Successfully leaving trucking permanently

I used to really enjoy going to work. I wanted the phone to ring and off I went, as happy as could be. Not today, I dread the thought of getting out there. It seems like every vehicle on the road is in competition with each other and this includes trucks. Why do people have to prove anything out there on the highways??

I do my best not to patronize truck stops except when buying fuel or getting a cup of coffee. One time truck stops were a place of "socializing" drivers trying to tell the biggest lie. Mom and pop truck stops with homecooked meals and the same drivers would stop at the same truck stops and they got to know each other and the people who ran the truck stop. Very few truck stops today have homecooked meals, fast food now. There isn't too much of "getting to know each other" out there today. It is more like "dog eat dog". What a shame.

 

I understand completely.

I landed a gig hauling trash. Drive a 2015 T880, pull 50' high side aluminum
trailer. Drop and hook at the transfer station, back on the tipper at the the
landfill. Pays better than I ever made OTR.

Our guys complain if they have to wait more than 15 minute. It is a dirty
job, landfill stinks sometimes. When it rains, it gets a little muddy. But in a year
I have only had to be pulled out twice. Both times the landfill dozer hooked
up a chain and pulled me out. Took about 5 minutes, no harm done. No
tickets or writeups.....

The trucks have a little computer in them, not a qualcom. Just send
a quick message when I load and unload so the office knows how many loads
to bill the customer for. I also turn in the scale ticket I get when I scale in at
the landfill.They don't micro-manage at all. Just do my job and collect my
check.

Our routes are all contract routes. No brokers, no lumpers, no GPS, no sirius
radio, I can actually hear my favorite local station all the time.....don't worry
about a place to park......never worry about my next load.....when work gets
slow I just go home early......

 

I don't that for almost 6 years. Easily the best 6 of my career. Now, looking back, I wish I hadn't of quit

 

I drove for about 7 years. The first 5 was OTR long-haul driving. After the first year, when the newness wore off, I started to really dislike it. I love my hometown and I really got tired of being gone all the time. I then got a local gig, which was better. It was good money for relatively easy work but it was all night time driving. That got old after a while too. Then, my company installed driver-facing cameras. One night I hit the rumble strip for a couple of seconds and they fired me for "falling asleep" at the wheel just a couple of days before I was scheduled to take my two week paid vacation. That was the final straw for me. I'll most likely never drive professionally again.

I am still in the industry though. I got hired as a fleet manager/freight broker for a small start-up trucking company here in southeast TN. So far I love it. I manage 27 trucks (20 o/o's and 7 company trucks) as well as book loads from direct customers and other brokers. It's like a giant jigsaw puzzle to figure out how to keep everybody rolling at good rates. I enjoy the challenge of it. I also enjoy the set schedule and the weekends off. It's nice to actually be able to make plans with the family and know I'll be there. I do not miss driving one bit.

 

Kinda the thing im looking for, been at this for near 20 years, getting tired and sore...

 

My plan is to eventually once my cars and the house I don't own yet are paid off , is to go crazy and collect disability the rest of my life. So you know, I can enjoy life. Like all men should. I eventually hope to not be a wage slave.

 

I've been doing some thinking about this. Pretty much everybody has a job they either hate or merely tolerate and this isn't just about trucking but "work" in general. If you stumble into a job you can at least tolerate you might as well stick around because you're doing better than most people. You gotta have a lot of jobs and experiences to be able to dissect the fine differences between the two though, so what happens is a lot of guys especially when they're younger and don't know any better, they end leaving jobs they could tolerate thinking the job of their dreams was waiting for them around the corner. Classic trap that people fall into with me being no exception. To me a job you can tolerate is by definition one that allows for the relatively smooth passage of time...days, weeks, months, etc without you hardly noticing. A job you hate is one that has you looking for the exit every time something frustrates or annoys you and you leave every day hoping you never have to deal with the place again. That's a job you should get rid of. But at the end of the day jobs are just jobs...you're doing what other people are telling you to do. It's not a labor of love it's an exchange of time or services for money. If you woke up tomorrow a multimillionaire would you go to your job (even one you could tolerate) just for the hell of it to stay busy? Probably not. The problem is most people are not going to wake up multimillionaires tomorrow, and the more successful you become at your job or occupation money wise, the more trapped you become by it and more it defines who you are, like it or not. That's why the goal for a lot of people I think is to work for themselves, even if it will never make them rich. A man just needs something to get up and do every day regardless of how much money it makes him.

 

All im after is contentment. I could make 4 bucks a hour more tomorrow if i wanted. Not worth the trade offs. I like what i do, and not to stroke my ego but im #### good at it to. Im a truck driver, all I've really been. Im fine with that, but im aware that at some point i wont be able to do it. Not there yet, but I'd rather not get to my limit and find myself with nothing to do. Im good at logistics, i have in the past and currently route trucks already. So, gonna give it a go as soon as I can. If it dont work? Well near 20 years, clean record and a idedic memory for the city will get me back in a seat pretty quick..

 

I look forward to my retirement plan. Social security and free housing sounds excellent

 

I'm not even sure I'll stick around long enough to see a dollar of Social Security. They can mail it to me in South America if they want to.