I'm 3 years into driving now. 300k miles, all doubles or triples. Clean record, Hazmat and every other endorsement with the exception of passenger. Hundreds of nights in the snow, wind and ice. No accidents. I've lost track of the number of Level 1 inspections I've passed.

All of it LTL. I've never done (or have any interest in) OTR.  I've run line the entire time. Never done P&D. Never done flatbed or tanker. My brother in law dispatches for a flatbed company and wants me over there but its a big drop in pay.

I've got some seniority so I'm in a pretty decent spot when it comes to run choices and equipment. Not ideal, but not bad.

The question is.... where do I go from here? I don't hate LTL. I don't like the number of hours much. I've been able to reduce my hours down to about 5 12s. Any more than 12 and I have zero life outside of work. I would also like to get off of nights if I can. I function just fine and sometimes prefer nights, but its hard on my home life. And being home every day isn't negotiable.

Now that our kids are grown, we are talking about moving somewhere warmer. I'm tired of working in the snow half of the year. Even if I transfer within my company to a new terminal, I lose all of my seniority when it comes to run selection. Might as well start st a new company at that point or end up on some nightmare extra board.

I've been thinking about fuel delivery. Fuel companies out here deliver to the mines a lot. I have a friend that went and did that but its hard to get into and there are no holidays. The money is good and it's mostly daytime. Delivering fuel to things like gas stations doesn't pay what I've used to so I don't want to do that.

So where does a guy go after a few years?

What company you with? You can just put out the first letter.

KY is pretty good on temps, even wintertime up north is better than out west in the mountains.

Running nights gets old. Did LTL for some years.

I'm with the company that starts with X.

Fuel is looking more promising but I'm leary about starting over at the bottom somewhere.

Bump

I was talking to Sub Hauler while fueling one night,  He used to work for RELIABLE. Said they are a good company the pay is insane but they run your ass hard.

With the job market where it is in general,  I don’t think you’re going to do much better than where you are.  


I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but unless you got a sweet deal lined up to get in with a fuel hauler…grass usually isn’t greener on the other side of the fence.   14 hour days are the norm for what I’m aware of as well, so make sure you consider that if you have an interview.  

The issue I ran into is fuel haulers want only fuel or bulk tank experience, and there didn’t seem to be any way to get my foot in the door without  ‘connections’ to make it happen.  Having a HAZMAT, TWIC, and all that didn’t make any difference to them.  



The trouble is, I know people with more experience than either one of us (25 yrs in, with some of that in management) that aren’t getting call-backs from job applications.    


My only suggestion is to ask @Foxtrot08 if he has any suggestions for you.