Timberwolf you work 11 hour days.. which we both know is actually low for any trucking job. I work 5 days a week plus a short 2 hour run saturday to drop the last load and pass my house 3-4 times a day now. Though i pretty much eat up my 70. But even those jobs are extraordinarily rare and every experienced driver competes for them. the idea of trucking 8 hours a day is just.. well it makes me laugh.

Imho honestly the best option would be bedbugging. The small companies will generally toss abut anyone in a truck... help you get your b's then a's then stick you in a truck with another bedbugger a month and send you out in a truck. Which scares me actually but ive seen it done over and over. Those guys generally dont really know what theyre doing even after a couple years.. though as far as driving skill noone can outdrive an experienced bedbugger. Ive put semi's into some absolutely insane places.

 

I was a newbie last fall. Pretty much a line haul driver home every night. Long hours, can't expect less than 13 to 14 hours. But it's nice to have an actual weekend with a full two days off.

I was told that I would have to go otr to start, glad I didn't listen to those people. I love driving but also love having my own life and if I couldn't live at my house and had to sleep in my truck every night I'd have to find another job. Other people love it but that's not for me.

Considering that most ovr drivers don't make much the first year, I'm not losing out much financially at this point. I'm making in the same range as most newbie ovr drivers and I'm home every night and weekend. It can be done.

 

i was able to get local right out of school, but i think it was a luck thing. So, i think you can find it, but it may take some real digging. Where do you live?


Right now, i am OTR and i'm trying to get a 1hr run in every other day, but there's just no time because our company has a boatload of miles. There may be OTR companies that DO have a good amount of work but have looser/more flexible scheduling so you'll have time to exercise and do other things. This will take research too, so you may want to consider that route also.


As far as pay differences between local and OTR, i feel one does not necessary pay more than the other---it depends on the company. The other thing is with local, i noticed that the local gigs that DID pay well, i only had time to go home, eat, take a shower etc. and then come back the next day. So really with local in a lot of cases, there is no time to exercise either.


P.S. Auto-truck transport was a OTR company i worked for that had a boatload of miles, yet had flexible scheduling----you delivered when you wanted to deliver (within reason). So, with this you could make time to exercise/do sightseeing (provided the truck could fit where you wanted to go), yet make as much money as you wanted.