Which is a tougher job: OTR driver or heavy-equipment operator?

We have both a trucking and heavy equipment jobs in our company.

I do the trucking part which is moving their equipment from site to site and hauling loads for them with the live bottom trailer.

I can also run excavator, dozer but I prefer the trucking. More variety with different trailers.

And no, the boss is not allowed to put me in a dump truck all the time. I’ll do a day or so every so often but that’s it. I cannot stand the boredom.

I have to work more hauling live bottom which allows me to get out of the truck.

In Heavy equipment, I find my brain to be working a lot harder and tiring.

 

I think operating equipment can be a bit more physically challenging than driving a truck for the average driver. Not in the case of a driver that has to physically unload a lot. To me, this is not the issue. Both jobs can be horribly unforgiving of mistakes. I was part of a discussion recently about that deadly crash on one of the runways at LAX (LA airport) back in 1991. Basically a 737 landed on top of a smaller turboprop aircraft. I think it killed over 30 people including everybody on board the smaller aircraft. In the end, the NTSB placed most of the blame on local procedures at LAX. The controller on duty accepted most of the blame and left the FAA. What makes a job tough is not limited to just the physical aspects.

 

Everything's all electro-hydraulic controls these days. Just like playing a video game.

 

Farmers across the nation have air conditioned tractors. Some of those tractors have GPS that controls the steering as the fields are worked.
Some port Longshoreman workers have air conditioned cranes that lift the containers off and on the ships.

 

A/C is almost standard equipment on everything nowadays. I honestly haven't seen a piece of new equipment hit our sales lot without it. An extra $1,500 on a $400,000 machine is peanuts.

 

ATV's have a/c for cryin' out loud. I don't know if pullin leevers is more fun, time goes by faster because you aren't staring out at a gray ribbon ahead of you for 12 hours. I enjoy running different equipment, ran just about everything, but as a job, day after day, it gets to be a drag. Now hauling the machinery, like Shawn above, is a good job, except long hours. Before the crew gets to the job, the machine has to be there, and same when done, everybody goes home, you have to drag the machine back. I was a delivery driver for a trencher dealer for a spell, operated all kinds of equipment, loading and unloading them, sometimes tense, but I liked the job. An outfit near me is moving dirt from one side of a big field to the other for condos, it's right on my bicycle ride. I saw several pieces of equipment a Volvo 6 wheel dump and an earth mover, just sitting. The guy would have paid me $25 /hr. CASH, I talked to the water truck guy, but I said no thanks. They literally can't find anyone amongst these tree hugging snowflakes to operate them.

 

Define "tougher."

I personally think not seeing my family and friends for weeks on end is very tough. Not sleeping in my own bed and waking up in my own house is very hard.

Playing with a big toy all day and going home to your beautiful wife every day is super easy.

Does "tougher" mean physically demanding? I'd say OTR is probably the least physically demanding job I've had other than a dispatcher.

 

Not always. We still run two D7 3T Cats with cable blade and a Hyster winch for skidding logs. We modernized one with an electric start pony motor but the other one still has a hand crank pony. If you don't know what you're doing that hand crank will tear your arm off. We're real careful who we let run it.
Big johnson bars for the controls that will make you appreciate the modern machines.
I don't think those things will ever wear out.
And yes, we have more modern machinery but I doubt if they'll last as long as that old iron.
I don't think that anybody here under the age of forty has ever run a cable blade.

 

I meant everything built in the last few years is electro-hydraulic or hydraulic pilot. You definitely can't kill that old iron though and the fact that CAT still supports it is awesome.

 

Not far from our company are two pits. One of them still use those huge Cat dozers (two of them) that use pony motors, levers, no cabs.

The other pit uses a 750B Deere which looks tiny compared to those old beasts.