The Tough Reality Of OTR Team Driving

It's mildly frustrating someone I left Sacramento with has been home once and is now on home time there now going through the same process as me and I'm just up crap creek going on a month and two weeks since I've been home. Hopefully test for my license sometime this week and request to send me home for a few days. Two months before seeing family or having any time off is kind of degrading.

I don't think it's a complaint, it's a reality.

I don't think it's a complaint, it's a reality.

Jeremy, have you noticed how most everyone here sympathizes with you, but we don't jump in there and constantly agree with your remarks? We all understand your feelings, we've all experienced them, and continue to experience them. This can be a frustrating job, but somehow you've got to get some sort of focus on the benefits of this lifestyle. If you can't adjust to it you will just end up as one more number in the vastly confusing statistics of high turn-over rates in this business. We keep trying to prop you up, but you keep trying to compare your experiences with someone elses - it's gonna ruin you.

You have got to embrace your own experience and be able to make it something worth doing. If all you are able to do is see how everyone else has it better than you then trucking is going to slowly suck the life out of you.

I've seen drivers who seem almost physically sick because of holding to the type of attitudes you are prone to. I am trying to point you in the right direction, because frankly, I think you've got what it takes to do this. Hang in there bud, it only gets better, but you've got to see your way into the fog and quit counting on your experience being a cookie cutter copy of your friend's.

It takes a tenacious spirit to be a successful truck driver, but it is that tenacity that puts you into the level of professionalism that makes it all worth while.

Oh, just so you know... I was gone almost three months before I saw my family as a newbie - yeah, I know what your feeling, I literally busted out in tears a few times over it, but I was pumped to be learning this new and exciting career.

Just the way the cookie crumbles. Thanks for the advice, getting pretty dam lonely and missing my girlfriend very much. I knew this was going to be some time but I don't realize some people got better treatment due to different trainers/instructors/dispatchers.

I just am keeping my fingers crossed it's going to be worth it. Right now it's just a bit overkill with all the roadblocks so far. Thanks

Just the way the cookie crumbles. Thanks for the advice, getting pretty dam lonely and missing my girlfriend very much. I knew this was going to be some time but I don't realize some people got better treatment due to different trainers/instructors/dispatchers.

I just am keeping my fingers crossed it's going to be worth it. Right now it's just a bit overkill with all the roadblocks so far. Thanks

Hang in there, Jeremy. I'm sure she is missing you too. :)

Hoo boy, is this all taking me back. I vividly remember the anticipation and excitement I felt going through training and orientation, and waiting to meet my trainer. And then the almost soul-crushing exhaustion that followed for the next 5 weeks. I, too, had a trainer whose attitude was "GO GO GO GO GO GO GO" as much as possible. He literally refused to park the truck any longer than was absolutely necessary. I didn't get a shower for the first 8 days I was on his truck, and then only because we were sitting at the Pilot in Grand Island, NE waiting for another truck to play musical loads with. I can count the number of times we actually parked for more than an hour on the fingers of one hand. I don't think I got more than 3 hours of sleep on any given day except for those few times we actually parked for a night somewhere. And yes, quite often that was at or just outside of a shipper or receiver. And yes, that fully confirmed for me that I would never be able to drive team, because I simply cannot sleep in a moving truck. Every little crease, crack, wrinkle, or pebble in the road would wake me up, and God help me if we hit a patch of actual rough road.

But you know what I did to get through it? I simply told myself that it was only a temporary situation. Every time I felt myself getting frustrated and discouraged and reaching my breaking point, to where I simply wanted to throw in the towel and tell my trainer to pull off at the nearest Greyhound terminal , I'd simply say "only X days left, and I get my own truck." And even though it all seemed like it was going to last an eternity at the time, in retrospect it seems like it all happened in the blink of an eye, and I was in my own truck. I was master of my own ship, totally in control of my own destiny, and the end result was most definitely worth the momentary torture.

As a little endnote, I ended up bumping into my trainer a couple years later at a receiver in Illinois. He'd since moved on to another company, but was pleased to see that I was still driving and doing well for myself. We hadn't always seen eye-to-eye during our time together, but he'd certainly made me aware of the sometimes unpleasant realities of life on the road, and I wasn't unprepared for them when it came time to do it all on my own.