My youngest son tried OTR driving for about a year. He went to truck driving school at 19, got his CDL, and went to work for C.R.England in Utah driving a 53' reefer. He loved driving but said it got lonely, plus he was always disappointed with how disrespectful customers were to drivers. He spent hours waiting around loading docks to be unloaded, and would often be refused bathroom use or not even offered a drink of water. He found it insulting and demoralizing. He got to see a lot of the country and meet a lot of people, but he was ready to call it quits after a year. He then went to heavy equipment operator school in Washington State. I have to say, he was an excellent driver. He could drop that trailer into the narrowest slots I ever saw.
I am guessing that is the Columbia River in your photo. It looks east of The Dalles and on the Oregon side looking over into Washington. We have a lot of C.R. England semis on the freeways around here. Not many can even turn a clean corner with a 53 let along back it. Single trailers never bothered me, however doubles with the side winds we have here are scary, I got certified for them. My last day with the big rigs was when they had me pulling triples from Boise to Portland. I pulled in at Portland gave them my resignation and a piece of my mind about how semi drivers differ from train engineers. "Do any of you numbskulled, nitwit, pencil dicks know why trains run on a rail?" It was then I went to ranch, mining, and rural deliveries driving smaller trucks or semi with single trailer only. While I had many scary trips on some bad back roads, one of the scariest was driving a load of dynamite up a steep grade to a mine when the engine caught on fire. All I could do was secure the brakes and run up hill. I knew it wouldn't blow but that it would make a hot fire and I had to get as far as possible. I made it to the top of the hill before it caught the load on fire and it melted the entire truck down to just a ball of steel and aluminum. Luckily there was no timber close and it was raining so no forest fire resulted. And yes @Beth Gallagher most receiving dock clerks have no courtesy, patience, and are usually unhappy with their jobs. Being a woman I got a lot of rude comments from the unloaders and guy pencil pushing office clerks. I always obeyed all the rules of the road and courteous to other drivers, stopped for restroom and meal breaks, which made me later than the men drivers that ran the scales, pooped in a can in their truck, ate while driving, and pushed past their daily legal driving time.
Wow, certified for doubles is impressive, Ms. Fox! I understand that is where the big money is for a driver. I remember part of Kevin's job for CRE was to "retrieve" abandoned rigs. It amazed me how often truck drivers just decide it's not the job for them and simply walk away, leaving a million dollar truck parked somewhere with a full load of cargo. England would pay other drivers to "retrieve" the truck and cargo. Kevin also drove for a beer distributor in the Austin area for a short time. (Probably similar to @John Brunner's soft drink delivery). It was very different from OTR since he could be home every night, but he gave up trucking for good once he had a heavy equipment job. He also has diving certification for underwater welding. That boy did not want a desk job.
I had what they called a Full Service Route. That meant I filled machines, mostly in Alexandria...and in some nasty parts of Alexandria. We were all commissioned, and aspired to move up to delivering bulk cases to stores & retailers as your son did. I might spend 15 minutes putting 6 cases into a machine, retrieving the coinage, then driving to the next machine, while another driver was in the parking lot of a grocery store emptying his entire truck. I had machines that were on the 3rd floor of old office buildings that had no elevator. Some of the machines were in such rough parts of town that they were caged in steel mesh cages with an access hole to insert your change and one to grab your soda. One of the machines was outdoors at the Alexandria sewage treatment plant, and had to have the gunk chipped off of the cage each time I needed to fill it. I also filed the machines at a PX that is long gone (Cameron Station.) That was where a guy in a Saab Sonnet rear-ended my truck and I had no idea I had been hit because of the differential in mass. It was a nice car. Good times!
Yeah, his route was mostly grocery/convenience stores. Occasionally he got freebies (near expiration, etc.) so he was very popular with his friends. His current job is with a large commercial construction company; he started out operating a crane but they were thrilled that he could also operate a cement truck or just about anything from a forklift to the largest excavators, cranes and bulldozers. His talent led to promotions and now he has a... desk job. He has a company truck (pickup) and drives around to various construction sites in Austin/San Antonio.
Kevin told me once that he got tired of waiting on goobers to back up/pull up when trying to park in a truckstop for the night. He'd jump out of his tractor and go park the other guy's rig so they could all get some sleep. I think the average driver's "experience" was less than a year. There's a huge turnover in truck drivers so people need to realize that when they are expecting a trucker to know how to handle that rig, chances are that he is still in training.
@Beth Gallagher I was sort of the opposite from Kevin starting with heavy equipment since that is what I grew up doing. Actually I started with carpentry and broadcast electronics but went into heavy equipment and then explosives, mining, welding, ranching, and even bridge building. I always went with the highest paying job I could do since I didn't have a hubby to help out. When a driving job delivering freight as a Teamsters came up and I actually got it, I was delighted. I stayed with driving on Teamsters jobs because of the benefits both medical and retirement. I simple couldn't make it with my SSD alone although it is at the top of the social security scale. My Teamsters retirement check really gives me some extra money that comes in handy. I fought with the corrupt Teamsters agents and trucking supervisors my entire 18 years of commercial driving. Can you imagine that hahaha! One company I worked for had a supervisor that couldn't tell the truth. He had the clerk watching and warning him when I came in and was mad. He didn't know that she would tell me where he had slipped out too. Clerk on phone: "Faye is headed toward your office and hot as hell." Boss: "Thanks I will slip out to the side dock." Clerk: "He is slipping out to the side dock." Faye: "Thanks, go girl power." Faye: "There you are your lying sack of crap." Boss: "I didn't lie, it is a gray area and we will have a meeting in the morning to discuss it." Faye: "Yeah and those brown nosing XXXXIES won't say a thing. They have families to support and worry about their jobs.so they won't speak up about the poor scheduling and how you put the crap off on me because, in your former words, I don't have a family to get home too so the extra hours and crap frustrating route, I should be happy to preform. Wrong Bucko, I should be treated with the same respect you show to family men." Next morning meeting. Boss; "You see guys it was a gray area and Faye didn't appear to have a difficult route according to the numbers, so my call was one of those gray areas and I was busy and let it slip through the cracks." Faye: "More like slip up my crack, you lying sack of crap." Boss: "No one has ever called me a lair to my face before." Faye: "That is another lie because just yesterday I called you a liar to your face." Of course the guys just smiled at my comedy and sheepishly said that, "yes such a "gray area" wasn't fair to Faye." No balls I tell you! Just a bunch of monks that were able to reproduce.
I am often proud of you, girl. I was kind of lucky to be able to say take this job and shove it, before the song came out. I'm a prepper in more ways than one. To be able to but not doing it gives you power.