Quote:
Originally Posted by countryhorseman
Good luck! There are hundreds more just like you everyday doing the same thing!
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Thanks to you and everybody else on the thread so far.
I definitely have mixed feelings. My old boss has a gig where he hauls trees once in awhile on the weekends. I might try to get a line on something like that, but as far as doing this for a living anymore, it just isn't fun very often anymore, and it's a whole lot of aggravation, and too damn much time spent working.
Even though I'm home every night for dinner, I barely see my kids. I'm too tired to do much of anything, because 12+ hour days behind the wheel don't leave a lot of energy for anything else.
I'm not getting any action from the ol' lady any more than I did when I was on the road either, and it's usually me who is too tired or has a headache. How sad is that?
The only bad part about this deal is going broke. I've been trying to find a better paying job that wasn't trucking since about the middle of 2005, when it really started to stop being fun. I can't find one, so I'm going back where I came from, where from the other side of the docks I got the crazy idea to go do this in the first place.
It was an interesting ride, but I'm just done with it. My life is like that movie Big Fish, complete with all the women on the side (even though I only fantasized, and never actually crossed the line, although there were a couple where I definitely would have if I had had half the chance!!) I've got enough wild stories to last for years, and I don't need any more stories.
I just want to go home, and work 40 hours. Just 40 hours. With labor laws that keep my employers from f***king me without paying me for it.
The worst part is going broke right in the short term, but the best part is that I will stop going broke over the long term. Every year, I earn just a little less relative to the price of everything than I did the year before. The raises in this business get you up to the top fast, and you stay there forever. The only way to ever get a raise after a certain point is to quit your job and find something more dangerous or more distasteful in some way.
Maybe it's different for the union boys, but you can't get an IBT job in this town unless you have the right Daddy, and my daddy is the wrong daddy for that.
Hey, I'm going to a better place than McDonald's anyway. I'm looking forward to everything but the paychecks. (Going because there is actually more BS to get a job at Wal-Mart than to drive a truck, believe it or not. Or at least the BS takes a lot longer. I haven't made it through all the hoops yet.)