When is Enough, Enough?

Yeah, but I expect I'll die behind the wheel someday. Bury me where I fall.

 

I am hoping for one more year of OTR, primarily because it's the convenient thing for me right now, given my wife's job, my kids living situation, and other non-trucking related things.

I'll still drive, but it'll be local (fuel hauling perhaps), or at the very least, home every other night.

 

I am fortunate in that I am healthy and don't take any medications. As we age we do tend to slow down a bit and our health usually declines somewhat. Eating a balanced diet and getting some exercise helps. One advantage is getting older is you learn how to better pace yourself. I am not ready to hang up my spurs just yet. Frankly, I don't ever want to retire. I may slow down a bit, but I don't really want to retire completely. I don't run as hard today as I did a few years ago. Much of that is due to my wife's health rather than mine. I don't have big equipment payments, so I don't need to run to make payments.

 

I would think a local job would be even harder on a drivers body than OTR. More in and out of the cab, and quite likely more loading/unloading and drop and hooking. It would seem to make sense that of all the options, OTR would have the least amount of wear and tear, although it still would certainly exist.

 

That all depends upon what you are doing for local work. There's a guy that drives for another O/O leased to the same carrier I am that is approaching 80. He's retired 7 or 8 times now...and it never lasts more than a few weeks before he's got the itch to get back up in the truck again.

My grandpa quit driving when they started up with the CDL...couldn't see paying $60 for a driver's license. EOBR will probably have me looking to start a new career elsewhere, because I flat out refuse to shut down 15-20 miles from home just because some arbitrary rule designed by bureaucrats 680 miles away who have never seen the inside of a truck let alone driven one say that I'm "out of hours". NO man is going to tell me I can't make it home tonight...that I'll have to shut down and pay for a motel room...because I was delayed 30-60 minutes caught up in traffic trying to make it into/out of/through some metropolitan clusterf#$% or loading/unloading took just a little bit longer than it should have. Jokes were made about Sarah Palin being able to see Russia from her house...well to paraphrase, if "I can see my house from here", I'm going home.

 

Lay your head down at home......your mind will always be in the truck. It is impossible to turn the truck off, not fair but it is the truth.

 

Nine more years for me unless something happens one way or the other. I dont really see myself doing anything other than trucking in the meantime. I wont go home and think about my has been job. It will be a new chapter in life. Got enough stuff to do without worrying about a job driving a truck, or any other job for that matter. Although I've had a couple back surgeries it's doing fairly well now and I see my knees giving out before the back. No more jumping off docks or the backs of trucks for me.

 

Really? are you saying this just for yourself? or do you believe to be true for all?

 

Just don't take anyone ELSE out ok? I was on 80 in Indiana yesterday,heard the night before a driver had a heart attack,and may have sent someone else he hit head on to the promised land..BEFORE his time..