Reborn LOL

Hey Guys : Wow great site just getting starting in my new career at 56 and very excited, was in the trades for over 30 yrs self employed and kinda excited about having a steady paycheck, used to working long hrs. and dealing with the public, working alone , and getting treated like **** so I think truckin is gonna be a good fit for me. Oh did I mention kids are grown and wife is getting old and grouchy .LOL

The great thing about driving OTR is you can take your home time in Vegas and your wife never has to know about it. You can just blame your stupid dispatcher for never getting you home.

Im rather young and just starting out... still in the middle of CDL training. I will say you shouldn't expect to be treated like ****... I think most of the time when you act like a professional you get treated like one. From what I have seen many people in this industry are very... strong willed.... so conflicts with dispatch arise from time to time.

I wish you the best, see you on the road!

used to working long hrs. and dealing with the public, working alone , and getting treated like **** so I think truckin is gonna be a good fit for me.

Yes it most certainly will! It sounds like you already know how to handle some of the tougher side of trucking.

Oh did I mention kids are grown and wife is getting old and grouchy .LOL

Another check in the positive for trucking as a career opportunity

I think most of the time when you act like a professional you get treated like one

Honestly you're going to find that applies less to truck drivers than most people in our society I'm afraid. You're going to be surprised at how many people treat you like a bad dog just because you're a truck driver. There are a lot of people in our society that see truckers as the very bottom of the totem pole and some of that is well deserved. There are an awful lot of stereotypical truckers out there cussin and smellin bad and dumping their trash in public parking lots.

But when you know you're a top professional at what you do and you're out there risking your life every day while making life better for everyone in our society it can be pretty tough when someone treats you like you're beneath them. Like nothing you do matters. And that will happen sometimes out there no matter how great your attitude, work ethic, and personality are. But hey, treating those people with respect and kindness, even when they're not showing the same in return, is what a true professional would be expected to do, ya know? The more difficult it is to keep your compose in any given situation, the more important it is. Keeping your composure is a critical skill in trucking. Not only in the face of danger on the highway, but in the face of dock workers and dispatchers and shipping clerks.

The most important people to always be kind and respectful to are the people in the offices of your own company. That's a huge mistake a lot of drivers make. Your dispatcher , your dispatcher's immediate boss, the operations people, the safety people - you have to be professional when dealing with them. I was 21 when I started trucking and I was pretty hardcore blue collar, New York Italian, type A personality, looking for adventure, that sorta dude. It didn't take me long to figure out that talking to office personnel like they're construction workers gets you put in the doghouse in a hurry. Talk about digging yourself into a hole!