I turned 50 a few months ago, and am in my 17th year of driving. I am NOT, i repeat, NOT one of those who grew up dreaming of driving a big truck. Far from it. I spent most of my first 12 years of work in sales…school buses, and telecommunications equipment and services (the industry I grew up around). However, when the company you work for sells out, the new company doesn’t want to negotiate your job title and duties to your satisfaction, and you can’t find anything else to do, you try trucking because when you look in the paper at the want ads there are none or maybe one job in your area and a page and a half (at that time) of driving jobs. You need a job, they have jobs, you have some experience driving grain trucks (because you grew up in a rural area), and there you go.

My wife joined me after a couple years, and we spent 12 years running team, the last 8 as owner operators. We made VERY good money as an O/O team. The last 5 years she was on the truck we also owned our trailer and made even more. Then, as Tim alluded to, health issues changed all of that. My wife got carpal tunnel in both wrists, had surgery on both, neither one took very well. She came back to work and lasted about 6 weeks. Her hands would still go numb after about a half hour of driving.

Here’s where we come to the real point of my little vignette: there are good companies out there, you just have to be like a hound dog in sniffing them out and then maybe add a little luck into the mix. I am now with a small company, 65 trucks, running percentage pulling their trailers and in 2007 as a solo, home every week, grossed about $184,000. Leave Friday morning, home usually on Wednesday about noon or so, sometimes Thursday morning but very rarely that late. Treated well, never have to watch to make sure I’m getting paid what I’m due ( although I still audit every settlement with the freight bill the company sends me, at my request, very willingly).

Is it easy? Not with $3.50/gal. fuel, no. Could I do any better local? No. And I have looked. I live in the middle of ethanol alley, there are about 50 ethanol plants within 100 mile radius of where I live. I could haul grain direct for the local elevator to their plant, or now refined ethanol to a local consolidation facility. None of these things pays anywhere near what I make on the road.

As for health, it’s what you make of it. I don’t drive overnight anymore. Every once in a while, about once every two or three months I have to overnight on leg of my trip. Not a big deal. But, as a diabetic, I know that consistent sleep patterns, especially during regular sleep hours, is one thing that will keep my health from deteriorating. I now have a job that I can do that. My semi-annual blood screenings have been that of a non diabetic for almost two years now. And I’ve quit smoking. Now I need to lose some more weight, but I will lose it the right way by changing my habits, not some new diet fad.

I feel for your situation. Hopefully you can find some place to hang your hat and call home. I’ve been lucky enough to find mine.

My comment, though, relates primarily to the culturally ingrained and accepted practices responsible for the bulk of problems facing drivers and companies. Your examples, and I’ll stipulate their validity, relate to issues and practices which are clearly unethical and against which there are existing laws; therefore neither culturally ingrained or accepted. Still, the issues to which you speak are of clear value and, as such, worthy of being aired often and strongly.

Over the years (and I’m talking about a lot of years) those paying the bill have been able to dictate the imposition of terms and conditions that are convenient for them and detrimental to the general health and welfare of drivers. Because of the competitive nature of the business, shippers were able to negotiate terms in which trucking companies granted concessions – like forsaking the right to charge for demurrage and detention, as well as others.

Eventually these practices became ingrained into the transportation culture; even when carriers held the upper hand they failed to act on behalf of themselves. To assume that this failure of action by the carriers was intentional, purposely ignoring an opportunity to improve the conditions and bottom line for both drivers and company, would be a mistake.

Of course, the subject of this post was “Life After the Open Road”. I think a lot of folks get into this business because they still don’t know what they want to do when they grow up and trucking seems like an adventure; they figure they’ll do something else later. Then later comes and they’re not prepared to do anything else; they think they’re too old to start over. Tim, you said you were 42. If you spent 4 years in college getting a degree in a field that you were passionate about, you’d be 46 when you attained your degree. That’d leave you with about 20 years, or more, to pursue your passion before retirement.

But that’s only one avenue of change and there are many others.