What Type of Trucking is for Me?

You might be asking which type of trucking is for you.  Most students generally have seen a certain type of trucking at a young age and have their mind made up before they ever become a truck driver or start school.  Others (like me) figure it out as they go.  

My trucking career began in a 53' dryvan.  Werner was the company that I started with.  After I did a year with Werner to get my experience and get comfortable with the truck and backing, I decided to give flatbed a try but after about 6 weeks, I realized it was not for me as I didn't care very much for it or having to tarp and untarp my loads and folding or rolling the tarp up after I was done.  Once on a windy day in Colorado Springs, the wind caught the tarp I was handling and picked me up about fifteen feet off the ground and dropped me into the grass.  That was the end of my flatbed trucking days.  

After driving flatbed, I started pulling doubles (a pair of 28' pup trailers with a converter dolly).  It was here I found my niche in trucking.  This is typically called LTL/Linehaul trucking.  LTL is less than truckload because the trailers usually aren't loaded to full capacity and you run what is called a Linehaul Route.  Linehaul Routes consist of leaving one destination, for example Denver and driving to Wamsutter, Wyoming which is the halfway point between Denver and Salt Lake City.  Another driver from Salt Lake City will drive to Wamsutter and meet you.  You will swap trailers with one another and you turn around and go back to Denver, you break down your set and drop your trailers and dolly in their appropriate areas, park your truck and you go home for the night.  

This style of trucking fits my lifestyle.  I like to be home every night, I like to have a couple days off for my weekends (usually Sunday and Monday), allows me to have a set schedule and I can usually take care of all my personal life needs without having to take a day off work.  

One important thing that my trainer told me when I was in training was that when I find my niche, stick with it.  Don't get cute and go try every single different style of trucking because not all of them will be for you.  He wasn't saying not to try different styles at all, he was just saying when you find what works for you, stick with it.  I didn't care much for dryvan or OTR and I certainly didn't like flatbed, but pulling doubles (and eventually triples at some point) is rewarding, challenging and a lot of fun and I found that it's my niche and I'm sticking with it.  

So most of you contemplating getting into trucking will have a general idea of what you want to do with your trucking careers, the rest of you have no idea about trucking but you want to get into it and don't know where to start.  It is my hopes that blog will give you more FACTUAL information with which to make those decisions with.

There's a lot of hearsay, rumors and bad information out there and figuring out what is true and what isn't can be daunting, difficult and a very misleading tasks.  There's also plenty of bitter, angry drivers out there whose careers didn't turn out like they had hoped or planned, so keep that in mind.  

Trucking is what YOU make of it. You're the driver, the one behind the wheel, the one in control. How you steer your ship, determines how your career goes.  The rest is easy.