soopageek

It seems like you've taken this career as a trucker and done a whole lot from an extra-curricular standpoint (for lack of a better word).

A) Do you think this affects your job? Are you more tired from all the running around?

B) What are most other truckers doing for fun? Are there any others like you that are making friends and seeing sights in the limited offtime that they have or are they doing stereotypical things like drugs/heavy drinking/prostitute procuring/staring at the ceiling of their cabs/just communicating with family and conducting personal business?

C) What was that journal site about the trucking lifestyle you gave in a much earlier post?

maybe extra-professional?

lemme try and answer these...

A) I don't think doing the extra things affects my job... I either do things because I have the time do them by chance (like visiting mandy_moon last month, or stopping in KC to visit my good friend justamy)... and when I don't have the time I don't. Other times I make arrangmenets to do things... one of the perks of this job is I can basically request my "home time" anywhere in the country and rest assured I will have a couple of days to spend there doing whatever it is I plan to do. I took my best friend in Lexington to NYC with me a little over a year ago and my dispatcher gave me four days off in the area! Such is the case with this weekend, I requested to spend my time off in Minneapolis rather than central Kentucky this coming weekend. Unfortunately, the gods of freight are not being kind.

I guess sometimes I have sacrificed sleep or forced myself to run at a much harder pace than I usually like to just so I can make some activity or plan "work", but that is not typically the case. I don't run around any harder than I do, say, when I'm home trying to visit with family and friends in the precious hours I have on weekends.

B)I really couldn't tell you what "most" other truckers are doing... I'm sure it's like any other group of people who all have distinct personalities and interests. My brother drove for 7 years and liked to see lots of the sites. I run into other truckers at landmarks, casinos, etc. I see other truckers with their laptops in truckstops taking advantage of the WiFi. If the crap for sale in truckstops are any indicator, I would presume a lot of them watch movies in their cabs. Some truckers even have satellite dish hookups in their trucks. When I was in orientation with my company, the guy who conducted our class said he'd played gold in every state of the mainland and encouraged us to take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity. Little did he know I had already planned on it. I don't know about hard boozing... it'd be kind hard to do your job for very long absuing a depressent, but I've heard tales of truckers becoming hooked on crank and coke for their stimulant affects. The sex industry isn't really much different than anywhere else in the country, it's just unique to the lifestyle/subculture. There are lots of strip clubs and adult bookstores along the freeway with truck parking, some even advertising CDL discounts. Prostitution exists in the form of "lot lizards" but there are also the legal brothels of Nevada (all of which have truck parking) as well as copious Asian massage parlors, some within walking distances of truckstops.

C) I have no idea what you're talking about. You don't need to hunt down the exact entry I mentioned it, but maybe you could refresh my memory?

oops... played golf :)

Can you tell me a little about how they despatch the work in your game? Like, when they have something available do they make the job available via radio, or is the despatching less immediate than that? Do the individual companies operate their own radio systems? Is their lots of niggly rules you have to learn about how to bid for work? Do drivers complain to each other that certain people only get certain work because they know despatchers? Can you decide where you're going?

I used to drive a cab and also work as an operator (despatcher), I've always found the science of despatching interesting, so I'm curious to know how they deal with it in the truck business.

Well, I'm a company driver, so I don't know about bidding for work... my company does all of that. They merely assign me loads and I do the work. All of the dispatching in my company is done via satellite to an on-board computer system which is received directly to that truck. As for deciding where I am going - I don't have much control over that being a company driver, however, I have a pretty cool dispatcher who is accomodating when I want to be in particular places for my home time other than "home". :)

Give one of us a call and one of us can meet you at the yard in Eagan. Save some time.