As I have had a couple of inquireies about driving I thought Id post about it

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This is also a job that is suited for either male or female as there are many Lady drivers out there. (and a lot of them are better than there male counterparts)
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and as an ADDed bonus its about 1000 men to each woman out there and it might be a good place to meet some one Grin
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I am on dexadrine and I have a letter from my Doctor stating such

It is an amphetyemine and when I had my drug test it wasnt picked up for some reason so I havent had to answer nto it in this paticular job , but another job that I turned down he asked me to get it checked out first so I called a doctors office who deals with Drug test for drivers and she told me it is an acceptable drug under doctors prescription.

I find driving to be a great job as it is by self and no one is there watching over my shoulder.

If your not afraid of a big truck it can be a wonderful job for an ADDer as nobody cares if you sing and dance to yourself as you drive down the road as long as you go into the job with the respect it deserves.

40 tons of truck doent stop on a dime so the responcibillity lies with you and you alone for the saftey and well being of the other drivers and the truck.

Dont let me scare you as it is a job you can get right into and hyperfocus on , listen to the tunes, talk to lots of other truckers, see lots of country, and get paid reasonably well for doing something that I would do for free( grin tour around and see the country )


Please feel free to ask any questions you wish as I will be more than happy to answer

http://sitefinder.verisign.com/spc?sb=truck+driving&searchboxtype=1&op=landing



http://www.schneider.com/
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Paid training and getting your licence

http://www.schneider.com/drivers/training.html
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http://www.jbhunt.com/

A couple of american companys but there are many more

The trick is to get your licence and then pick a company thats big enough to put some $ into you.

once you have 1 years experence then you can go anywhere so keep in mind that the first year you will be on the road an awful lot but you will get paid well for it.

you cant look at how much time you are in the truck (sleeping ,eating driving) by the hour or you will think this is rediculas but when you relise how nice it is to drive down the road fo 3 or4 hundred miles and get paid it makes the waiting time in places worth it

From most Flying J Truck stops and probally the TA truck stops a portable computer and a wireless air card and you are on the internet at high speed the moment you park your truck for the night

Define well paid...

signed,

A computer programmer, dissatisfied with the low quality of existing software and the operating systems on which they run, not too mention the large number of out of work programmers in the midst of what is claimed to be a programer shortage...

What are the rules? How many hours total per day?

How often are you explicitly or implicitly asked, demanded, or required to run over, or fake documentation to stay employed?

Thanks.

I think my wife would love to have me out of her hair more often, finding me easier to take in theory than in practice... :)

I'd love to do truck driving (plently of opportunities in OZ) but it doesn't go with being a mum. Maybe when I 'retire' I can get my licence and drive around Australia.

I think it would be a good job coz then you don't need to worry about getting into fights with anyone or misundertandings.

I think the definition of well paid equates to the amount of hours that you do at one time.

I agree with you on the well paid if you look at it in a linear thinkers point of view as to how much money you get for how many hours you are away from home.

The trick is to make your truck as comfortable as you can so that when you shut it down for the night you are at home right away.

Many people work away from home and stay in a boarding house or apartment and dont get home to the family till the weekend anyway.

You also have to add into the equation how well you are getting paid for the time you are working and how easy the work is, assuming you like driving.

Once I hit the road I hate to stop at my destination to drop off my load and get a new load . I just want to keep driving.

its to bad they wont pay me just bto drive around with an empty truck but for some reason they want to add having cargo into the equation. Grin

There are also driving jobs where you are home every night but they ussually entail making many stops and dealing with more people ect

its all abalencing act to each persons type of personallity and the jobs that are available when you are looking

Well wheel
those are very good questions and the range that a driver can make would depend on how much time you are willing to invest away from home and family.

A driver can make anywhere from $0 to $100,000.00 depending on your commitment, investment in time and weather you want to become an owner operator, and your willing ness to work.

Average wage for a driver would be at a guess of 60,000.00 per year

I also once again state that that it is a totally different lifestyle to reallity of a non truck driver

I just sent a letter to Schniders today to discuss an idea I have as to luring new drivers to the profession

The way it is at the moment there is not enough time put into showing a potential new driver what it is all about and I as an ADDult feel if I had been shown properly years ago what it is all about, I would have been doing it back then.

Hours of service
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This will depend on the type of company that you go to work for

The larger companys " DO NOT ALLOW" playing with your log book as the fines to the company and the drivers are horrendus if caught

http://www.schneider.com:1080/Search?browse-category=Drivers%3ADriver+News&view-template=sni-drivernews&view-hits=&ui=bw

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New Hours of Service

These are being put in place to eliminate the abillity of companys and drivers to push them "limit of the law to extreams and BEYOND"

http://www.schneider.com/drivers/news/HOS.html

if you have any questions please feel free to ask

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Once again I state how you are treated and and how happy you are with your job will depend upon the reserch you put into what you are capable of and "THE COMPANY YOU CHOOSE TO WORK FOR"
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At the moment , and it took me 3 companys to find this job,

I go to work tonight at 7:00
pick up my load at 8:00

Drive for upto 6 hours to get to Cleveland
Arrive at 2:00
lay down and sleep for 8 hours
Deliver at 10:00

(or if I want I can take my sleep half way there as long as Im there for 10:00 in the morning)

Reload by 11:00

and drive for 3 1/2 hours

relax or snooze for an hour or so
Deliver for 4:00

Drive home empty

Arive at home by 8:00

have 12 hours off

and do it again

2 trips one week
and 3 trips the second week

weekends at home

pays me about 35 to 40 thousand a year (Canadian)

Im happy as there is a good balence of work time to home time to money paid

Doesn't sound bad.

