Profile For Eric F.

Was looking at the page here for Prime Inc, and holy cow! They have a repair shop in Altus, OK. I spent 8 years there as a kid when dad was USAF. How random is that.

I want you guys to know I really appreciate the time you take here. I am sure you have folks who come in and it seems like they are asking for help and really want validation of their own ideas. I hope that isn't me.

Thanks guys.

Morning Brett.

Thanks for the input. You've nicely divided the two competing interests. It's frustrating I think because I was pretty much told to "look into it" for the future, but bringing it up to wifey right now is a stresser for her, which she doesn't need. Don't want to get into soap opera stuff, but work for her right now is pretty hectic and so adding to her stress level is a bad idea. But it means that I tend to get push-back when ever the topic comes up.

The need for being with our church family is more on her side of things... I am fine listening to sermons on the road etc, and I don't need a lot of people in my life. I really just need someone to be present. So, her sleeping in the back would work fine. If no one else is there though, I can get into a bad place emotionally. I can handle that in a normal home/work situation since I get my dose of contact (like it or not) at work. I would have some concerns while on the road, though. Wifey though really values the relationships and community of church. I think when we do have our sit down talk about things, the conflict of interests (financial freedom/church community) is going to be the crux of the issue.

BTW, Brett, thanks for all the work you have put into this site. Regardless of what our choice is, I have always been interested in the driver side of this industry and it's really neat to see the trucking community from this perspective.

Eric.

On mobile, so sorry if there are formatting issues. Thanks for replying! I really appreciate it.

One think confuses me about your response, though. How does us saving up cash in hand to pay for school equal getting into more debt? Getting into more debt would be if we get student loans... I'm not following your logic on this.

On the rest ... Drat. I was not aware that the mileage would not be as good. Or at least that it would be so much smaller than I was thinking. Sigh. I think this one factor is the biggest ding in the idea of pursuing trucking. Which means its good that we have a lot of time to pray and think about it.

Thanks again for your input! It's got me thinking.

Howdy! My wife and I are looking towards the future and one thing we both said was that when we were younger we thought it would be neat to drive big rigs. My grandfather (whom I really don't know that well) was a trucker for years and years... I think he was an owner operator, and his wife rode shotgun with him. I remember being a wee young lad sitting in the cab while he was at the terminal waiting for a load. I remember very little about it, but it was exciting! :D

Anyway, we both have... um... a fair amount of debt to knock off, and not enough income to knock it off with, it seems. Our budget is pretty tight as it is, and it would be nice if we could be free to go places (no where in particular, we just like going on road trips), make decent money, and not be separated from each other. Long term, we would like to be debt free (huzzah!), and have money set aside to buy some land, build a home, and raise kids. And get Wifey back in school to finish her education degree. (She rocks with kids, but debt prevents us from her finishing... she was already cherry picked for a sweet education job, but lack of degree stopped it. :/) So we aren't looking for doing this for the rest of our lives. It's a hopefully enjoyable means to an end.

That said, I know little to nothing about trucking. I have been perusing the site for a few days now. The intro book was really awesome. I felt like I had an idea of what we could be looking at.

What I would like some input on:

- Job plan, five-ish years out. I am thinking that before we even start we would need about 8k in the bank just for classes for the both of us, PLUS 3-6 months "emergency fund" to pay the bills for the apt/electric/mobiles/car insurance/etc in case we have bad weeks. We aren't looking to dump all that since we don't know if this will work out. Plus, it would fit better with the 5 year plan... Here is why. I am thinking we should do year one as Regional drivers. Reasons: we still want to have SOME connection to home. Our church family is important to us. We don't need to be there every week, but we would talk to our dispatcher and explain that every other week or so we would like to be at church. Leave right after church for the road or just get off right before church, fine... but about twice a month would be what we want. Also, Texas is a big-ass state, but one we are fairly familiar with, and we live smack in the middle of it, almost. I think it would help the learning curve. Years 2-5 we would want to explore our options of regional Vs. OTR. I, personally, would like OTR. I think so would she. But leaving our church family is kinda hard. We would have to judge what would work for us. - Training. I am thinking a private school, so that we aren't "slaves" or indebted to a given company. I can see why have them pay for us to learn can be good, but I am in debt to too many others to really be okay with the idea. - Actual time together. How much time would we actually get to be with each other and not be sleeping while the other is driving? - Actual... close time together? Would this only work during 34 hr resets?

.... That's all I can think of right now, and I gotta run. Thanks for any input. Eric.