Where do I go

Good sage advice.

 

This is one beautiful post.

 

If I was going to break it down for a new driver the first thing I would ask them is how much home time do they need and how much do they want? If your mother has cancer obviously you need to be home often so you need a local driving job. If you are married with kids and they are teenagers you don't need to be home daily but you want to be home regularly for your family so being out all week in the truck but coming home Friday night and leaving Monday morning isn't really a bad deal for you if you don't mind not being home everyday. If your young and have no current obligations in life and want to live like a nomad and wander around the country from place to place then by all means give OTR a shot.

After that I would ask some questions about different driving jobs to try and give them a better idea of what kind of driving job they want.
-Do you mind touching freight?
-Would you like to try hauling things that are oversized?
-Do you think hauling tankers would interest you?
-What do you think of going in and out of Rail yards?

If you hate touching freight then LTL is going to be out of the question for you since ltl jobs require you to work the dock.
If you don't want to haul anything bigger then a 53ft van trailer than being a trucker that does oversized loads is not for you. No interest in hauling tankers is self explanatory. If you hate the idea of going in and out rail yards then hauling containers is not going to be something you enjoy. New Drivers need to ask themselves these type of questions. Some of the questions they won't be able to answer though since they have no experience in it.