The Trucking Lifestyle

We stay out on the road for six weeks at a time. We usually give our company a time frame within which they can work when we are ready to go home. Because of the area our home terminal is located (El Paso, TX), we generally cannot get out of the house (truck lingo for leaving our home terminal with a load) before Fridays. So, we schedule our times off so that we get to Irving, TX on Sundays. Our company usually has an extra El Paso, TX load that leaves every Sunday. This load takes us to our home terminal by Monday morning. Then, we usually spend 12 days at home. That is not the norm for our industry. The norm is one day of for every six to seven days out.

When we get home we have to take just about everything out of our truck in preparation for our twelve days at home. We’ve usually emptied our home of all perishables, so if we want to eat we need to put the food back. We take out all the dirty laundry, coffee decanter, cell phones, log books, trip note book, any medicines, clothes, shoes, computer, electrical cords, dogs, doggie medicines, etc. Then we clean the truck, both front and back. This usually takes us up to three hours. This same routine is repeated (except for the cleaning) when we get ready to leave. The only difference is that by the time we get ready to leave I’ve picked up an extra thing or two at the local grocers.

I have created several lists which help me to coordinate all of the taking out and putting back in, as well as last minute things that must be done before we leave our home. I have a list of items that must be taken out of the truck and I have a list of items that must be put back in the truck. Also, I have a list of things to take care of in preparation for leaving our home for six weeks at a time. The worst feeling in the world is when you find yourself hundreds of miles from home and you realize that you didn’t pack your toothbrush!

Being away from home for as long as we are leaves lots of stuff to get done when we do get home. My husband and I don’t have any children and we live in the boonies. So, there is no one we can rely on to take care of things around the house or to go get our mail. We use a different mailing address for our mail. It’s like a post office box, except that Fed Ex will deliver to that address. We usually have three to four bags of mail to collect. During the warmer months we spend much of our time working on things outside the house. You’d be surprised how fertile our dessert is!

Our families haven’t seen us in a while so all they want is a little of our time. We are glad to oblige them because we miss them so much while we are gone. We miss anniversaries, weddings, birthdays and baptisms. Then there is the doctor appointment that must be made. If we are delayed in getting home it’s like a domino effect. Everything has to be rescheduled or just plain missed.

In the trucking industry (at least in our experience), one of the hardest things to adjust to is how difficult it can be to actually get home. If we try and work around the timeframe our carrier provides we end up with a load that goes from Irving, TX to Phoenix, AZ. So, if we have a reason to get home on a different schedule we brace ourselves. We know that after six weeks out on the road we will have to bypass our house in order to get to our house. That is, if we’re lucky. We’ve deadheaded (truck lingo for pulling an empty trailer) on our dime. I must take a moment to say here that we are with one of the better carriers. If they can’t find us a load to get home and we have to deadhead they will usually cover our fuel costs.

I do a lot of cooking out on the road. That’s one of the reasons we moved into the bigger truck. It has the sink, counters and a convection oven. Now I can control the quality of foods going into our bodies. Whenever we find ourselves in one place for at least a day I go into super cook mode! I’ll cook several meals in advance and freeze them so that we can have healthy meals while we’re out on the road.

One of the things I really like about our current carrier is the other husband and wife teams that are also leased to them. In our entire career we have never met up with so many good people! It is so great to get together with them. We will all usually go out somewhere to share a meal. If we aren’t under a load we might go out for karaoke night or something equally fun. Sometimes we each cook a part of a meal and then get together in the break room and share it with each other. It is true that we run hard, but we play hard too! We are there for each other because we know what we have to deal with out here on the road. We are proud of who we are and what we do!

More to come …