How I Spent My (Very Short) Retirement
I wrote awhile back about my retirement from a life as a practicing attorney after roughly 38 years. As I wrote at the time, there was actually a little more to that story, but I decided to hold off on telling it. However, now that a couple of months have gone by, I am ready to tell (as Paul Harvey used to say on the radio) The Rest Of The Story.
If retirement means having nothing to do all day, my retirement lasted about one day. As winter turned to spring earlier this year, I honestly answered a question I had been asking myself with increasing frequency – Could I continue doing what I was doing for the next 3-5 years I was expecting to work before actually retiring? The honest answer was “nope, nope, nope”.
A former law partner once lamented to me late in his practice that “nobody should have to do the same thing for over 30 years.” His last years as an attorney were not great ones for him, but he didn’t know what else to do, so he stuck at it for as long as he could. Perhaps it took me longer than it should have, but I decided that I was not going to follow his example.
I knew that starting with zero experience, at my age, in some unfamiliar area of law was likely a non-starter. This was certainly true if I expected to earn anywhere close to what I had been making. This was even more true in some professional field outside of the law. Guys in their early 60’s who want to start out in something new are not in high demand in our modern business world.
It was part dumb-luck and part research that led me to a well-paid field where a guy of my age is in high demand. My new daughter-in-law’s dad is in that field, and generously spent some time listening to my situation and telling me about his experiences. He also told me that with my background, I would be heavily recruited and could make a good living at it for as long as I want to work. That field is trucking.
Yes, trucking. I have always loved driving. I have always loved machines. My favorite part of any job I ever had was when I had to drive somewhere. One summer I drove a van making pickups and deliveries for an auto parts warehouse. I spent one semester in college delivering pizzas. Even as an attorney, my practice took me all over my state, so that “windshield time” could be a major part of my day – almost invariably the least stressful and most enjoyable part of it. I vividly remember a day maybe two or three years ago. There was a construction project going on across the street from my office. I was trying to work as one dump truck after another came to the site as part of an earth-moving operation. My single thought: Why couldn’t I have been one of the guys driving one of those trucks instead of sitting at a computer screen trying to get the advantage over an opposing litigant.
I had the clean employment/driving/drug screen records that are a must, and all I needed was to get my CDL (commercial drivers license). Research led me to the program in my area that seemed the most thorough of all of them. After an application, a background check, an interview and a physical/drug screen, I was accepted. I finished my last day of my old life as an attorney at about 7:30 pm on a Saturday and showed up at truck driving school on Monday morning to start a five-week class.
I learned about safety regulations, I learned about the industry, and (most importantly) I learned about how to drive a big rig. Backing, maneuvering, and even parallel parking were among the things we learned. And road driving. Lots and lots of driving through city and suburban streets where we learned about the many hazards we would be expected to avoid. The driving instructor was a grizzled veteran of something like three million accident-free miles as a trucker. He was blunt, and never hesitated to give me a tongue-lashing when I needed to improve. It may not have been my preferred learning style, but he wanted nothing more than to mold us into safe drivers, and got the job done.
After completing the school, I got my license and started looking for a job. Several companies had sent representatives there to make pitches to our small class (that started at four people and finished with three). Almost all of them told us that this was the only school in the vicinity they would consider hiring out of, so I felt vindicated in my choice.
As I write this, I have finished my third week as a new driver. I have chosen a company that is a contractor for the U.S. Postal Service, and the job will be driving loads of mail between various cities within my state and a few that are farther away. Although there are many jobs that involve greater distances, mine is a home-daily situation that suits me at this stage in life. This company puts a lot of stock in safety and training, and most of my time so far has been spent backing trailers in the parking lot. The rationale is that too few drivers are proficient at backing, and better backing skills results in fewer accidents. I am now assigned to a trainer on a regular shift. And if I put in the same kind of hours I was putting in as an attorney, I will make as much (if not more) money as I was making as an attorney – at least in the kind of insurance practice I spent my life doing.
So, what is it like? First, I find that since leaving law practice, I am the happiest I have been in years. When I leave at the end of the day, I am finished. I am not fretting about things that must be done tomorrow, calls that must be returned, or an unexpected turn taken on a case that now requires urgent action. Compared to how I spent most of the past four decades, this is an incredible freedom for someone who always felt that something could have been done a little better if only I had been able to spend a little more time on it. Now, I now have one job – to take cargo from one place to another, and to do it safely. That’s it – when I reach my destination the job is finished.
