Hey Y’all, Just venting here..Not sure what path to take as Im Feeling Extremely stressed and confused in regards to continue a career in trucking. Im sure lots of you Have been thru this and I sure would like advice/suggestions from experienced fellow truckers.
A bit of background:
I worked for Customer service in hospitals, specialty clinics, and State funded public assistance offices from ’03 to 2018. Having moved to a different state, I stayed in customer service but had to start from zero, as I lost All seniority I had for 15 yrs. At that point, I was Meh about it as it was a state job which meant decent benefits. However, my spouse decided to obtain a CDL and once I saw the paycheck, Hell, I made the jump and joined.
Luckily for me, our company started paying me as experienced from the get go, as we’re Team drivers and pretty much my spouse trained me. Trucking life was peachy and new, exciting and the most income WE ever earned, Together. Pay just increased and increased and Then pandemic hit. As Im sure, we all came to a sobering halt in work, those were tough But manageable times (for us at least). 2021 seemed to pick up and we got back on track. Unfortunately this year, we got hit w medical issues and didn’t work first half of year. Now for the last month or two, trips have been very hard to come by. We keep getting told by employer that there’s no profitable loads, that they cant pay us what We get paid..etc etc. We were Desperate to get some $ coming in, so we offered to take a pay cut if needed as long as we were able to continue doing our team trips.
That worked for about 3 weeks and now we’re back to ‘no trips/no work’, that it’s the same for everyone, that fuel costs are high, that no one’s making profits right now, blah blah blah.
OH- and to top it off, Allegedly another driver got busted during inspection w medical condition..and company lost 50% rating…meaning we lost a Major contract until further notice. So now Theres DEFINITELY less work..
I just Dont know what to do…If there’s no profitable loads, then why would I go to another trucking company? Is everyone going thru this? At least our supervisor/dispatch aren’t terrible to deal with. But now they want to start giving us local work. We’re team drivers, not local drivers.. am I being irrational? If a local driver was asked to go OTR theyd say HELL NO… And I get that. OTR is not for everyone and vice versa (local).
Anyway, I know Im ranting…but I feel like maybe I should just get back to what Ive done for 15 yrs..crap pay, but at least there’s work 😔. I feel like Im focusing also on other negative sides of trucking such as Not seeing my family for 2 yrs now. I feel bad for feeling like our time w this company is reaching the end. I just don’t think many companies out there would pay us what we get paid (when there’s work), based on their cpm job ads.
Thanks for reading.
Any sound advice or words are greatly appreciated.
