Laid off engineer from IBM going for his CDL

Well, I would just think that an engineer of 30yrs would be smart enough to setup an IRA plus an individual brokerage account, instead of being naive about pensions. The pension nightmare stories are not new news. Many planners reccomended having Roth IRAs for each spouse.

Anyway, that's water under the bridge. After you drive for a while and look back on your IBM career, I think you will uderstand hiw I can call you spoiled. Trucking is a hard life that blackens the soul and alienates family and friends. You either get hard or get out.

Here's a website I recommend for an alternative to the traditional retirement: retirecheap.asia

The American Dream was outsourced, so why not just outsource one's retirement to recoup the purchasing power that was denied us? If you are 50+ yrs old you can get a permanent resident retirement visa. You can have social security direct deposit anywhere. You can't get Medicare overseas but you won't need it. Healthcare is affordable overseas because healthcare companies have not been allowed to form cartels and control the goverment. If they did, there would surely be riots and killing over it!

 

Harsh ouch!!

 

Wreckdiver your out around the Binghamton NY area. I'm thinking you may want to check out either Conway Freight or YRC. Both of them are in Maybrook NY. If so those would be good places for LTL. Old Dominion has a new terminal in Newburg NY as well.

 

Hi, I am an also an Electrical Engineer and I followed the path you are on, I was also laid off at age 58. You can read some of my back posts ---- by from my screen name you can kind of guess what happened to me. I went into trucking to get health Insurance for my wife, and to prevent spending all of my retirement pay before qualifying for social Security. I thought it would be a fun way to end my career. I actually made it all the way through training and was about to get my own truck, when my wife suddenly got a job, which meant I was free to quit.

It was a fun experience and I would not trade it for anything. But quite frankly if you have worked as an engineer your whole life you will be spoiled. IMHO, truck driving is not fun, it is not interesting compared to engineering, it can be dangerous, stressful (Yes, I am the guy that got lost in San Francisco pulling the 53 foot trailer around) and not the best way to earn a living. What I ended up doing was going back to school, took every database, sql, java, asp, ruby on rails, entity framework, oracle class I could find. After about two years I landed a job with the state of California and I am pretty sure I make more money than 95% of truck drivers and work from 7am to 3:30pm daily...

So, give it a try, you might like it better than me, driving the truck is fun, but there is a lot more to the job than just driving. I spent one week driving from Salt Lake City to Cheyenne Wyo in winter through snow storms, days broken down in the middle of nowhere, trying to put a trailer between trailers at the Oakland Dock when there was no room, eating junk food for days on end, the list goes on and on. Sleeping in the truck is really not all that fun. It's a life style, maybe you will like it but it is quite different than an engineering lifestyle. I have a lot of respect for truck drivers, and I have said it many times here they deserve more money than they get. Good Luck to you.

 

Rockyroad 74, I actually agree with you. I also was an engineer for 30+ years, and I used that same word 'spoiled'. I have no regrets that I tried to be a truck driver, sometimes now I look at trucks, and say to myself, "####, i could be driving that" Driving a truck is I guess every little boys dream, that does not seem to go away. I tried it, don't regret it, the OP will try it, but most likely he won't last longer than a year. I think most of us spoiled professionals from other fields become disillusioned. The OP said he was not into OTR, so he might have a better chance at it, but that probably means he will be driving in the city exclusively, which has its downsides also.

 

I know a former CFO of a major retail chain that lost his job due to downsizing. He works for Schneider now and happy as can be. He lives in a high-end gated neighborhood and for awhile was the butt end of gossip in the neighborhood because "a truck driver lives in our neighborhood." He laughs about it. He's a former commissioned officer in the Marines and couldn't care less what anyone thinks.

 

That's what I did. No regrets. Lots of good choices. Philippines is good; they even have a Social Security Office in Manila which is the one I contact if I have a question or problem.
A little backup plan; buy 2 condos/houses overseas & live in one and rent the other for cash for extra income. Don't have property taxes to deal with either.

 

Well, I have a B.A., a J.D. (yes, one of those people) and spent 13 years as a dreaded investment banker, made some money, got wiped out and burned out, started pulling a flat about a year ago....should've done it 15 years ago....I LOVE IT!!!!!!!

 

I hear you dude....20 yrs in the high tech field here...got outsourced 3 x..finally at 50 decided to go into trucking...
not a bad way to earn a living...no little kids crying for me to come home...pay is ok as a comp driver..get to see a lot of the USA..[
QUOTE=wreckdiver;4148303]Hi, I was recently laid off from IBM after 29 1/2 years as an electrical engineer. I'm only 58 yrs old and am too young to retire. Too specialized to find another engineering job locally so I decided to go for my CDL and drive truck to avoid working for minimum wage. Starting school on Monday at Sage. Any suggestions?[/QUOTE]