I have also reflected on my background. I grew up in an extended family that included a wide spread. My father came from a family of neckties and country clubs and five-o’clock cocktails. My mother (and my stepmother) came from small farms. The result was that I sort of straddled two worlds, one that was full of white collars and one where many of the collars were blue. I did the white collar professional thing for a long time, but never lost my connection to the blue collar guys in my extended family and among the people I represented over the years. I have also been coming to the belief that too many young people have been herded into a situation of incurring too much college debt for a credential to the middle class that can actually be more like corporate servitude, when the real key to the middle class is a good job in skilled trades that have been begging for more people. I feel like this is another way of putting my money where my mouth is, if at a late stage.
I have hesitated to write about this before now. For one thing, most non-lawyers I have told have looked at me and thought (even if unsaid) that I was a little crazy. It is true that I have always been a contrarian, someone whose nature is to see what everyone else is doing, then go a different direction. However, every attorney I have shared this with has gotten really quiet for a moment, then confessed something along the lines of “I’m actually kind of jealous.”
So is this a retirement job? A bridge to retirement? A career change? A mid(or late) life crisis? I don’t really know. What I do know is that I can spend the rest of my working life doing something I actually enjoy (or at least that I don’t dread). There is somethin to relish about working in “the real world” where what I do makes others better off in a concrete way. This is so much more satisfying to me than working in ideas and concepts and in a world where one person winning means another person has to lose.
How long will I stay at it? I have no idea. I will be eligible as long as I qualify for a DOT medical certificate, and there are a few drivers at my company who are in their 70’s. As I get older, the current shortage of drivers tells me that I can work as much or as little as I want. This is, to me, the ideal way to finish off my working years. Since making this decision, I have heard multiple stories about other guys who have left professions of law, medicine, accounting, and sales and done this very same thing, so maybe I am onto something. So wish me luck, good buddy and I’ll catch you on the flip side!
J. P.'s Blog 
Jim, the lawyers you have told of your career change aren’t alone – there is a tinge of jealousy with at least one guy who has been a professional engineer for quite a long tie. Having been privy to your life change for a short bit, it has really inspired me on what I want to do in two years or so, the point where I intend to leave my current job. What you said about being able to be truly finished at the end of the work day is a definite part of the overall appeal.
The salary also helps in the appeal of your new career. Truck driving is much more lucrative than it used to be. Yesterday I learned of a young, CDL possessing gentleman where I work who had his resume on Indeed or some such website. The nearby Dollar General distribution center quickly offered him a job – more than doubling his salary. Knowing he’d be home every night, he jumped on it.
While I can’t take credit for it, I am still curious if you will be using “Hoosier Daddy” as your CB handle.
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Well, I am glad to provide inspiration. Most of my life I have followed the advice I was given when I was young, which was to start a career and keep at it all the way through. This kind of resulted in a tendency to keep doing things (or doing them at places) for longer than was a good idea. I have been told that I “think outside the box” and I finally put that to practice in the way I actually live my life, and so far I am really enjoying the change.
Dollar General has advertised around here too, and pays really well. However, you will spend your days driving a semi into and out of Dollar General stores, that tend to not be in the newest areas or areas with the easiest truck access. Also, the driver does all the unloading. The trick is finding the sweet spot between pay and what they want you to do for it. If all you want is money, you can maximize that by staying away from home for significant stretches or by unloading freight. I chose to avoid those two things. But anyway, good luck in preparing for the next change in your work life, whatever that may be.
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I salute you! I actually met a person who was a long haul trucker for years, retired well, and then went back to work for the USPS trucking mail between post offices in a metropolitan area, and was able to go home at night, make pretty great money, and have even much less stress than his long haul trucking years!
Retirement is a a huge deal only because of the generations of Anglo-Saxon-Protestant psychological punishment of disparaging non-work as somehow an unholy state! Until the post WWII union structure that existed until the eighties for the blue collar, it was almost impossible for even most non-union white collar workers to save enough to not live in a near destitute state. The best one could hope for was that you could pay off your house, and pray that the near stoppable rise in property taxes and utility expenses would not overrun your social security and meager savings. After the 80’s, and the introduction of the 401k system, which resulted in the virtual elimination of the defined pension system (and which has been proven repeatedly to not be anywhere near as good as pensions), it has been increasing difficult to even decide when to retire or if it’s feasible.
