Is It Really Worth It to Have a House and Car if I'm OTR for the Foreseeable Future?

I'm out of AZ, what's your state? Anyway, my CDL is up for renewal early next year.

 

I'll give it a try and see if it works. If not, I'll rent from some ad on Craigs list and have the person with the room sign a lease agreement or some other type piece of paper saying that's when I reside. In my situation,there's no need to have house or apartment when I would never be there anyway. As long as I'm a legal US citizen it should never be an issue, but these days everything is under increased scrutiny because of the REAL ID act.

 

Used to be you couldn’t claim per diem tax deduction if you spent the night at home . So I changed the address in my DL to my parents house, and my logbooks showed me spending the night in a major city every night , 125 miles away from “home “
Was my accountants idea and saved me about many thousands a year on taxes.

 

Illinois, unfortunately. It's OK except for the humans.

 

Thats ummm, the world at large last i checked

 

The house I can understand, but even if it's an old beater you should have a POV to use when on hometime. I have looked at some of the POVs parked at terminals and have noticed almost new vehicles parked for so long spiderwebs are attached to them. I have never been married and to be honest, during my driving career I thought it a bit foolish to rent a space I never was 90% + of the time. Up until the Patriot act and some other changes, you could use a simple PO box and be OK. Today especially with the real ID you MUST establish presence. When I last updated my ID card (I lost my CDL/DL for medical reasons) I had to produce my Birth Cirtf, My DD-214 (to get my vet status) and I used the first page of my lease agreement. When I was driving I used my mom's address until she died then I changed that to my oldest sister's address. I paid one of her utility bills and it was in my name. So!

There is no real need to rent or buy a home when driving OTR, but you still MUST show presence! However, you really should have some type of vehicle to use when off duty and at the home terminal.

 

A receipt from an extended stay motel usually works for establishing presence.
And any lease agreement will work, from anyone . You rent a closet from your cousin and get the lease agreement and take it to the dmv.

for a car, a 92-97 thunderbird or cougar is the best car for the money. V-8 rear wheel drive so it’s easy to work on , and shares parts with millions of fords, so parts are cheap. Teenagers and red necks don’t want them like they do mustangs , even though it’s a mustang underneath , so there is no demand for them and thus they are cheap to buy.
$2000 will get you a nice one.

In the 90s my POV was a 1970 Firebird.
It would sit at the terminal for two or three weeks and the terminal was sort and gravel, 300 trucks a day in and out.
I’d have to scrape the inch thick dust off the windshield so I could see how to drive over to the water hose to wash off all the windows.

 

You should check out current prices on used cars. Outrageous. But I think the OP said they have a car already.
Probably depend on where you live and how often you go home. But for me even if I was given a car for free it's cheaper for me to pay Uber than to pay registration and insurance and I'm the only user so it'd be dead in the garage when I finally got to need it and then I'd want to drive it off a cliff LOL. Uber is less aggravation for me

 

I'm just old school I guess. This issue though is a bit of a sore spot for me. I can't drive anything anymore and this loss of freedom still causes me to have rage attacks. When I was driving I kept an old 95 S-10 parked. I rarely was gone for longer than 14 days so I did not have a problem with it sitting so long the battery died. I did keep a good battery in it, however. I don't remember the exact cost, but the last few years it cost me about $35 a year to register and around $400 a year to insure. I'm sure were I still an active driver today it would cost me more to insure. Still, it was nice knowing that ride was there after getting in off the road and getting on to where I was going to stay during my hometime.