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Emoryocc98
Butterfly
Butterfly

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Joined: 5 Feb 2012
Age: 33
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01 Apr 2012, 12:09 am

well im thinking about becoming an 18 wheeler driver i know ill have to go back to school thats all good but does anyone on here drive or knows someone i need advice if its a good choice i hate being around people and i love dogs and i heard u can but but anyone know any advice thanks



enso
Hummingbird
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Joined: 14 Feb 2012
Age: 52
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Location: woods of northern michigan

03 Apr 2012, 8:54 pm

When my father was alive he was a truck driver and employed others to drive for his company as well. He had 6 trucks in all which were actually more like 36 wheelers not 18 wheelers. They where the type that had wheels all from the front of the trailer to the back because of the huge weight of load they carried (mostly bins of cast iron auto parts). 18 wheelers tend to only have two axles on the trailer and carry most common lighter freights.

One thing to consider before going this route is driving record. If you have even the slightest tendency to get any sort of traffic ticket then you likely will have troubles down the road. Employers expect perfect safety records and often consider more then 1 speeding ticket in 4 years an indication of an accident waiting to happen. A ticket is not the end of the world but the best drivers often have zero tickets across 20 year careers.

In terms of not being around people I would have to say this is the perfect job. Especially if you are over the road meaning you will be driving long runs and spending the night away from home most of the time. Unless you are driving for some company like Frito Lay or Fedex you will likely have minimal contact with anyone except at places you stop and then only to get their signature or further directions. If you become an owner-operator you can pick your jobs and they are not too hard to find. Go into any major truck stop and they will have a special computer that announces what sort of loads need to go from here to there and you just show up with the right sort of truck and take the load. All in all you will live a long time and deal with on average about a dozen or less unique people per week unless you go out of your way to socialize with people on the road.

As for dogs I work with them all the time on the side. I am the same way. I would rather live in a pack of dogs or wolves then in the society as it is now. And there are quite a few different dog that would do just fine living in the cab of a truck with you. Or if you have short runs where you come home each day they will be just fine spending 8-19 hours waiting for you. Just do not pick a breed that is prone to hyper activity or separation anxiety as they will either be left alone at home for hours at a time or cooped up in a small cab with no where to go. A dog is a great companion if you pick the right one. I have known dozens of truck drivers who travel with all sorts of dogs.

That is about all I can think of living as the son of a truck driver/company owner. And no matter what the economy is doing it seems that there is always a need for trucks to move things and people to drive them.



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Sea Gull
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Joined: 1 May 2010
Age: 53
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Posts: 204

03 Apr 2012, 11:57 pm

I'm a truck dispatcher with 15 years experience in the trucking industry. I tried driving a truck but it was way too hard. It’s like having two full time jobs- and I'm not exaggerating!

Getting a CDL is the easy part, I have one myself, 4 grand and 4 weeks later I found I couldn't hack the rough life you must lead. The laws say you must inspect every part of your truck for mechanical defects every day and inspect and be fully responsible for your loads. Deal with unpaid down time while your truck is being fixed. (sometimes a couple of days) You are often expected to load and unload the truck yourself- this was really something I had not expected. Hard, dirty, physical work, long hours, pay scale not worth the effort you must put into it. (At least I felt so).

I had one job which lasted two days. On my second day of truck driving I almost rolled the truck sideway's off a cliff- scariest moment of my whole life, I quit immediately. Another job working for a glass company where I had to load and offload the glass and mirrors onto the truck myself- dangerous doesn't say it when working with glass. That lasted 2 months, when I realized that every other truck driver there had some major, life altering injury from working with glass, didn't want that for myself.

Also you must have a tolerance for hard, demanding, mean people. Dispatchers, shipper-receiver's, angry customers about late loads or damages, ect, ect.. At the glass company the dispatcher came up to me, looked me in the eye and said 'someone ought to kick your F****** head in', try and remain calm and attentive to driving after having that said to you first thing in the morning.

Do the research on it first. Being a truck dispatcher works for me, but driving a truck is hard. Don't take the decision lightly, its an entirely different lifestyle- don't expect to be home to raise a family or have the weekends off. Still many people like it, each to their own. Take my word for it don't just look at the $80,000 a year pay cheque; think of it as no family life or home time, working 80+ hours a week, so really its $40,000 a year for working two full time jobs, dangers both driving and loading unloading. Difficult people, isolation and loneliness can even effect Aspies.

Might work, might not, it depends on your preferences. Do the research!


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VIDEODROME
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Joined: 20 Nov 2008
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05 Apr 2012, 2:06 am

I drove truck for a few years and got fed up with the regulations and sever shortage of truck parking.

For a while I tried Expedite Van and while the pay was lower I enjoyed that job a helluva lot more. If I was an owner operator it would have been a better deal.

Driving a van cross country you really have much more freedom of the open road zipping past those annoying Weigh Stations. Mostly though for yourself you do indeed have a lot of solitude. You just need some book keeping sense because most of these are 1099 Independent Contractor jobs.