I always thought, since I worked in a creative industry unlike “regular work”, I would be able to work as long as I wanted to. Imagine my surprise that in my metropolitan area, the lack of employment overall, as well as the exodus of employers doing what I do to larger market areas, layered on top of a surprising amount of ageism, would result in very little employment opportunities even if I wanted to work! As with actual life and home ownership, in my area of the country, most of this was only feasible with a working spouse. Repeated attempts for the single me to buy a house, even as a senior white collar manager, we’re not feasible when you had to spend 3.5 weeks of pay a month to cover mortgage, taxes, and utilities. As a business manager told me one time, we live in a community where one salary makes life a struggle, and two opens doors to retirement investment and decent vacations! The only people I know who have what I refer to as decent “gone fishin’” retirements, or around the world tour retirements, are those who have two retirement incomes and a paid for living situation.
I salute your working retirement and the ability to find, and actually get employed, in a job that seems to pay decent and have little stress. Most of the people I know, their last ten years of work were so horrific, that they are holding on with their finger tips to the idea of blissful non employment of any kind. I’ve even heard an amazing amount of people espouse the idea of suicide when they run out of money rather than ever work for anyone in those abusive environments again!
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I agree that the idea of “retirement” was not the norm through most of history, but then people lived in communities with extended family who would help as the oldest ones lost their ability to really contribute to things. I could probably write a book on what went wrong. You and I seem to come at this from the opposite sides of the political spectrum, but I think we agree that the current system is not a good one. I think that some of that cushy period from after WWII into the 80s came as a result of the US being the sole fully industrialized country in the world that came out of the war not bombed to smithereens, so those years were fatter for us than they might have been had there not been a war.
Age-ism is certainly a thing, especially for someone who loses a job and tries to go elsewhere in the same industry at a high level. Driving is proving to be a way to beat that. I have been told that people our age tend to have a better work ethic and maybe a better attitude about taking correction than some younger people do today. Whether true or not, I have felt very well treated all through the process.
I now look at older people working in places like fast food or maybe at a big box store and wonder why they don’t get a CDL. A class B will let you drive a big box truck, and will still pay decently. But then again, there is an increasing number of hoops to jump through to get the credential, and maybe they lack the good health/clean criminal or drug record I have been fortunate to have. But then again, I have to recognize that not everyone loves vehicles and driving the way I do.
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Back in the early 90’s, when I was doing some economics research, I read an interesting book by a Harvard professor that talked about how post WWII, while Europe was rebuilding, many countries decided to take their growth in profitability in positive benefits for their communities, like national health care, and time off; whereas in the US, people wanted their overall growth to be paid out in what they assumed to be personal wealth, so they could own more stuff. The recent news from France about people rioting because the government wants to change retirement age from 60 to 65, makes us wonder about why a lot of people in the US seem to be incessant about not working. Two people I know who have retired from difficult jobs in magnificent financial shape, both volunteer, one at a food bank, at the other at a NGO office, and both come home more stressed than when they were working! There’s a library full of wonderful books to read, and they have a wonderful deck to do it on. I had to laugh when Trump was modeling social security takers and Medicare users as “takers”! In my life, the most successful I’ve met, are making a lot of money with very little work. Way lessors than I was doing in the middle class corporate world. I always wonder when America is going to learn to relax. My parents lasted into their late 80’s, with decent time off at the end of their lives, whereas i know more and more people dying at ages mostly between 55 and 64, and mostly from stressful lives or worry about having enough! I always think the republicans want it that way, for their minions, and not for themselves.
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The concept of “employment with dignity” is almost dead among us. The bigger the corporate entity, the greater the tendency to move employees around the country at will and dictate every aspect of their personality at work ~ deliberately disempowering manipulations. It’s dehumanizing and it’s not okay. No wonder workers are balking at a return to the office!
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Well, good luck. I can identify with wanting a different career as the years go on. I’ve been reflecting lately that I was originally hired by an 80 person company, and thanks to the magic of mergers and acquisitions I now work for a 15,000 person company. I’m not really a big company guy, sigh….
