Truck Driving, Should I Go For It?

No.....! Y
Sent from my RM-845_nam_vzw_100 using Board Express

 

Im assuming you will be 21 soon. Yes it's a good career.

 

Yes, go for it. Set it up so you graduate from trucking school around your 21st birthday so you can go right to work. Plan well, get all the endorsements, TWIC, passport; by doing this you just might start your career making more than you old high school buddies that went to college.

 

I think you should give it a try but have a back-up plan as well. Trucking is a hard industry with a high turnover rate and you may not stick around for too long. It really depends if your cut-out for it or not. It is harder than it looks and it can really drain you mentally and physically. I would try to get on with a local outfit and avoid OTR if you can.

 

Nooooo!!!!

Turn around little Johnny, and run away as fast as you can! Run away boy, before it is too late!!!

 

Considering you can make quite a bit more then most of your friends when they get out of college with there bachelors degree and you having a year experience being able to work for a better company then the one that hired you out of truck driving school and you won't have years of student loan debt to deal with yes it is a good career. Especially with the trucking industry being desperate for drivers right now and there being pay increases across the industry right now. Where as most people are going to college to get degrees right now which creates a problem with to many people having college degrees and not enough jobs which means it takes longer to get a job and the wages could and most likely will be cut since there is more supply then demand.

 

One thing I want to add is that OTR sucks. That is the easiest route to go for getting a job in the trucking industry but there are guys out there that have done nothing but local driving for over 30 years. The "lifestyle" talk you see on these forums a lot is talking about OTR trucking which is getting phased out by intermodal. You don't need a new "lifestyle" to be a truck driver.

 

to me driving local is the worse thing about driving
long days at home long enough to sleep
get up do it again
city driving with the rest of humanity
the rest of you can have it

my dispatcher gives me a run less then 2300 miles each way he gets the hairy eyeball

 

It's good some drivers like local driving; I hate it. Coast-to-coast for me.