Would you agree that Trucking, despite being a tough job, is actually very underrated and rewarding

Because any job that you actually have to be around other people 8 hours a day makes me angry and need a drink?

 

Only things I qualify job-wise is a 25 yo secondary ed diploma, likely get fired for whooping a smart alec teen or their parent. I don't qualify to re-enter service so other than trucking I can teach or wreak war.

 

Lose the word Job. This is not something you get up in the morning and go to work to clock in at 8 am or whatever and then suffer at your desk or assigned station in a building until a pre-determined lunch and later your quit time to clock out. Everything is monitored to the minute with several layers of supervisors with one goal. The entire production of everyone there makes them revenue. Your payroll, benefits if any and so on will come out of that revenue. In some cases you are a expense. Or a resource to be exploited if you gained skills or certification after additional schooling. Even if you found the time to go to night school to get a 4 year or even a 6 year masters or post doctorate etc.

There are hundreds of people who cannot succeed on a basic time clock work. But they pour their lives into college past the 4 and 6 year mark. Thinking when they get a big enough paper and are called Doctor so and so, they can finally go show up with a Government hiring office and gain that mandatory GS 12 pay position that makes them a big chief with little problems later in life. To make as much with the least sweat, effort etc.

I tried that type of work early in life because my parents did the same kind of living. I was not happy being so young and treated rather badly because I was young and knew nothing. There was no chance of advancement for a long time. Can I get you some coffee with that sugar and cream? Or can I get you that case of papers for the printer that is always running out? Whatever it is menial, anyone can do it. My first job was doing dishes in our Tavern so the people on the food side can enjoy the seafood when in season at the Bay. I learned to kill, process and cook Seafood later and then steaks and fries etc at the cook line. But the Bartending will have to wait a number of years until the State allows it due to age and licensing etc plus other training to identify those too drunk to be allowed any further purchasing and so on. But you would never for many years in life have the money, bond money, license money and fees necessary to open your own tavern or buy out that of your parents. Not for a very long time on the wages they give you.

Enter trucking.

I wont bore you with the details of the work, because all who read this subject are very well aware of the work involved in trucking. What I will tell you is this.

There is a large part of washington state that grows apples, onions and other good things to eat. Called Yakima for a example. There is more than enough grown in that area to load several hundred trucks going east. The Major cities in the east need many many many apples every day. And so you have hundreds of trucks if not thousands rolling east all the way to the east coast with those fine apples, onions and so on. 24/7 any season. It will be there in a week for people to buy and enjoy at home.

That's not a job. That is keeping a Nation FED. And by indirect actions of feeding them, you are keeping them happy and strong so they can show up to school in the morning, or work etc. If you do this trucking long enough it becomes a way of life.

You don't need very much. Not everyone is going to live long enough to enjoy anything when some get killed running off a mountain due to burning up their brakes or doing something stupid. It's even more tragic if they go and kill someone else who has nothing to do with trucking. Excepting during their own travels which might be looking for work like my father did once, he traveled as far as central Colorado and deep into Arizona one year looking for work in his beat up old Falcon. Not just minimum wage work but actual productive good paying work to raise a family on. When he finally got back home he was told to simply keep driving and so ended his first marriage with us kids split up by the courthouse.

Now in that Tavern were many truckers. There were many other kinds of workers too. One was a Postmaster. His routine was very simple. Go to work everyday. Finally retire and have a drink or two every night and go home to his wife who is none too content. Once and only once we carried him stumbling drunk to his house down the block. Because he had no more wife then.

What good is life when you piss it away doing something like a hamster in the wheel and lose it all after many decades?

Truckers come in with stories of places they have been to, foods they have enjoyed and would like us to cook, the people they have met and in some cases the things our Military is up to in our days of the Cold War. They would talk about how Granite Maryland is nothing, maybe two stop lights, a gas station and a few houses. But in the fields round that small town sit a battery of NIKE nuclear defense missiles protecting either Baltimore or DC depending on how the Soviets choose to come in if they attacked. To visit Granite is to see nothing, all of that has been cleaned up and anyone who has ever been station there is passed on. Literally history. But the stories remain. It's one of 48 locations protecting specifically Baltimore and DC in the 60's

Anyway. To go trucking is to do something important for the USA. Now some of you will laugh and toss rotten tomatoes. That's fine. But at the end of the day whatever it is your trailer has on it the Nation has need of it. Sometimes in peacetime. Or sometimes in time of war.

As far as the benefits? HA. There are benefits out there if you know what to look for to keep yourself happy and good morale along with eating well to stay strong when the dispatcher says ok, Ive been waiting on you three days that's enough, yer late already get going.

 

See Opus' post re: brevity..

 

LOL....X does not have that gear....LOL

 

Well what makes other careers better than trucking then?

 

i actually enjoy my job, but im local. i left the yard at 6am today i was HOME by 3:30PM. i drove all day, parked the truck drove the camaro home, t tops down and everything. got home, had dinner with the wife and kids, took my 7 year old in the pool, trimmed the lawn. right now im spending time with my wife. i make a consistent $1k per week, she also works full time. we have good health insurance, she has a pension; and i will get a week of paid vacation after i complete my first year. typically i get home by 4pm, i see my kids daily, and spend time with the wife on her days off (she works 2nd shift). i am able to do things that would be impossible if i drove OTR. driving OTR would be like being in prison for me, driving local am actually quite happy. knowing that what i do also matters. without my efforts milk would never leave the farm, and people would not have cheese, milk, butter, ect

i think in order for one to decide weather or not truckin is for them, they need to explore all options and decide if there is a fit within some facet of the industry. if you really truly hate driving itself, well then i cant help you.

i agree 100% about the point of being left alone, my boss does not bother me; i can go days without having any communication with him, and when he does communicate he is very pleasant and easy to deal with.

as far as seeing the USA, well i saw it briefly when i had my brief stay at werner..... that was enough for me. i would rather see my wife, kids, house, yard, car..... ok you get the idea. no amount of money is worth not having those things in my daily life.

$1k local
$1,200 (give or take a little OTR)
not a hard choice, if i want more money i can work 7 days and easily make $1,200 per week..... and still be home at night.

next time you pull a reefer full of dairy product, think of the farm pickup driver..... its where it all starts.

 

No

 

True millennials will never be able to do a real truck drivers job.

 

But a lot of drivers like OTR better than they would a job like yours, but then some drivers hate OTR..
Where else can a person live like a gypsy? Never knowing where they’ll wake up or where they’ll be going the next day?

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Plus our economy needs all different types of drivers and workers and trades people.