Anyway my sunset career thought was that I’d be a porter at the hospital where Mrs DougD works. I’d just pick up somebody on a gurney, make small talk while I navigate them to their destination, then the job is done. No warranty work calls 6 months later: “Your gurney didn’t meet the project spec when you took Mrs Jones to the OR in February! Get back here with a spec compliant gurney right now!
I wish you many safe, happy and lucrative miles!
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Thanks, Doug. Haha, the “Gurney Ambassador” (a great title for that job, if I may be so bold as to suggest one) would be a great gig. Maybe someday I would like to downgrade to be one of those retired guys who gets hired to drive new cars between distant dealerships. That would be fun too.
And yes, the lack of warranty work or the need to plan to keep the whole enterprise running is a huge benefit!
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Many wishes for success in your new venture. I hope it will work out well for you. Be careful about those wintry roads when July turns into December!
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Thanks, Lee. Having grown up in northern Indiana where the weather tends to be worse, I would say that while some experience fear in those situations, I approach them with a healthy respect instead. I am fortunate to be in a place that is hugely safety conscious, and so the orders from the top are to never drive faster than you feel comfortable, and to pull over and stop if a driver determines that it is not safe. The safety director believes strongly that trying to keep a schedule is a distant second to staying out of accidents. But we have been told to keep something to eat and drink on hand for those times when some idiot in a 4×4 SUV finds out the hard way that winter roads are slicker than they are in July, and we must endure a lengthy backup.
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Great choice. I do not know why more people do not try different things in life. Hope you keep Blogging. You should have some interesting new material!
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Thanks Geoff – I wonder that same thing (and also why it took me so long to actually do it). I wonder if some people get too wrapped up in being in some profession or “station in life”. I hope to keep blogging too. It is certainly going to require some changes in my routine.
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Habits are hard to break, both good ones, bad ones, and everything else in between.
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I love this for you!! i am getting close to that “golden” age and will be considering retirement in the fairly near future. I don’t think I wnat to drive a truck but for you I think that is amazing!!! Good luck!!
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Thanks Kim! I am sure that there will be some days of drudgery ahead, but I had those before too. I have been out with a trainer for a few days (nights, actually) and still find myself thinking how amazing it is that I am actually getting paid to do this, because I find it enjoyable. The only times it feels like a job instead of something I am doing for fun is when we have to turn right back around and get to the next place. My trainer’s regular run is from Indy to Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne to Indy, Indy to Bloomington, Bloomington to Indy in a single 12-hour shift.
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What a time we live in when trucking is as lucrative as lawyering! (I get it, there are levels of lawyering from a pay perspective.) I’m happy for you that you did this and I hope you enjoy it for many years to come.
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Thanks, Jim. I think the modern pay structure for drivers is a result of some pretty stringent requirements for licensing and for clean drug tests in an era when that kind of thing is more of a problem. For me, I love learning new things and the ability to pick up a new skill is great – especially a skill in something I already enjoy. The fact that it is a skill that has some monetary rewards is a bonus!
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Personally, I find all societal contribution to be equally valuable, and will be very happy when home health care workers and custodians join truckers and lawyers in being fairly compensated for what they do.
Next time your plumbing fails, please give a moment to meditation on the relative value of laboring careers.
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Very cool! My younger brother was an over-the-road trucker for many years and he loved it. I hope we will hear more about this as time goes on.
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I think one of those over-the-road gigs would be interesting – but for maybe six months. I am just not at a stage in life where I want to be away from home for the extended period such a thing would require. Some guys are either not married or have the kinds of marriages where they want to be gone for long periods. I enjoy time spent at home with Marianne, so I chose something local.
I tend to write about things I experience, so I suspect I will get a story or two out of it.
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Good on you! There is a shortage of trades people in just about every area and it may well be many people like you who take up the slack until young people clue into the upsides of trades jobs.
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I agree. I think some trades are better for younger people, but driving is something that can be handled by someone of almost any age, so long as the person is in good health. I don’t think college is the boon that it was in prior generations, with more than a few majors being offered that seem like kind of a waste of time to me. A very expensive waste of time that saddles kids with way too much debt.
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I’ve been anxiously awaiting your first post about your non-retirement – and I must say, you make a very compelling case in favor of truck driving as an occupation. Since my daughters are now teenagers, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to both their futures and of employment markets in general. A lot has changed in the three+ decades since I was their age. Foremost is the reduced desirability of college. It seems to me unless one is pursuing a very technical or focused career, college seems nearly worthless for the current generation. In some ways, worse than worthless. An engaging career that pays decent wages and doesn’t require the ritual of a college degree sounds pretty appealing. For my older daughter especially, I think truck driving might be an option as she gets older, so I’m glad to read about someone’s recent first-hand experience.
