Profile For Old School

Are your boys living with you? Do you just have them for weekends? Give us a little more info.

Trucking jobs are very demanding. They often have crazy schedules with many unexpected interruptions. Almost all trucking jobs involve long working hours. For the most part, this is not an ideal job for people raising children.

how do you guys manage a home/work balance with younger children?

In my opinion, there is no such thing as "home/work balance" in trucking. This job requires a serious commitment. That's why most truck drivers are up in years. They don't have as much reason to be home. I do not reccomend this career to young parents. I have 11 grandchildren who I would love to see more often. Unfortunately, retiring from trucking is the only way I'm going to make that happen.

what is a regional lane? And what's the difference between being a regional driver and an OTR one??

Okay, trucking terminologies are confusing. Of course when you say regional, you think that means a certain region, and it does. But... what is that region? A man with small children, like yourself, may think a regional position would allow them to be home nightly, or maybe several nights a week. That's not really the case.

Some companies offer what they call a Western Eleven region. That's 11 Western States. That's a sizeable region. I'm a regional driver who seldom goes West of the Rockies. That's an even larger region. Even though I'm regional, I'm only home once a month for a few days.

I'm not trying to discourage you, but we need more information to really be helpful to you. I just don't see this as a good career path for someone who has charge of young children. You'd need a local job at best, and those are pretty tough to find as a rookie. Local jobs can be just as demanding. They still involve long hours and crazy schedules.

Okay, let's try something...

Tell me why you felt the need to be "completely honest" with this "Western Van Division Director" by telling him you didn't like him.

I'm very open and honest, but I can't even imagine saying that to anyone unless there was already a great deal of friction going on between us.

This is one of those times where I miss Paul Harvey.

Jeff, the only advice I can give is this... If you honestly believe you got fired for having a bad attitude, you will absolutely have a difficult time finding another trucking job.

Your description of everything is screaming... "There is more to the story." If you can't see through your "complete honesty," and realize what was really happening, you'll probably not resolve this.

Paul Harvey always gave us "the rest of the story." If you could figure that part out, and share it with us, we might be able to help.

That's hilarious Turtle!

It was all sounding so fun until you got to that broken rib! As I was reading, I was already starting to think... "Well, something has to break on a weekend like that." Sure enough, you fulfilled my thoughts.

I broke a rib once. I don't reccomend it to anybody.

Ouch!

Bobcat, that looks rough. Boats provide so much pleasure when they are cooperative. Given half a chance, they will cause us some grief here and there. Sometimes they cause a lot of grief.

I agree with your statement... I'm just glad it wasn't worse.

I hope you can get it repaired for the price you mentioned. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more. Good luck with it!

at one point I knew all of the lyrics to all of the songs. (Sometimes there wasn’t a lot to do for kids living in rural Mississippi in the 60’s). I also got to see it performed by a traveling Broadway troupe a few years ago up in Lubbock at Texas Tech. As nerdy as it sounds - it was really good!

No judgements from here. I knew all the lyrics too. I raised three daughters who loved the old musical genre of movies. I've seen Oklahoma hundreds of times. Here's another cult-like musical they loved... Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. I had that thing memorized too.

My kids had an unusual non-traditional upbringing, but they've all turned out real well. Out of three daughters, I now have 9 grandchildren with 2 more on the way. The grandchildren are even more fun.

Uh oh!

My old timers might be hitting me...

I think that line is from a different song in the musical. It's from, Oh What A Beautiful Morning. I may not have even quoted it accurately. Oh well, you get the idea.

Hello ID Mtn Gal!

It's great hearing from you. I hope you're doing well.

That line is actually in the song, Oklahoma.

The broadway play and movie “Oklahoma”.

Ding, Ding, Ding...

Bush Country wins the prize! A corn on the cob dinner from me, but first you've got to find me!

I don't think we've heard from you for a while. How are things going in the oil field?

Do you remember that line from the movie, Second Hand Lions?

I've been running the Midwest states lately, and corn is all I see. Man we produce a lot of corn!

The good thing about seeing all this corn is that it indicates football season is about to start.

Who recognizes where this line comes from? "The Corn is as high as an elephant's eye, and it looks like it's reaching right up to the sky!