Per rbowman:
My takeaway from reading interviews with various OTR drivers is that their primary worry is falling asleep at the wheel - and they have a number of strategies for dealing with that, CB radio conversations and singing to oneself among them.
Birthdays, recitals, the normal family stuff doesn't happen. I wanted to spend time at home so I took a job that was supposed to be a drive from here to Kelowna, BC with Western Star parts and back. My last run was when they told me to go from Kelowna to Edmonton for a load of pipe going to Alabama. Then I loaded lumber in Alabama going to Pennsylvania, and next picked up an elevator going to Seattle. Meanwhile I'm stopping at Walmarts to buy clothes. I got back to Missoula parked the truck, told them somebody else could take it to Seattle.
I usually carried a bicycle. I got some nice rides in while hanging around waiting for a load. The only bad moment was coming back from Canada and I realized I didn't have a receipt showing I bought it in the US. Fortunately they weren't in a nosy mood that day. When Canada and the US were in a pissing contest over something it seemed the border cops felt it their duty to be pricks.
It was fun for a while. I tried for a local job but never got anything permanent. After a year I gave up and went back to driving a computer. The view from my chair isn't as interesting but the pay is better and I get to sleep nights. Not everyone has another career they put on hold to go back to though.
Books on tape were okay but if you got too engrossed in the story that could be bad too. Crank up the radio or tape. I was crossing Iowa one night and the search on the radio was coming up dry. Finally it picked up a station that was playing a Bo Diddley cover
I'm a man I spell M-A-N A Christian man..
Oh shit... Seek...
That' true. Hope you get all the work you need!
Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop When the wind blows, the cradle will rock When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall...
I had a well paid supervisor quit. I think this week him and his wife are starting driving school. Both are in their early 50's and want to do this. I wish him well, but it does not seem to be a good age to start over, but he wants to be his own boss. Biggest challenge I see is getting that first couple of years of experience and reputation.
I've found that driving keeps me awake.
Loud music makes me go to sleep.
On the subject of health and softy shooting itself in the foot, there have been many more deaths in boxing since they started wearing gloves.
Per Mr Macaw:
On PBS a few years ago I heard a round-table discussion involving some older world-class welterweight fighters and the consensus was that brain injuries were almost unknown back in the bare-knuckle days.
The rationale: bare-knuckle boxing was essentially an endurance contest
- circling, looking for an opening. Once one of the fighters landed a punch, the fight did not last much longer. A person just can't take very many full-force bare-knuckle punches. Therefore there was very little of trading punches - especially to the head.
My kid brother told a cop one time when he was questioned about talking on the CB, and handsfree telephone "you don't really want me driving WITHOUT distractions, do you???" as he was motoring across Sakatchewan - - -
Many OO's are under contract. Whether they make more than the company drivers is questionable. Being your own boss sounds good until you realize shippers, receivers, the DOT, and brokers are controlling your life.
Being a team has some drawbacks. A solo driver can show 60 hours in 7 days, or in practical terms 3000 miles. If everything lines up right you might get 12,000 miles a month. A team has the potential of 6000 miles a week. To do that pretty much requires you to run fixed routes with long legs and minimal time spent loading and unloading to maximize profits. While the run from LA to Seattle is relatively scenic if I did it more than twice in a row I'd get antsy. LA to the east coast means you're going to spend a lot of time in the flatlands and that gets old really fast.
Do you think boredom on those long trips a major problem? Like falling asleep at the wheel from it?
not really. You get to do a lot of thinking. There were a few times when I was sleepy but mostly not. Fatigue is the real problem. You're not necessarily sleepy but you make stupid mistakes. I never wrecked a truck but there's a certain amount of road rash that goes with the job, scraping a trailer backing into a dock and so forth. Whenever I had one of those incidents I realized I wasn't hitting on all eight.
Even now there are days when I catch up on documentation and do trivial little chores so I don't break anything by making stupid logic errors that a new programmer would catch. Some jobs you don't have that luxury.
You really have had some amazing experiences all over the place, it sounds like to me. A nice guy who works hard. That's something I can appreciate and admire.
Don Y posted for all of us...
The ECM knows all...
rbowman posted for all of us...
Yes isn't it phenomenal? I drove a truck that had red lights, siren and air horn but I was the one ending up stopping...
I don't think they are escapees, they drive amongst us, no wonder the zombie and paranormal is so popular.
WTF?
You can't really understand if you've never driven across Saskatchewan.
Now you've seen pretty much all there is to see and there's 405 miles of it.
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