Two Years Trucking

About two years ago I wrote about my decision to hang it up after a 38-year career practicing law. A part of that process was deciding on a second act – I got my commercial drivers license (CDL) and then got a job driving trucks. One year ago I was navigating some changes at my company and things were still a touch unsettled. Now I am two years into this new life and can report that I am quite happy with it. How happy? Let me tell you about it.

I love driving. I have always loved driving. And so any day spent driving (and getting paid for it) is better than any day spent at a desk arguing with people over email or the telephone. And that’s what litigation was – one big long series of arguments and disputes, in which the only way to win is to make the other guy lose. I love that most of the tension and drama has now gone out of my life. “Just drive the truck” is a fabulous way to live. When something gets fouled up there are people whose jobs it is to figure those things out and get them fixed. But I am no longer one of those people. I cannot describe how liberating it is to let someone else take care of that stuff. I just drive the truck and let everyone else deal with the rest.

Last year about this time I was transitioning into a new role with my employer. I had begun fresh out of driving school with a nighttime job driving a tractor-trailer between cities carrying loads of U. S. Mail. That job gave me long hours of solitary highway time, which I really loved. Then I transitioned to a daytime gig driving locally. My company serves the local trucking needs of a large international manufacturing concern. As one of maybe 30 or so drivers, my main job is to make multiple daily trips between area warehouses and the company’s main manufacturing campus, bringing in packaging and other supplies used in making finished products. So how is it? It is working out really well for me.

As in every field, there are day-to-day frustrations. Daytime weekday driving in a large metropolitan area makes for dealing with lots of traffic and congestion. There are times I miss the quiet nights on rural interstate highways with little in the way of traffic to contend with. Urban highways during busy weekdays is another thing. Can I share with you my biggest frustration? Merging. Not me merging, but the way the rest of you merge onto a highway I already happen to be on.

Have you ever gotten frustrated with a big semi truck that stays in the right lane and will not pull over to make it easier for your car to merge on? I can tell you why that is, because I am that truck driver. I have lost count of the times I have tried to accommodate a merging car, only to have the merging car match my speed and slowly creep ahead of me in the lane to my right. Because I am required to drive the speed limit (something almost nobody else does), traffic backs up behind me, and then goes to the right to follow cars like yours past me. And then I cannot get back over, and I become the truck driver everyone hates for blocking traffic in the center or left lane. Here is my tip – when you merge onto a highway, you have one job: Get up to speed, and either get out in front of or slip in behind the truck that is looming on your left. I am cool with either approach.

Merging aside, I enjoy my days. And those that I don’t enjoy, I at least don’t hate. Well OK, I have hated a few days, but those have been the ones with heavy rain. I don’t mind driving in rain, but I hate it when no small amount of that rain leaks into my truck cab. I hate water leaks in a vehicle, and I especially hate them in a vehicle that is maybe 3 years old. As this is written, the truck is back to the lease company (again), which has hopefully found the source of the leak and fixed it. I will have to admit, though, that life is pretty good when this is my biggest career irritant.

My days start early, at 6:00 a.m. But on the flip side, I am almost always done by 4 p.m., which beats my old life which could often have me arriving at work before 8 and not leaving until 6 or even 7 p.m. I am tired when I get home, but then I was tired when I got home before, too. But now I don’t fret about what’s coming the next day or about whether I should have stayed longer and put in another hour on something.

In one concession to some changes at home, I am now on a schedule that sees me at work every Saturday through Wednesday, with every Thursday and Friday off. Marianne has been seeing more doctors than she used to and those two weekdays available to go to appointments and take care of other business have been huge at this stage of our lives. And working on weekends makes for better traffic conditions on the job for those 2 days, so there’s that as well.

I am soon approaching my 66th birthday, and periodically ask myself how long I want to keep at this working thing. I have the luxury of being healthy enough to say that I plan to stay at it as long as it makes sense for us. As the old farmers used to say, make hay while the sun shines. And while the sun is shining and the hay is being made, I will confess that I still periodically experience a wave of happiness when I look out through my windshield and think “I get to drive a truck today!”

