I was curious if any of you changed jobs over the holidays or have plans for big changes in 2026? A lot of drivers change jobs around the holidays or plan to do so soon after the spring season kicks off.
Obviously, I shut down Trucking Truth in October of last year, and I’m working on a new High Road Training Program 2.0 right now and will be building a lot of new apps this year. I’m not sure whether I’ll start any new websites outside of highroadtraining.com, but I will certainly help or advise Davy on his plans for a new website this year if I can be of service.
This industry has gone through a ton of changes in recent years. I’ve been wondering how all of this is affecting everyone. Kearsey gave some great insights into the massive changes for her and why she left Prime, which was a much-needed change through no fault of her own.
I’d love to hear how everyone’s year has started and what plans you guys have!
I changed from company driver to lease purchase operator in August. I plan on buying out the lease within the next couple months. I have enough private equity and financing options to do so.
Ive been successful with it thus far based on several factors, but its still very risky and inherently uncomfortable. It will be a bit more secure having ownership of the rig in that it removes significant amount of control from the carrier. With removing that, it frees up capital and reduces liability slightly.
Basically the plan is to reduce my operating costs enough that I can afford to operate part time.
Ive been out of construction and housing for 5 years, but im strongly considering doing some fix and hold to rents intermingled with driving, thus the need for a more flexible schedule, and a few flips. Again, i have resources and people that can mitigate a lot of the risk and expense in that as well. But it will make for a very busy few years to come.
My original intent with trucking was to allow myself to buy properties in areas that are cheap because I wasn’t geographically contained to working there, fix, hold and rent to gain equity. Time will tell if thats successful or not.
My hat is off to you Davy for such an accomplishment. Most of us do ok and are comfortable financially but such an aggressive plan takes great planning and the ability to balance it all.
For me being retired since 2011 after 44 years OTR, a small company pension, modest 401K and our 2 SS checks the wife and I do OK but it gets harder each year to live the same way without worrying about the costs rising.
As long as our health remains stable and the economy doesn’t fall apart we’ll survive. I wish you all the continued success in your future endeavors.
Hey Brett glad your still around. The first of October I sort of retired again. I changed over to intrastate only and I have one customer that gets 2-3 loads a week. My overhead dropped dramatically and this works for me. I’m blessed that decisions I made during my working life has enabled me to do this. I need something to do, I can’t just sit around. It is sure taking some getting used too though.
Oh, that’s a tall order. Normally, with any commodity-style business, it’s the opposite - you do all you can to achieve maximum output. I could see sharing the driving duties with someone, but even that would make the entire venture barely break even.
I would think finding a part-time trucking job as an employee might work if you’re looking for part-time, but a part-time owner-operator gig would be tough. I don’t know if you could make worthwhile money that way.
Part-time anything in trucking is tough to find. I remember some companies, maybe Roehl was one, had the option of like two weeks on, two weeks off. It seems Schneider might have had something like that at one time, as well.
They’re talking about creating 50-year mortgages. If they do, housing prices will explode upward. They’re also talking about legislation that would reduce corporations’ ability to acquire a large number of properties, which would crash the market. Regardless, government involvement in anything is always a massive risk.
”Things were a mess until the government fixed them,” said no one, ever.
That’s fantastic that you have the luxury of choice. It reminds me of the saying, “If you’re willing to do the hard things now, your life will become easy.” Amen to that!
And I agree, we all need something purposeful to do with our lives. Dogs can lie on the porch all day and be happy. That doesn’t work for humans. We come unglued if we have no purpose and only limited activity.
I’m 42 with a paid for house and minimal debt. My goal is to give this 20 years and have a nicely funded IRA, sell the house and buy a bus and travel for what years I may have left. If I die on the way to my goal at least I lived the way I wanted.
My neighbor is selling their house and I very badly wanted to buy it as an investment property but I’m a couple years shy of being in a position to do that. But who knows, the right offer may show its face a little further down the road for us to be able to make a move like that.
I love hearing of your guys goals and plans. It’s inspiring.
I changed jobs back in June of last year. I had been trying to get this job for almost 3 years when I got a call asking if I was still interested. We were in Colorado at the time so I told them I’d come in the day after we got back. I started two weeks later. I drove OTR 18 years ago and have been local ever since. I moved to VA a little over 4 years ago after a rough surgery and long rehab to be closer to family. I got a job hauling fuel then met the woman of my dreams. We have been talking about getting married so two years ago, I moved closer to her to start the process. I’m only 15 minutes from her now but I was an hour and 15 from work. I was really getting burnt out working 60 hours a week plus that extra 2.5 hrs of commute each day.
I finally got the job I wanted and things are finally looking up. We spent the fall getting her house ready to sell and it did in less than a week of being on the market. I asked her to marry me on the same day she closed on her house and she actually said yes! So now I’m working 10 minutes from home, 40 hours a week making almost the same money I was making working 60 and we are looking to move in together and getting married this year. Had a bit of a health scare but everything turned out ok thankfully so it’s looking to be a good year for us!
Congratulations Davy. The world moves in mysterious ways and you are headed in the right direction. After my previous marriage ended I became a single dad to a 4 year old son and life was hard trying to balance my job and father responsibilities. Then I met my soul mate on a blind date and we married after 6 months of dating. We are still at it after 46 years of blessed marriage and love life. We raised 3 children together and after 44 years of OTR career we have been retired since 2011 and enjoying the full time RV life. Good luck on your future.
At Veriha, we’ve implemented Optimal Dynamics (OD) in Q4 of 2025 to basically be an AI dispatch. I eventually gave up my dedicated run from Upper Michigan to North Carolina. While it paid well, it was grueling running 620 miles per day, 5 hours through the Appalachians and zero fail stopping points each week. The AI dispatch actually works well. Get good miles and back to just running the regional Midwest. Feel better and am more active during hometime on the weekends.
I also got upgraded to a 2025 Volvo VNL 850 so pretty happy about that. Overall things are looking good for 2026, we’ve gotten a few more lanes with regional grocery chains and a few others.
I’m still out of work in my ‘original profession’. Been like it for a few months now and the job outlook ain’t great so far. It’s not a good time of year to be job hunting, so I’m still leaving the CDL-A option open. I’m just kinda fidgety about changing careers at 55.
Brett, I agree and normally I wouldn’t entertain it, I would just go for max volume and efficiency. I may still do that.
Basically once the truck is paid for, ill have about a year of milage I can put on the truck where its still running without the likelihood of major repairs. After that, its likely going to be encountering service lifespan issues on parts failures. In that year, i can cover my household monthly costs, fixed costs on the truck and save a bit in about two weeks of each month. The other two weeks ill be bags on working the rehab on the houses with my brothers (all of us have been in the trades and contractors for decades). Once the rehabs are completed, the house goes to a property management company and is rented out to service the debt on the house.
Im going pop a relatively low cost, low risk unit soon as a test to see how viable it is and what kind of troubles come up. If its too much trouble to scale up, than I can easily change course after that and just keep on trucking. The bug to build a business operation is calling me again though.