Should I leave LTL and go back to flatbed?

Yeah Goodluck raising a family on less than 40 hours.

 

Ya maybe I’m a bit biased because I’m raising a family on 60 hours a week with time and a half for overtime and it’s tight. We live in a single wide in the country that we redone because it was fairly rough when we got it. One vehicle paid for the other a $20,000 pickup. We don’t live high on the hog I promise.

 

It’s tough no doubt. I pay $2500 a month for a townhouse in NW Oregon. Cost of living is stupid out here. Single income family of 5. We aren’t poor, but you can’t work less than 40 hours and be anywhere close to comfortable.

 

Your post feels like you're leaning towards going back to flatbed. What's telling for me is that you said you loved flatbed. If your flatbed gig was paying you good money, I fail to see why you left it. I understand LTL will pay you more, but if what you have currently works, then you stick with it. The sexy thing in trucking is to go to LTL, linehaul, or P/D. I think the sexier thing is fulfillment. If it were me in your situation, I'd totally go back to flatbed. The money may not be as good as the Southeastern at its peak, but its good money, good enough money, and you are happy. Now here's a disclaimer: trucking gets fickle from time to time. You can't always look for a change when there are downturns. You must ride them out sometimes.

 

Go talk to a temp agency. Are you always free the same days? Maybe you get some money there at a warehouse. Go wait tables to make an extra couple 100 a week?


Anyway good luck. Just throwing out ideas.

 

25 years ago I was working at south eastern in the shop. I quit because I felt like they didn’t do “real” mechanic work. Dumbest decision of my life. My advice is to stay put. The grass is greener because it’s generally fertilized with BS.

 

Instead of spending your extra time thinking about how bad things are, how about working a part-time job or making a part-time job out of something you know how to do. There's buying things at thrift stores and re-selling them online if you know a lot about some thing in particular. There's "retail arbitrage" where you buy certain clearance items, if the price is low enough, at say a Walmart or Target and re-sell them online like ebay. If you have more hours and less money they even working fast-food pays something. Nobody knows when the economy will pick up. Why not do flatbed like your friend now?

 

Generally the other half works, my wife’s office was in our home which was a bonus