The photo is a random one from the internet, showing a late model International LT day cab and a 53 foot trailer like the combination I drive, except that this example is much cleaner than mine is. And probably does not leak water into the cab.

25 thoughts on “Two Years Trucking”

  1. What’s that old expression? Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Looks like you found your calling.

    I’m a wee bit (ok more than that by a bit) older than you and in my second career and loving my work. I make my own schedule (“encouraged” by my missus), track and charge my own hours, and it’s great to work with the folks I am with. Life is good.

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    • I used to make my own schedule (mostly) but found that it created less freedom for me than more. So I find the regular schedule to be kind of liberating. Probably just my personality coupled with the kind of work I used to do. But I suppose in a career in what we think of as “retirement years”, it would be a benefit.

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  2. Always love to read about your truck experience and the change of career.

    One and a half year ago, I also made the decision to change my professional life. I have been working in IT for over 35 years now, and counting.

    A plan came up to keep working for the same company but for 3 days per week only, and fill in the other two days with something completely different. Definitively no screen work!

    When visiting an “open day” at our local public transport bus company, they made it clear to me that I would be very welcome to work for them, even if it was for just 2 days per week. That they offered to pay my bus drivers license was a nice touch, so I started taking lessons. After 3 months I got my drivers’ license and started on the bus.

    That basically is what I am doing now for almost a year, and I love it. The work could not be more different than my other IT work. Every day on the bus is planned in detail. A couple of local city lines, a break, a region line, maybe another one, another break, then more city lines or region lines.

    I love driving the big bus. It is huge, especially when driving in the city on narrow roads. The contacts with the passengers is nice, did not have a nasty experience yet. 

    Hope to do this for at least five more years when I officially retire. Even then I might decide to stay on the bus for one or two days per week.  

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    • I love it! Bus/passenger is the one license I don’t have. Yes, getting used to something as wide as a bus/semi on narrow city streets is an experience, isn’t it! Same with making those tight turns. Best of luck!

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  3. This is great to hear! Although the two years part has crept up rather quickly.

    Interestingly, I had on a local radio show earlier on my drive home. A truck driver had called in, saying he was aware of ordinary drivers thinking truck drivers are a huge problem but then he said it was actually the other way around and gave the same example of merging you did. He said most drivers have no clue what it is like to drive a truck and how few understand it takes around 500 feet at 65 mph to stop an 80,000 pound truck.

    As long as you are willing and able, keep driving.

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  4. Glad to hear that this new chapter in your professional life has been an enjoyable one. That gives me hope, as I’m definitely ready to switch gears in my career.

    I would imagine that driving in an urban area during the day is not as pleasant – let alone as stress-free – as driving on interstate highways when traffic isn’t very heavy. Then again, it’s probably better than dealing regularly with opposing attorneys, uncooperative witnesses and a potentially hostile judge.

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  5. Wow, 2 years…time has flown!

    The merging thing I think is endemic among most drivers, although it’s obviously all that more dramatic in relation to trying to merge with trucks. Most drivers just don’t seem to understand how traffic works and/or how they can adjust their own behavior – in this case their speed and trajectory – to compensate for changing conditions (e.g., merging onto a roadway with other vehicles). Literally, the majority of drivers seem to operate as if they were the only person on the road. And I guess in their own minds, they are.

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    • I am just glad I’m in the midwest where 1) there’s lots of real estate for long entrance ramps and 2) drivers tend to be a little more relaxed than the ones I have experienced on the east coast or in Chicago.

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  6. Thank you for the suggestion on merging JP. I was a passenger on the expressway once when a truck was merging into our lane too quickly and my friend swerved – I thought we would roll over, but didn’t and every since then I don’t like the expressway and will use a service drive instead if that is an option. Some incidents just stick with you.

