Some OTR wisdom....

All that time on the phone over 50 miles of deadhead time to get home? Trust me, your dispatcher is dealing with a LOT bigger problems than that on the average day, I spend a few hours in the office every week and the stuff that goes on is mind numbing. Just go the 50 miles home and inform your DM what you did once you are on line 1. This is a situation where is it far better, and MUCH less stressful, to ask for forgiveness instead of permission. If your company REALLY does fire you for it, than consider it a favor, you don't want to work for them anyway.

All this whining is why you ALWAYS need to have a savings account with enough money in it to rent a car and go home if needed. Being too broke to go home is a BAD reason to keep a crappy job. If you do everything right on your end, then you will have no problem finding another gig when you get home.

For the record, I've bobtailed 600 miles home because I was out for several months and they couldn't find me a load home and thought it was acceptable for me to sit 600 miles from home and wait for a load over a 3-day weekend. That didn't work out so well for them. A got a call a couple hundred miles into my trip home asking what I was doing. I told them I was going home and why. After a few minutes of arguing I asked if I should stop by the terminal and clean out the truck instead. Because of my perfect safety and on-time record I was told to enjoy my time off and call them after the next weekend for my next load. Knowing I wasn't broke gave me the ability to do that.