Looking for Advice: Getting into Trucking

I work for FFE. They recently started doing hair follicle testing. Make sure y o u are able to pass your drug tests before you start. A failed test is a kiss of death in trucking. If you stick around, you see multiple threads probably weekly from people that bomb drug tests and now cant get hired anywhere.

 

I sort of relate to your story. I got into this because I want to Farm. I’ve worked on produce and dairy farms. One thing I noticed on the dairy farms was that there’s always the old guy working there who thinks they still might go out on their own... I wasn’t ready to be that guy lol. So I talked to the guy I worked for about going full time and possibly looking at a transition situation in the future. Long story short they weren’t ready to replace the old full time guy.

I’ve been OTR now for 7 months and their full time guy quit. My wife works there now and I help out when I’m home.

Just judging by your posts, you most likely highly value your independence. For that reason alone I’d say pay your own way for school and put in the research to find a good company. If you do that you could potentially gross 60k+ your first year.

And a piece of advice pertaining to your master plan- don’t allow your ideals, the romanticism, and the angst to rule you. Don’t discard it all, but carry it in your back pocket instead of as a mask. Set your goals and be patient about achieving them. It’s easy to say #### this whenever something comes up.

One last thing, don’t underestimate the amount of work, knowledge, and patience required in becoming self sufficient. I mean no disrespect but if youre a city kid, be prepared for A LOT of your ideals and romanticism to be misconceptions and b.s. The life your talking about living is an great one and I wish you nothing but good luck! Shoot me a message if you want to talk more about the non trucking parts of your post.

 

Wells Fargo has been "Inflating" their eh.. annual reports system wide to please bosses, bosses show the board nice progress and so on. They have been under survillence and maybe some FDIC Banking action or even above that at the Federal Level in enforcement for trying many things such as showing a apparent increase in customers that don't exist for various reasons. (Draw in stock buyers? etc)

Checking accounts are good to have. Open one at a Credit Union near you as long it's under NFCU. It's a touch stronger than FDIC. It's way beyond explaining how fragile our Nations 7700 or so banks in total really are and how bankrupt the depositor insurance funding really is. It took me three years to catch up a decade ago. Now Im behind. It would take a book to explain it all. One I don't want to write.

Open a nice checking account, migrate everything there. Leave 10.00 or whatever in Wells Fargo and let it rot. The more they continue to 0.00 whatever... it's fine. Its no loss if they get closed but I think they are big enough to be part of the Federal Wire SWIFT system which is the under foundation of all of our financing every minute this country exists. A smaller quality or even Military (Ex vet, spousal with vet etc such as I am) Credit Unions will work provided they have a branch in your area.)

Checking accounts can benefit from a 500 dollar ACH Auto draft credit line. If you sign a form and one of your say electric bills present against your checking for auto draft and you only had 8.00 in it, you will have that bill paid and not bounce. You will however have two problems bank fees (Mine are 40.00 per bounce) and you have 60 days or less to make good both the fee, the bounce amount and back to 0.00 and above positive on your checking asap. If you do not, it will be closed and you will learn at that point you cannot get a checking account anywhere and became unbanked person. With a whole new set of problems.

It will not hurt your score as long you do not lose anything. Scores are built on history of monthly payments. Say you got a 1000 dollar Amex card or VISA Black or whatever. Put a pack of smokes on it monthly, paid in full every month for say 5 years, you will get a 800 score eventually. But if you max out the card to say 990 dollars of 1000, then that nice score will erode to predatory lending levels at 620 and below. (You do not want that. Ever.) Again I stated I don't care about credit anymore, burn it. Ive used all I would. For example 12000 dollars borrowed against a Fairbanks house during two years of probate and lawyer fees, expenses, oil bills etc (600-1200 monthly until house sold) paid bank card debt off.

IF YOU EVER MARRY SOMEONE. You become two in one for financing. That means your spouse needs to be your equal. You do not want to say marry a spouse with huge debts you cannot handle because saying "I Do" instantly makes you a debtor as well equally. When I said I Do, I became a home owner in 10 seconds with a 33000 dollar house and some acreage and fields, woods to clear plus a trailer home to dispose of via sale if possible. Among other problems. I did not say that I Do lightly. Everything was paid and cleared in 6 years flat. Then we had medical and cancer etc coming on (Vet spouse, her cancer care cleared a cool 1.5 million roughly in total. Something we can never afford) We divorced and after our debts were assessed, split in half, home sold at a profit (Actually loss considering the 150K or so we both put into the place over two decades...) and that is that.

That's the short version.

Even shorter is the ability to build savings and have money on hand at any time in this trucking industry. Your job or so called career is what I would call 6 seconds from a final ending when that trailer starts to show up in your mirror coming around on ice for example.

You will literally decide what future you will have every day you work this industry. You will succeed or fail depending on decisions you personally make. DO NOT EVER MAKE RASH EMOTIONAL DECISIONS. For example telling off Dispatcher on the phone. BEEP satellite message: Yer fired. it's that easy. Be very careful about this.

For every one that makes it 10, 30 years in this industry, dozens or hundreds or thousands are lost along the way for reasons that encompass every possible way to be removed from trucking including disability, mental issues, death, injury, accidents, whoopsies, theft etc.