Research and Decisions

Thursday:

For the past few weeks I’ve been glued to the PC doing research on over the road (OTR) truck driving.  I think it may suit me well; I’ve always loved being on the road, my mechanical abilities have served me well in past jobs, and working alone sounds fairly attractive.  My family life is much simpler these days with all our children grown and on their own, so the time away shouldn’t be as much of a factor as it could be (and did I mention my supportive wife?).

What did we do before the Internet?  There’s more information than I can begin to digest on the subject.  Much of what I’ve found came from several forums ( Pumpkindriver.com is my favorite so far).  I’ve also found BLOGS to be quite informative; nothing like following someone’s daily life as they describe it.  One of the most interesting I’ve found to date is authored by ‘ opposablethumbs ‘. His timely (for me) postings of his first experiences in truck driver training and OTR driving with SNI were exactly what I needed to read.  I’ve also found the experiences and opinions of a much more experienced driver (namely Orange Boy ORT ) quite valuable. A big thank you goes out to both of you for your postings. My research suggested that joining a company that provides training in exchange for an employment commitment would be my best bet.  Of those that do, it seems that Schneider National, Inc. ( SNI ) gets the best reviews overall.  It doesn’t hurt that their Charlotte training facility is only ~10 miles from my home.

With that in mind I went by their Charlotte Operations Center (OC) this afternoon and met with Enterprise Recruiting Manager Joe Jennings.  He spent a good deal of time describing their training and OTR driving in general, as well as answering all the questions I could think to ask. 

But you can only do so much research; at some point you have to form an opinion and act on it. What are my impressions of the career thus far?

 Good:

• Being on the road
• Working alone much of the time
• An ever changing schedule (hate the thought of going back to 8 to 5)
• Mapping and routing; I’ve loved map reading ever since being in the army
• Driving a big truck

Not so good:

• Being on the road
• Waiting…a lot
• Making deadlines in spite of obstacles (poor directions, problems w/ hours, etc.)
• Weather
• Traffic

A year from now I’ll probably look back on my first impressions and laugh (like I’m sure some of you are now), but you gotta start somewhere. We’ll see how it goes…