Where is everyone #2!!

Still out on "special assignment" but I am headed to South Bend, IN to run a super-load down to Nashville then going back to the frozen, cold, snowy (it hasn't stopped in 11 days) north till February 14th. My assignment got changed again and shortened since I've been working 7 days a week instead of 5 but now the mother ship is trying to talk me into a permanent relocation.......AGAIN. (No more laughing saddlesore, I know your laughing at me not with me!!)

 

Now that I've found good local work, I wonder why more drivers don't consider permanent relocation to an area where there is good local freight. Wouldn't being home with family every night be better than once every three weeks that most typical truckers are?

 

There's a give and take in everything in life. For me, right now at this point in my life I'll take the money all day long. I can guarantee you that there's no local work anyplace I would ever live that comes close to the money I make here. Sure there's a value to being home every night but how big of value is different for everybody. I was made a lucrative offer to get out of the truck and become a manager over a year ago but in the end I love money more than I want to be home every night so I stuck with the money.

Now they have upped the ante for another position and almost getting to the monetary value that I would need to replace money with home time. Not quite there but a lot closer than before. Will I move, maybe, maybe not but the number sent to me Friday night did get my attention. You can say "money isn't everything" but I have 3 teenagers who will disrespectfully disagree! Then I have to think of what else I'm giving up and for me that's the pure love of hauling the loads that I currently do. No amount of money, home time, quality of life etc. can replace that. I'm very frank about it, I love what I do, I love pulling into a customer and seeing something 20' wide and taking on the challenge of how to get it on the truck, how to secure it, how to tarp it (well okay maybe not the tarp thing) and finally how to get it across the entire USA without damaging it, hurting myself or someone on my crew and doing all of that while keeping the unknowing masses in 4 wheelers (and other trucks with big names on the sides) safe from their own lack of knowledge or respect.

 

I would love to add more, but you said it all.

 

sitting on the couch northeast Washington state

 

The biggest grin I get is when I go to deliver a oversize load either Super load or just a extra large load and the customer "suddenly discovers" that it won't fit thru the door!

 

I think we all have had that happen a time or to.
Best one I liked was got to a shipper and lded the ld. Measured it and looked at the door. Measure the door.
I can't get it out.. Opps..

 

To me, being local is boring as heck! At least in my new line of work it is. Same thing day in and day out. Yeah I do get a good challenge every once and a while being a driver in Chicago everyday but in all honesty I enjoyed hauling OD loads more even though it was at a big name company it was still more fun then what I do now. The wife and I even had a talk about this yesterday since my previous employer called me last week asking if I was interested in coming back and being on the specialized fleet again, I declined the offer, not to be home everyday but because I don't want to hop from one job to the next. I am saving my pennies and some dimes to try my card at being an O/O, that's pretty much the only way I will go back on the road.

Its not all about money in my book, its more about doing what I enjoy. I brought to my wife's attention that yes I would be gone a couple weeks at a time and it sucks for her having to raise our child on her own but its better then 7 months at a time with a likelihood of not coming back or coming back missing a leg or 2. Trucking is a joy to me. I never really woke up when I was OTR thinking to myself, #### it I don't want to get up and work today, I always couldn't wait to see what the next day had in store for me.

 

I ran into that three years ago with one of our biggest customers. Got the load put on the trailer on a Friday afternoon to leave on Monday morning and when we compared load vs. door measurements we were 4" too tall. Company ended up calling a contractor in over the weekend to take the door off, cut the header out and knock out two rows of block to get us out.

 

Kinda like the guys in Pennsylvania who ordered a 13' 6" wide plasma table to put through the 14' door but forgot the 18" walkway welded to the one side and the 6" of air door actuators on the other side.