    I knew you got a different gig a year ago, but now I understand why you are not off for U.S. Mail holidays as I once commented on and you said the company worked weekends.

    I’ve mentioned my father’s Sunday car, the ’72 Chevy Impala – he drove a VW Fastback to work the other six days of the week. It had a vinyl roof and it leaked. If the Sunday drive was out in the country on rural roads, the car got a carwash afterward and it invariably leaked. My father took it back to the dealership several times to have the leak fixed, but it still leaked, so my father, always a hothead, went to the dealership on a night they were open and stood in the middle of the showroom and told the tale of woe re: the leaky car roof. They offered to take the car in for service immediately and it never leaked again. 🙂

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    • Sometimes you just have to make a little noise to get something fixed. Mine is still being worked on so I am driving an old one today – a 2015 model with 600k miles on it. And it doesn’t leak!

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      • The old adage of “the squeakiest wheel gets greased first!” That’s a lot of miles and no leaking is good! (On another note, I started and finished a book this week, thanks to abandoning French – great, except it was like a magnet so I couldn’t put it down once I started it. Too hot to do much anyway.)

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  7. One of the favorite sayings I retained from my late father is “Do what you love; the money will follow”. Obviously this is your mantra as well and I admire you for it. Your “I get to drive a truck today” reminds me of “The Rookie” (Kevin Costner) where one of his teammates says, “You know what we get to do today? We get to play baseball”.

    I’m one of those drivers who accommodates the big rigs whenever I can. I just can’t imagine the logistics of jockeying that vehicle between lanes, let alone putting up with drivers who still think the own the road. My wife can somewhat relate; she trailers her horses on occasion and I can attest to the behavior of those same drivers. They could care less that live animals are in the trailer and have no sense of what it takes to slow down when you’re pulling that much weight. They’re asking for an accident.

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  8. That was interesting JP. I checked the links and I had read the one (May 2023) where you had decided to retire, but not the training one. I’m glad you found something you like to do and can get paid well for it. I enjoyed my career, but had soured on it the last five years I worked as I was tired of butting heads with the corporate administration over quotas and staffing, the cheaper and faster approach does seem to be what they want now where profit is king, and I had too many concerns over patient safety. The money justs wasn’t worth it. 40 years was enough! I can see where the adversarial aspect of law might wear you down after awhile from my brief sojourn settling my mother’s estate this past year. Fortunately, we executors had a very good and honest lawyer who was able to navigate the rough waters for us. I could never drive truck, I can hardly drive on major expressways, due mostly to lack of experience, so I am probably one of those drivers you might curse at! When I had to have all my preop tests done in London, where the traffic is crazy, I booked a local Elderly Outreach Van Service (you only have to be over 60 to qualify) to take me to my medical tests, wait and take me home, right to my door, and found all of their drivers to be very courteous and friendly, and the vast majority were retired truck drivers and school bus drivers, who wanted something to do after their official retirement, and missed being around people. Me, I don’t miss people at all! Well maybe in small doses…

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    • Most of my legal career had been working with insurance companies, and those same pressures to do everything faster and cheaper affected me too. I tried to transition into estate and probate work (which I liked better) but could not get that work built up enough to reach critical mass.

      That’s one nice thing about driving is limited doses of dealing with others!

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  9. Great follow up to your truck driving. Hard to believe it’s been 2 yrs, we’ve been here for it, so can say time is flying by. I’d say do it for as long as you can and enjoy it. Otherwise, what else would you do? Well, go to the beach, take a good nap. LOL. I always fear too much retirement would make me lazy. How many games of bridge or bingo can you play? My mom plays bridge, she’s 85.

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  11. I love success stories. I use you as an example in many conversations because your path seems unusual. I know lawyers who retired to teach or become Executive Director of a charity organization. I don’t know any truck driver who retired to become a lawyer but you make me believe one is out there somewhere! You are kind of a hero to me. Don’t screw it up!

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