Long-haul driving gives a person the opportunity to work either for a trucking company or for himself or herself. Owner-operators have the freedom of being able to pick and choose which runs they want. The benefit, of course, is flexibility. The downside is that the business can be sporadic.St.Paul,MIN,USA -The Star Tribune Sales and Marketing, by Robert Elsenpeter -(originally published: October 30, 2006) -May 2007: -- Andrew LaFrance doesn't have a carpet-walled cubicle, an ergonomic swivel chair, a stack of papers filling an inbox or a boss hovering over his shoulder. Rather, he has what he has always wanted: a semi truck decked out with Green Bay Packers adornments, a cellular phone and the open road. LaFrance, a long-haul truck driver from River Falls, Wis., is one of more than 3 million truck drivers in the United States - and the industry needs more... "I've seen every state in the country," says LaFrance, an owner-operator. "You get a lot of freedom in this job"... Being an owner-operator brings its own set of challenges - not the least of which, in recent months, has been the high price of fuel... No matter where a driver is employed, the career is booming. It pays well and gives what people in cubicle farms can only dream about - freedom...
* USA - Trucking Days
USA - Silver Expressions Blog, by Dee S. Knight -May 3, 2007: -- Want to feel old immediately? Tonight I realized Jack and I sold our Mack and stopped driving truck in 1982—twenty-five years ago. Goodbye truck, hello computers. Our lives changed dramatically... Funny, we remember things that happened when we drove tractor-trailer like it was yesterday. How could it have ended a quarter century ago? See?? I feel old. :) -But I also remembered some of the times we had, driving as a husband and wife trucker team. Here are some of those thoughts... Worst place to drive: Salt Lake City... Best place to drive: Anywhere in Wyoming on a clear fall day... Best places to eat: Contrary to old stories, truck stops don’t have the best food, they have big parking lots. But a few places do stand out: Tucson Truck Terminal, where you can have a full Mexican dinner at 5 AM if you so desire; Iowa 80 Truck Stop that used to have a great apple dumpling; a place in Pocatello, Idaho (that I unfortunately can’t remember the name of), served the finest breakfast I’ve had most anywhere, and another rinky-dinky hole-in-the-wall place outside Sublett, Idaho served fantastic homemade pie... Most astounding view: Setting suns in La Grande, Oregon and west of Phoenix, Arizona... Scariest sights: Looking down over the Hoover Dam. Seeing the back tires of the trailer tipping the water of the Mississippi River as we took a ferry from Arkansas to Tennessee. Seeing Mexicali, Mexico from our truck when we went across the border to pick up freight—no one there understands the concept “stop sign”... Most fun: Having loads that allowed us to visit the San Diego Zoo (CA) and Disneyworld (FL) in a 10-day period. Visiting the seal caves on coastal Oregon, spending a weekend in autumn Vermont when the trailer needed repairs, anytime we laid over in San Francisco... Jack and I drove truck for just over eight years. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything—we had a lot of fun while we also did a lot of hard work, and we were together... What I’ve mentioned here is just the tip of the iceberg. If we ever meet (and you’re brave and have lots of time), ask me about trucking. Then get a cup of coffee, put your feet up and be prepared for lies and war stories. I’ve got a million of ‘em!..
Labels: trucking stories
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
Wayne,Mich,USA -Reader's Digest, by Margaret Heffernan -24 March 2010: -- When Andra Rush started her trucking company, all she had was a beat-up van, a pair of used pickup trucks, and the naive certainty of a 23-year-old. She figured it would take her about four years to make her fortune. Then she could use her newfound millions to accomplish her true goal: tackling poverty on Native American reservations across North America. "I thought I could retire by the time I was 27," says Rush, a member of the Mohawk Indian tribe of Ontario, Canada. "At that age, you don't know what you don't know"...Rush is 49 now and still working hard. Her tiny start-up just outside Detroit has grown to a $400 million North American business that employs hundreds of Native Americans, who assemble automobile components like steering columns near their reservations and then truck them to manufacturing plants... By 2001, many of Rush's 1,000 employees were Native Americans, working alongside people of every background... She says. "I like the fact that you can start to get some momentum and keep challenging yourself—and then suddenly you lift your head and it's been 25 years"... (Photographed by Kevin J. Miyazaki/Redux - "People imagined that the business was run by my dad or my boyfriend," says Andra Rush)
