Turns out trucking is an underrated job for autistic people?

I may or may not be on the spectrum. My dad is, so odds are pretty high. Main traits I have are hyper focus for basically unlimited amounts of time and EXTREMELY introverted. Luckily, I learned with age how to socialize and fit in when needed, but I definitely thrive on my own. Pretty good combination for trucking.

If I didn’t care about seeing family and maintaining the friendships/relationships I have, I’d be perfectly happy being in a truck for 6 months straight. Usually only takes me about 3 days at home to get burnt out and want to be in the truck. Getting paid to traverse the country AND have minimal interactions with people? That’s my dream that I get to live. I enjoy it enough that I still choose to stay OTR even when there’s LTL jobs I could easily get that would pay more and get me home everyday.

 

If :autism is a spectrum
Then: different jobs will have varying suitability for those people more and less affected by it.


Run this back to prehistory.
Is a hunter better or worse for having hyper-focus on the task at hand?
Would a socially awkward individual be ideally suited to be the chief in a tribe.

Youre just (re)discovering truisms about life and the messiness that biology contributes to human society.

Its similar to the add, adhd blah blah stuff. These things have existed throughout human history, always will, the label is unimportant, what you do with the information can be useful... or used as a crutch.

If a development (or trait) was so deleterious to survival, it was eradicated long ago (yes evolution) though in the modern era nearly everyone has SOME attributes that are not as "productive" as they may earlier have been

 

That and treatment and govt programs that provide financial assistance to people who can’t or won’t work are very recent .
Like in the last 50 years .

before that , you worked or you didn’t eat .
And you found a job that was suited to your personality , or you figured out a way to deal with it .

Im glad you’ve found a job that fits you.

it took me several tries to find a job that suited my personality

I like machinery much better than I like people .

 

I don't think that truckers are stereotyped anti social because their autistic necessarily. I personally think that people who go into trucking, over time, lose touch with the world outside of trucking. Many can't talk to others who aren't drivers. They also have shown an inability to talk to others how don't think, look, or act like them. Overall, I think truckers are lousy at social settings outside of truck stop counters. Now that those are fading away, many show an inability to evolve with the times and learn how to interact in today's world.

 

Lets be honest, truck stop counters display some of the most egregious examples of lousy social skills truckers ever could show to the world. The only thing worse than that are the idiot 55 year olds trying to chat up the obviously 18-25 year old girl at the loves checkout. At least at the lunch counter, theyre mostly just annoying other drivers

 

As for the social graces of truckers, I take it none of you spent much time in the agriculture community, ever go to a farm auction?
What most of you describe in probably Asperger’s. My wife and I raised a son that was afflicted with Autism, stopped smiling after early childhood vaccination, stemming, smearing, self injurious, non-verbal, the whole nine yards.

 

Elon musk is on the spectrum