Remember to look at the reality and not the dream

I am available to answer any question you might want to ask that are within my limited knowlege of the subject

but if I dont know an answer I will help you to find someone who does

Sounds great Gary. Working in IT has some good things for ADDults too: (support calls can come at any time - so you need to be ready to jump to it and fix the problem asap).

8:00 am come to work, hook up the laptop, check e-mail, launch event viewer, check voicemail
8:30 Check firewall/ftp/web logs and if all ok ...
8:45 ... get a cup-a-java, and browse the usual websites: ./, google news, here
9:30 realize you gotta get some work done tackle the long term issues/meetings
11:30 boredom sets in - back to the web
12:00 lunch (usually at your desk, because phone doesn't stop ringing - boredom set in for all your users too - so they decide to explore their computers)
1:00 back to the ugly jobs: long term planning, documentation, budgeting
3:30 boredom unbearable - back to the web
4:00 get ready to close up shop - make sure that all systems are nominal, back up scripts ready to execute, walk through the building to see if someone's been to shy to ask for help (better now than at 5:15! or worse still tomorrow morning: "I couldn't get anything done yesterday because the Internet was off!")
5:30 ride home

OK - this was a little cynical, but not unusual. Unfortunately this kind of day leaves me with 5 hours a day of functional interaction with my family (of which dinner and chores take up a further 2hrs). Weekends are free (BUT! you can be called in to work at any time).

Averge pay? Probably $50 -$60K canadian. Do I like being a sys-admin? Lots of alone time - love dealing with emergencies (I think I actualy relax when disaster strikes!) - work tends to be analytical - lots of troubleshooting - but politics often get involved - then the job sucks. I guess the job's ok or I wouldn't be doing it - but I'm certainly not bragging about it . I kinda picked up the itch for auto/moto mechanics recently - now that could be a fun job. Unless all you're doing are oil changes... I suppose every job has its good n bad.

Good post WHY and if sounded like I was bragging about it then I appologise as that was not my intention.

I was like you did giving a run down of the good and bad points of my job for anyone who is interested. I envy you in your job as I have been repairing computers since the days of DOS but I do not have what it takes to do your job. Either the knowlage , the memory, or the certification.
But my main reason to not attempt a job of that type is that years of Quaility Control in an automotive manufacturing enviornment showed me that I hate being locked inside in a cage as I call it looking at the same 4 walls every day.

but politics often get involved - then the job sucks

My inability and/or my unwillingnes to conduct myself in a political way is the main reason I do not want to place myself in a position as such either in computers or Quality Control.

It has cuased me too much grief over the years of which I accept all the responcibillity for my actions and now that I recognise that it was the ADD as a reason and not as an excuse

Auto Mechanics now is a funny subject in that my Dad was a mechanic, I spent 3 years as an apprentice mechanic until they started putting computers in cars and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to understand how to work with them so I left that trade for other employment.
The funny part is I got into reparing computers as a hobby years later

I now have a 1962 Pontiac and a 1976 Volkswagon Beatle so I can play with them in a mechanical way.

And yes the 1976 Volkswagon does have a computer in it.

I was really surprised when I was taking it apart and discovered it

Originally posted by Garry Lawton
And yes the 1976 Volkswagon does have a computer in it.

I was really surprised when I was taking it apart and discovered it

That could be a real ADHD moment, depending on how you took it apart!

Big Grin

No no no..don't misunderstand - your job sounds like it's worth bragging about - mine..... eh not so much. I already mentioned to you, that you seem to have the right gig for our kind of people. Rural location, an ADD friendly job, free time for our ADD :) projects. I envy you. Now I'm still a youngun, so I'm still have time to get there, but still.... - you got what I think I want.

BTW, (and this goes to all the people who read this) computers/networks are not as difficult as they are made out to be - they seem difficult to comprehend because of the complexity - but that is a false impression - the complexity arises from sheer numbers of factors - broken down into smaller chunks computers/networks are quite easy - however, most people involved like to dress it up in convoluted language and furrow their brows as a way to keep others from figuring out that this is easy. It's a scam, the deeper I get into this the more I recognize the scam - most people involved in my industry only expose the bare minimum of information to others purly as a protectionist measure. Take the time to actualy RTFM - that is, to read the manual - and practice (you'll see that the manual is also written to obscure the truth) - you'll see that in reality this is fairly easy and no one need to fear their computer - a bit of effort with documentation and experimentation and you'll almost never need to call tech-support again.

76 Beatle eh - I'm really craving a early 70s diesel Benz (especially if I can get some BioDiesel to run in it).

you caught my interest with the bio deisal and then the black out
want to look into bio diesal and a diesel generator this winter


another project

grin

Originally posted by why

Take the time to actualy RTFM - that is, to read the manual - and practice (you'll see that the manual is also written to obscure the truth) -

Ya. Tell me about it. : )

I remember when manuals actually had information in them... limits of the system, design criteria, structure maps, lists of defined functions, ways to do things that actually listed what you had to do and how to do it!

Ah. Those were the days before consumerization!

Of course those were not too different from the days when appliances came with schematics so any repairman could repair a device! No need to basically buy the whole thing on a card and plug the new one in... REAL REPAIRS! What concepts...

(mutters reminiscences... about 16 KB Atari 6502 Assemblers and Macro Assemblers (yes they made assemblers WITHOUT macro capability!))

...ways to do things that actually listed what you had to do and how to do it!

I guess this is exactly why I have a thing for old mechanical "thingies". They were built to be repaired not replaced.