New Driver looking for niche

You would want to do a little bit of labor maybe once a week to start. Combined that with eating carefully you will see that your body will get pretty fit. This is the foundation of what you will be at 50 when you begin to lose 8% of body mass every year. So the more you can put on for work in a carefully paced situation with plenty of rest, vitamins in particular (Your body will want to use it to repair bones and muscle, tendons etc that are leeched during work.)

By the time you hit 32 you will want to switch to work that does not involve lumping. by then you would be into your early prime physically and pretty fit if at all possible. You are 25 right now and do not have the benefit of a lifetime to look back and say gee I should have done more work and got buff. This is the time to do it.

When I was your age, I was a powerhouse. Lumping 48000 pounds to the floor in the daytime, driving half the night and then moving that back off he floor onto pallets called small wood the next morning. Get a nap, breakfast etc and drive to load another 48000 onto the floor and do it again the next morning. By friday I am pretty tired to care about how much my check was. Instead of partying and dancing at the club I go to bed. We have a run to the midwest for monday am being loaded in the dropped trailer to be picked up sunday.

You don't get to be with family much OTR. I paid that price. However considering weights and balances of my family vs OTR Family, I preferred my trucker brothers and sisters alot. I had very few people at home who actually cared that we are doing well OTR.

Local work is better for those to stay home. However if you have any wanderlust at all, seeking to travel or get out then get it done before you get too old. Baltimore Unions offered me a seriously profitable future starting at 22 a hour in the long house at the docks at 7 am to see if they call my name or not when I was 21. I had a good relationship with everyone on the docks and that was missed. Along with the food trucks etc. However I was going to see these United States and get away from Baltimore a while. And so I turned it down and got away from there a while. Sometimes life is determined when you make a decision like that.

Or a decision is made for you (OR against you... without your say so...)

We have two sick parents still with us. One will be buried in arlington within the year or two and the other we take one day at a time. She has 4 different ternimal things wrong with her that in a normal say 25 year old, they can saw you open on the table and fix the parts and you live forever and ever strong and so on. But this one is so sick she will not survive the table. It will kill her. So every day we make a phone call to see if she is still with us. We are getting ready to get down there twice a week because her mind is shedding parts for lack of a better word. Like a transmission shedding a gear here a rod there and a few teeth over younder. soon enough you have a mind that is like that of a child. Then a giggling baby with a lifetime of memories and experiences etc plus the knowledge

POOF. Empty. That will be the time to commit her to the nursing home because she no longer knows how to say use a toothbrush. the knowledge will go away. You laugh at me saying aww a toothbrush you never forget. But when you are 90 and a storm rolls through your mental house of your mind clearing everything out leaving you lost and physicaully hunting constantly for what you have lost. You know you lost it or misplaced your family or home etc. And you spend your days or worse nights in particular wandering looking and looking and looking for something that is lost to you forever.

I refuse to be 90. There is no benefit in it. The day my mind goes is the day someone shoots me in a pasture somewhere. PRobably after I catch me a nurse and don't know what to do with her.

//Snarky. I am teasing about that concept. I love my nurses, but they need to be good girls. Otherwise it wont work as far as some of he things they need to do.

Good luck to you.

 

Food service and beverage companies usually hire with no experience. The best shape I’ve ever been in was when I was a route driver for Pepsi for 2 years.

If I were in your shoes I would make the choice to stay local for now. It’s where you need to be. You can always go OTR later if you want.

 

There are lots of driving opportunities in southern Delaware. Without having that 2 years experience everyone claims, finding a driving job local can be daunting. What you may want to explore is driving a concrete mixer or dump truck for one of the local excavating or concrete companies. If you prove yourself on a mixer see if you can move into driving the cement tanker. Same with the dirt movers. Get on a dump and prove your not an idiot and start pulling the lowboy. You may find your place here or at the very least gained experience for something you like better. You would be a 1%er in Seaford if you landed a job at coraluzzo in Salisbury.

Places off the top of my head to try:

Melvin Joseph
Horsey
Parker Block
Atlantic Concrete
Any of the million propane places
Chambers ( if you want to haul giant things)
1st state crane

Long story short try a construction outfit to start. You will get what you want if you show your willing to work, learn, and not wreck their stuff. You'll be home everyday and be around to help mama

 

Or try Pepsi or coca cola in Salisbury also

 

I lean strongly toward the "disclose EVERYTHING" camp. I just finished selling my truck and trailer, going back to being a company driver. I disclosed everything, even events that weren't reported to police. That helped me. The company I am starting with next week hauls freight for the military. They are anal about background checks. If I had tried to hide anything I think that would have become a deal breaker.

Be honest about your record. Let the cards fall where they may.

 

If you are smoking go ahead and stop it. It will be out of your system in 10 days flat and the emotional changes you will have to make to permanently quit will take you 6 month minimum.

The reason I say this is that once you get out here into the mountains and you are at 12,000 or even 14000 thereabouts you will understand you have a new problem a need to get air. Your body will adapt if you stay up there long enough. But if you cannot get air then you are genuinely in a life emergency that will be expensive.

I am a former smoker. I quit in 2001 after a life lone 4 pack a day habit. I got mountain sick one time near Casper and told the doctor that I am dealing with someone wrapping chain around my chest wall. (The existing Chest wall issues is with me since birth and I am very adjusted to that.) but that episode combined with excessive winter time cold down to -25 and my age plus family history of asthma required Casper to treat me in certain ways that night.

We were able to continue on at sunrise, but that was a beginning of the end and a end for a new beginning in my life I was very sick by the end of 2001. Where I am now is a possibility of return to limited big rig work, farm and harvest usually under Tier two. We will see. Ive a team of doctors arguing this week which will take a few more weeks to see if I am allowed to go for it or not. If I did, it will be a experimental work permitted under our SSA rules.

I wont know until the doctors know for sure enough to commit. Otherwise we proceed with the next surgery work.

 

I just got my CDL in January, applied to every local job I could find with a little help from @Chinatown, and got hired on hauling tankers of milk. Steep learning curve to start out with for sure, but it can happen. Ignore the experience requirements, and apply everywhere. I'm six on, 2 off, home everynight, bringing home about $1150 a week after taxes, but I work a lot of hours. I was right out of school, no experience, but they gave me a shot, so just do it and you'll learn something new everyday on the fly.

 

The OP could try driving a log truck if you live in the north. But in my experience it does not pay much more than about $1000 per week, to drive 160,000 gross down the same boring road for weeks.