Major personal fork in the road, could use some advice :)

I am sure you can find a regional job that works you all week and are home on weekends. I did this all the years my kids were growing up. Everyone is different but one needs to find a balance between personal needs and financial needs. Being home every weekend worked for me because we live simply and don't have a ton of debt to pay every month.

Now the kids are all grown and the wife and I run team we usually stay out for 5 weeks as we are trying real hard to build up a nice nest egg for retirement. As your life situations change, so can the way we earn a living.

 

Yop, real helpful there. How much did you put away for maintenance to issues?

Home weekly for a 34 reset. Enough to put $500+ a paycheck into savings.

 

If making money is your goal and you need to spend time with a relative, don't buy a truck and drive it, buy more than one truck. Lease them out, sell them, put your driver in them, or a combination of all three. You make better money with less physical labor and get to spend time where you want to, not where a dispatcher wants you to.

If you own and drive one, it'll become like a bad girlfriend and steal time from things that are really important. Don't forget- if you own a small fleet you can hop in and cover for your drivers when they're off for a few days (if you care to keep the wheels turning).

 

Not everyone, seems to me most are moaners

That is 100% and something too few posters are aware of.

I am down to 185# from a normal weight of 225-235 and have lost about an inch due to aging, it was 2-3 years ago that I was well beyond "flat-broke" and could only hope for Chapter 7 to shield me from the banshee's ....

Oh, the lucky few that have a home.

Anyway, for purposes of OP's needs: The Texas average rig count as of May 18 was 934, representing about 49 percent of all active land rigs in the United States ~ oil-shale operations are populated by desperately needed water-tankers across disparately represented business operations, mostly centered on Karnes County / Karnes City, TX where road-building is totally shambled due to remarkable traffic, then if that does not appeal to you BigJohn54's post that begins "Welcome to the TTR Forum" has all the rest of it that you might need until further questions forthcoming from you ....

 

what i am doing is mailing the field-offices directly, though a correctly done letter does not match showing up with C.D.L. in hand ready for follicle screen it is nevertheless workable to mass-mail until some non-clueless "no-nimrods" in a field office sees the letter on a day when desperate for someone with brain-function still operational .....