It sounds like you made the right choice regarding the trucking school you attended – interesting to hear the details, and also of your first weeks in employment.
On a related note, I’m glad you were able to find employment after age 60. Around 20 or so years ago, my father was laid off at age 60, and experienced a lot of difficulty finding a new job, since employers were reluctant to hire someone his age. That was infuriating… after all, a 60-year-old is unlikely to flake out and leave a job after a year or two like what’s common with younger employees. But anyway, maybe things have changed in that regard – I’m glad to hear it.
I hope you continue to keep us posted!
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I sometimes wonder if the reluctance to hire older workers is a side-effect of our country’s insistence of tying health insurance to employment. My last firm skewed older among both attorneys and staff, and health insurance was terribly expensive because of the awful risk pool. A couple of the younger attorneys refused to be part of the plan for that reason. I get that when you hire an older worker you sometimes get habits formed elsewhere that might not be in line with what the organization wants, plus the questions of insurance and health too. Still, it is a shame that so many 60+ people are shut out of the market in upper-mid level jobs.
If you or your daughter ever want to get more in-depth about my experiences, I would be happy to do so. I will say that my company has several female drivers.
I have now finished my first full week of training. My trainer has a shift that runs from 4p to 4a (or longer if there are delays) on a 5-day week, so I got in plenty of hours. He tells me that he will probably sign off on me to drive on my own some time next week. I expect that I will remain a night-owl going forward. I was not looking forward to that at first, but have decided that it is really relaxing to drive at night when there is much less traffic on the roads. I have been married to a night-owl for years, so we are probably better matched in our sleep schedules than we have been in quite awhile.
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Thanks JP. If our daughter still seems interested in trucking in a year or two, I’d love for you to share your experiences with her. It’s great to know someone with recent first-hand experience here!
I know there’s a lot of folks who prefer driving at night, though I’m not one of them. When I think of night-owl drivers, I often think of my wife’s uncle, who (unbelievably) still made long-distance trips up to age 95 – and he also drove alone, and at night. He told me he felt night driving was both more relaxing, and made it easier to concentrate.
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The days when the aged were respected for their hard-accumulated wisdom have morphed into an era of massive and skyrocketing elder imprisonment.
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Wow JP – I was wondering when you would divulge what your new occupation was. Good for you getting the CDL license and a new career. A high school classmate of mine and her husband moved to South Carolina and both of them got their CDL license and shared long-distance/OTR driving responsibilities on the road for Con-way Truckload. If memory serves me right, they had their own truck as well. It’s been a while and they both are now retired.
Since you wrote your post about retiring from the business of law, I have given my notice to my boss. I told him in June I would like to retire the end of this year. Our lease will run out at Stroh River Place in March 2024 and he wants to continue to practice law even though he will turn 77 the same month. I think I told you before his father practiced probate law until age 83 then got ill and passed away suddenly so my boss had to close his father’s practice. I will be 68 next April. My first real job was 50 years ago.
Good luck on this new (ad)venture!
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I understand that team-drivers can do really well, and for a husband/wife team that enjoys spending time together, trucking can be a great choice. My own Mrs, however, has not the slightest interest in driving a truck, so we will not be following in your friends’ footsteps. 🙂
Good for you for letting your boss know that you need to put an end date on your working life. It is good for him to want to work long into the future, and I salute him for it. However, it is not good for him to assume that you want the same thing. 50 years is a long time to keep working, and I am sure you have earned the right to live at a slower and more enjoyable pace going forward. Congratulations!
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Margaret and Landon enjoyed seeing different states and working alongside one another, so being team-drivers was a win-win for them. Thank you JP – I am looking forward to more “me time” and pursuing new hobbies. I hope that giving my boss enough notice would make him re-think his future and perhaps when the lease expires, he could shut down the practice. Time will tell.
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I am curious, JP, what was it about your chosen school that recruiters would hire from and not the others. There are a number of private schools in my area, but I’m biased to think community college is the way to go.
