase gross pay and decrease expenses.
I'm starting out by entering one of the highest paying segments of hauling. vehicle transport. It's an aspect of hauling several partial loads. Put together several LTL loads and they can add up to a good bit more pay than a whole load. With the negative that it can take much more time and work picking up and delivering. Even with only 3 we can spend all day making 3 drops and 3 pickups in one city when they are all 1 to a place. So we waste a whole day because we only get paid to put on the miles. It ends up being not quite so good pay as it looks. However the potential is there for some real good paying loads. We had several that were pretty good.

In addition we are working on doing everything we can find or invent to reduce fuel use. Since that's the no. 1 expense. There are a number of interesting things that can be done along that line. My ultimate goal is to build my own drive device. It so happens that IC engines are extremely inefficient machines. There are much better options, but to get them I'll have to build them. As a lifelong researcher of inventions and being quite familiar with electronics and mechanics foundry and machining, It's something I might be able to do better than some who aren't so technically inclined. Once that's accomplished I'll go back to farming.

 

I started out with a teamster job, back when there was actually teamster flatbed companies! I wish I could of stayed with the teamsters and in 3 more years I would have my 30 in and be able to retire!

 

I am always being contacted by gentlemen from Nigeria promising me great wealth.You mean to say it is true sometimes!

That is a different shower

This has been my mantra and it really makes the difference.

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Sounds like my life right now...

 

I would wait to start trucking until my kids were grown up. I've missed way too much and been gone way too much over the years.

 

My husband say's he would have started driving a tractor trailer sooner, instead of various class B vehicles. But they were local, so he says he doesn't regret that 100%. He got to see his son's grow up...well to a point... but.. wrong forum...lol

When I lost my job in 10, hes say's he wouldn't of talked me out of getting a CDL and we could have done our "time" and then tried to find a company that would have taken us as a "super single" instead of a traditional team.

I enjoyed my time in the passengers seat OTR, but it did get rather boring and I could probably have a better paying job here in the Oil patch than Postal clerk ( relief ).

 

Does the OP consider the "I knew then what I know now"? If that's the case, I would have never been a company cheerleader. I would have went O/O right out of the gate but anything else experience wise I wouldn't change.

 

you also have to remember there are just as many companies and types of hauling
as there are drivers
day jobs that you work 14 a day
line haul back and forth and back and forth
LTL pu and unload yourself
none of that for me
no ty
gimmie my reefer send me 2000 miles
wash rinse repeat
fits me

 

I would of got my CDL but I would of been an Electrician. It's in my blood now,I can't do anything else. 18 years with 14 more for retirement.

 

I wouldn't change anything. I started at CR England barely making 30k a year driving a Cascadia governed at 62. Now I'm in a wide open W900L making almost 6 figures. I must be doing something right.