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Overview
Trucking is a challenging lifestyle, not just a job, involving long hours, extensive time away from home and family, and significant personal responsibility for safety and efficiency. Drivers manage constant variables like weather, traffic, and deadlines, living in their truck for weeks at a time and dealing with the physical and mental demands of operating a large vehicle. While the lifestyle has its challenges, it can also offer significant benefits, including good pay and a sense of adventure, with different types of driving jobs available to suit various preferences.
Key Aspects of Trucking
- A Unique Lifestyle:
Truck driving is often described as a lifestyle rather than a 9-to-5 job. Your truck serves as both your workplace and your home, and you're responsible for ensuring everything runs smoothly. - Time Away from Home:
Over-the-road (OTR) drivers may spend weeks away from family and friends, with limited time at home before having to leave again. - Long & Demanding Hours:
Truckers work long hours to meet deadlines, often driving overnight and managing schedules that are far from typical. - Significant Responsibility:
Drivers are responsible for vehicle maintenance, safety, navigating complex logistics, and dealing with unpredictable issues like weather and traffic. - Isolation and Loneliness:
Since most drivers operate solo, the long stretches of time on the road can lead to loneliness. - Variety of Roles:
The trucking industry offers diverse options, from long-haul to regional driving, with varying schedules and levels of time away from home. - Benefits:
Despite the challenges, trucking can offer benefits such as competitive pay, particularly as drivers gain experience, and the opportunity for an adventurous career.
The Driver's Experience
- The Road is Your Office:
Your truck is your primary workspace, a mobile environment where you manage your load and your time. - Mental and Physical Demands:
Drivers face constant mental pressure to navigate and maintain safety, along with physical demands like shifting and backing up a large vehicle. - Constant Adaptation:
Drivers must be prepared to adapt to various conditions, from severe weather to busy traffic, all while ensuring the safe and timely delivery of their cargo
- Your value as a worker and earnings are determined by how hard/smart you work, not by your ability to kiss ass or pretend you like working in a cubicle on vaporware.
- To a great extent you get to set your own schedule.
- The money is good.
- You get to see the country.
- You get plenty of time to yourself. I always found this meditative. You'll have enough time to think every single little problem in your life out to their extremity. Once you've thought all there is to think you think nothing. This is 'emptiness' in the sense of meditation.
CONS
- You give up your entire life to do this job. No social life. No family. No meals at your favorite hometown restaurants. Bands who come to town play to crowds w/o you. Yeah you've got a phone but it's not the same.
- It's a dangerous job. Drivers can and do get killed with shocking regularity.
- Some companies view you as a cash cow and nothing more, which is why you'll see so many posts on this sub about changing companies.
- For certain people it's an intolerably lonely life.