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That’s a great question. In my case, the community college school was a 4 week program, and week 1 was about getting a learner’s permit from the state. Classroom work was all video presentations. The school I chose was a 5 week program that required me to already have my learner’s permit on day 1, so there was effectively 2 additional weeks of instruction, and classroom instruction was live.
Also, the job search at the community college was a website where you could connect with potential employers, while my school had representatives of companies actually come in to make presentations to us. All of those representatives told us that they actively recruited from this school because it taught students to actually drive, rather than just to pass the state CDL test. Each student got something like 40 hours of actual behind the wheel time. Other places counted time in the truck with another student driver as “driving instruction time”.
I’m sure every area has different options and perhaps other community colleges have better programs.
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BTW, I also support and enjoy the driving thing! Spent a lot of years living all over, hence driving all over, and I’d done a lot of “one days”, Between Milwaukee and Chicago, to New York and Washington DC, and always liked it and thought driving might be a thing I would investigate. Have to say tho, when I crossed 66 or 67 or so, my attention seems to be dropping off. my sister claims I’m too attention deficit now, so driving as a work option is probably off the table! I actually do know a few people who retired well, and are driving car parts around town or picking up medical tests, and they all seem to like it.
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I always liked the idea of those jobs for retired guys who would drive new cars between distant dealerships following trades done over the telephone. That could be a great gig for when I decide to really slow down.
I have learned that there are lots of bad “car habits” to break. I have also learned that there are also lots of bad trucker habits. The training process I have gone through has worked hard to break the first group and to prevent formation of the second. Following closely is one that probably comes under both categories. When I learned to fly I was told that a pilot can almost never have too much altitude. I think the corollary is that a truck driver can almost never have too much distance between himself and other traffic.
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J.P. I also knew people driving cars between different rental car offices back when I lived in Chicago, and they really liked that too!
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Fantastic decision, J P. If all you did was post the picture of the truck (and the title) I’d have wondered if you had your head on straight. But your explanation makes sense from so many angles. Especially the white collar/blue collar thing. I have a similar family situation (white collar upbringing, married into blue collar) and over the years I’ve developed a huge appreciation for the “other side”. Blue collar tends to think with a clearer head, has more street smarts, and knows how to fix just about anything with their own hands. Also, being able to clock out (physically and mentally) and be home every night is worth a lot more than the paycheck itself. I hope you’ll take us on the road and blog about several trips. Looking forward to hearing more about this adventure as it unfolds.
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Thanks Dave. There really is a big difference between traditional white collar/blue collar folks, especially in prior generations. My paternal grandfather had many gifts – he even took up painting in his retirement (the art kind, not the outside of houses kind). But he could barely screw in a lightbulb. My other grandfather (who died before I was born) was a farmer who could make anything, and even had a couple of patents issued to him. Interestingly, neither of those men had any formal education beyond high school.
I am sure I will be writing more about the experience as I get settled in. Hopefully I will get a sign-off from my trainer this week, and then I will get thrown into the deep end of the pool!
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As the late, great Arte Johnson would say, verrry interesting.
I’ve been back and forth. Originally administration services at the insurance company, then loan ops at a bank, then accounting for people who turned out to not be worth my time, and now working in claims, again at the insurance company! In fact I sent a suit assignment just this morning to outside counsel in Phoenix. 🙂
The important thing is you’re happy. If so, carry on.
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I was just released to drive on my own this week. I still find myself motoring down the highway, amazed that people pay me to do this.
Claims is an interesting business, and I spent close to 40 years working with them, either defense, subrogation or coverage. I enjoyed most of the claim reps I worked with. Unfortunately, the business has changed to where the unpleasantness from cost-cutters on high overwhelmed the good parts for me. I wish I had done this 5 years ago.
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Congratulations. It sounds just about perfect for this period in your life.
Best line of this post: “I am the happiest I have been in years.” I am happy for you.
I was shown a much more trying type of trucking some years back when my son will was 10 or 12. A friend (John) from church had a small trucking company with three identical Volvo tractors (with pre-selectors transmissions) and three identical stainless tankers used to load and unload plastic pellets about the size of elongated peas.
My son William and I accompanied John of a number of his runs. John’s trucking job was so, what’s the word, difficult, it made me wonder why he did it; your trucking runs sound much more reasonable.
Here’s a typical “run” for John or his employees.
. Weight the truck and trailer before the plastic is loaded (‘first weight”) but after the fuel tank is full; weigh stations are not conveniently located in Northern NJ.
. Drive to the rail siding where “His Tanker Car”, fresh from the refinery, is parked (not a good NJ neighborhood; the rail yard is locked behind tall fences).
. Locate his rail car, which may require backing up between long sidings.
. Switch the tractor’s pump (driven off the truck’s engine) to “Load”, climb under the rail car, hook up the hose, and pump the plastic from the rail car into the tanker being careful to balance the load in the tanker as state highway weight stations require a proper balance in the tanker and a total weight of less than 80,000 pounds.
. Go back to the weigh station for a “second” weigh and get the shipping load (“second weight”) ticket.
. Drive to the customer’s site, switch truck pump to “Unload” and blow the plastic from the tanker into the silo.
. Give the customer the shipping load ticket; that’s what he owes John.
. Drive back and maybe do a second turn of all of the above tasks.
I drove the 18 wheeler around the private rail yard, and I tried to back it up along a rail car, but failed multiple times. Car drivers are shocked to learn that you cannot see out the rear window; it’s all in the mirrors.
About 15 years ago John sold his business and moved back to his original home, Australia, and drove tourist busses in retirement. About 8 months ago I was informed that John passed away.
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Good luck, good buddy!
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Haha, thanks!
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You have done exactly the same thing my son did. An engineer for Verizon he left after 26 years leaving a couple hundred thousand on the table. He was tired of the pressure and knew he would have to work somewhere. His job is similar to yours, day driver , home most nights, and recruited by several companies. He likes the non-political nature of the job and leaves each day unstressed. I worked 42 years for the same company it in a craft position which was generally less stressful and I actually liked what I did. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to find some satisfaction in what you do for a living. My son took his previous job after military service and it was just expedient and paid well and because dad (me) worked there. Happy Driving!
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Thanks for the good wishes, Joe. I can be tired at the end of a shift, but it’s a good, physical kind of tired and not the emotional/mental kind that wears you down after awhile. Glad to hear your son figured things out sooner than I did!
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What a great way to change your job!
I too (61 years) am looking out for a career change, albeit a little different. Having been 30+ years in the IT business, slowly it becomes weary and tiring. Same experience as you had, bigger companies to deal with, more rules, less face to face work. Working from home 4 days per week (and 1 at the office) is not very motivating as well. The catch as always is that golden cage (good money but no real job alternatives).
I was a truck driver in the army (1985) when we still had army conscription, and enjoyed doing that. My task then was to ferry 4 – 8 USA soldiers every other week from our army base to a big USA army base in Hamburg, a 4 – 5 hours single journey. And return on the same day. These soldiers just went there to do some USA specific shopping (amazing really).
Not having driven a big truck after that, I took the chance to test drive a truck a year ago. Loved it! Then started thinking.
Here in crowded Netherlands the situation is very different. I know two truck drivers and they both complain about long working days, lots of traffic jams and generic aggressive road behaviours from other drivers. I was not looking forward to that.
So, no trucking for me then. Instead, I will become a driver for the local public transport. A bus driver! Will do some time learning and getting a bus drivers ticket (paid by the company), then start working for 2 or maybe 3 days per week as a bus driver. The snag is that the pay is much less, which is why I will remain at the IT company for 3 days per week. My total pay will be a bit less but my weeks will be so much more interesting.
Looking very much forward to this, next Monday I have an appointment at the bus company to go over the details.
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Congratulations! It sounds like you have found a great solution! Please come back and let me know how it goes for you!
I hear a lot now from older truck drivers who say things are not as good as they were in the good old days. I think this is true in pretty much every field – I certainly found it true in law. But I have concluded that after moving into driving trucks, my own “good old days” are right now because I didn’t experience it the way it was 20 or 30 years ago.
My company also operates a small “motor coach” operation. They run some of those very nice charter coaches. I am told that truck drivers with the company have an opportunity to drive the coaches if they are interested, but there is additional licensing involved. Really, I am kind of enjoying the holiday from dealing with others. 🙂
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going into my 15th year of being in IT and still feeling like I haven’t found my place, this article was very inspiring. Best of luck to you on your journey forward
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Thank you! I sometimes wonder if I should have made such a leap sooner, but then when I was in the thick of life with a family at home it seemed like too big of a risk to try something new. I hope you find something that works for you.
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