I’m currently thinking of getting a commercial driver’s license and doing over-the-road trucking. The research I have leads me to believe that I’d make between $35k and $45k my first year. Living out of a truck/motel rooms should save quite a bit on expenses too.
Downside is that it’s a lot of hours on-duty, as well as a couple grand of loan debt and a month with no income to complete school.
I don’t understand why you want to do this, honestly. Trucking seems like a very unpleasant profession from what I’ve seen. What upsides drew your interest?
I find driving pleasant and I’m good at it. Mostly it’s a combination of low living expenses, decent salary, and getting to see the country. The independence and lightness (term borrowed from Go strategy) of the position were upsides as well. It’s basically a good way to turn a year or two of my life into the roughly 40k it’d take to retire on a couple acres, a garden, and a yurt. I could even get the yurt before getting out of trucking as a fairly cheap minimal economic offering.
Also, I fully expect trucking to get automated into a much cushier job over the next decade with self-driving vehicles. Instead of driving a truck for 11 hours a day, you babysit a truck-driving machine and make sure everything runs fine and gets loaded/routed properly, which is essentially a desk job. Lowered accident rates and insurance premiums pays for the upgrade, even without an increase in the allowed hours of service regulations.
Not needing a college education is another huge plus, since it means I get working sooner and with less out-of-pocket expenses front-loaded onto it.
Anyhow, it’s not something that makes sense as a long-term plan. It’s something to do to loot roughly $100k over three years after living expenses and then get out.
turn a year or two of my life into the roughly 40k it’d take to retire on a couple acres, a garden, and a yurt.
Have you actually done the calculations that convince you you could retire on $40k? Because that seems awfully optimistic to me.
Let’s make the following optimistic assumptions: (1) You will be able to invest the money so that it grows reliably at 4% over inflation. (2) You will only need the money to last you for 25 years (e.g., because after that some rich family member will die and leave you a big pile of money. Or because after that you will die and not care any more). Then, taking inflation to be zero for convenience (the alternative is to inflation-adjust all the numbers, and because of the form of assumption 1 this is equivalent but uglier), if my scribblings are correct then you can afford to spend about $2500/year.
Living on $2500/year in the US seems really, really tough.
And that’s assuming none of the $40k actually needs to be spent on the acres, the garden, and the yurt.
The $40k was more roughly the number I had in mind for getting set up somewhere. Land, yurt, gardening tools, and food expenses for a year or two. My ongoing costs would be property taxes, food costs if gardening doesn’t work out, and water/electricity (or budget for upkeep/maintenance/replacement on my own systems).
Gardening can be an income stream, too—selling fresh vegetables at a farmer’s market (or effective income stream in offsetting food costs). But that’s probably not wise to count on—it keeps my position dependent on not failing at gardening.
It’s really getting the living expenses down that’s important, though. If I can meet my needs cheaply enough, then it’s really not that big of a deal if I have to pick up a shitty job later.
The research I’ve done also suggests that it’s fairly straightforward to get on disability. That would more than cover incidental expenses at $500/month.
Anyhow, I kind of rambled for this, but that’s mostly because it’s not particularly thoroughly thought out. It’s more out of a suspicion that it takes much less money to live a happy life than most Americans think it takes, and that the common error mode is spending too much time making money to try to fulfill your needs, rather than simply fulfilling your needs with more effort and less money.
Also, I fully expect trucking to get automated into a much cushier job over the next decade with self-driving vehicles. Instead of driving a truck for 11 hours a day, you babysit a truck-driving machine and make sure everything runs fine and gets loaded/routed properly, which is essentially a desk job. Lowered accident rates and insurance premiums pays for the upgrade, even without an increase in the allowed hours of service regulations.
Doesn’t this lead to the risk that your pay will drop as you face competition for the position with an increasing number of willing unskilled workers?
Doesn’t this lead to the risk that your pay will drop as you face competition for the position with an increasing number of willing unskilled workers?
I’ll have an experience edge over recent graduates by the time that happens. Besides which, the better working conditions would more than make up for it.
Worst case scenario is that I cross-train or cross-certify in truck maintenance, as “someone who can get the damn truck rolling again in an emergency” is going to get a much better paycheck than “someone who picks up the phone when the damn truck stops”.
Actually, the real worst case scenario is that I lose my job and get out of trucking in general.
My father (in his mid 40s) recently took up trucking to help pay off credit card debt (my parents claim to be good with money, but I do not predict they’ll pay off anything in their lifetimes barring winning a lottery or living much longer than average). He also owns an electrical/construction contracting business, so he only takes a maximum of one load a week (he usually does much less; more like one or two a month). He hauls steel, primarily from Tennessee and Arkansas to Texas (other trips come up, but I haven’t heard of him accepting any). I think each trip is supposed to net him $1000, although there isn’t a reliable schedule on when he gets paid—basically whenever the people in charge get to him in their list of priorities. (He also wound up working for a business in which one of his high school friends has a lot of status, which probably makes it easier for him to bug them about when he’s getting paid—although at any given moment they seem to owe him around $5000, from what I hear.)
So just generalizing from the one datapoint, your $30-40k/year sounds about right.
I’m currently thinking of getting a commercial driver’s license and doing over-the-road trucking. The research I have leads me to believe that I’d make between $35k and $45k my first year. Living out of a truck/motel rooms should save quite a bit on expenses too.
Downside is that it’s a lot of hours on-duty, as well as a couple grand of loan debt and a month with no income to complete school.
I don’t understand why you want to do this, honestly. Trucking seems like a very unpleasant profession from what I’ve seen. What upsides drew your interest?
I find driving pleasant and I’m good at it. Mostly it’s a combination of low living expenses, decent salary, and getting to see the country. The independence and lightness (term borrowed from Go strategy) of the position were upsides as well. It’s basically a good way to turn a year or two of my life into the roughly 40k it’d take to retire on a couple acres, a garden, and a yurt. I could even get the yurt before getting out of trucking as a fairly cheap minimal economic offering.
Also, I fully expect trucking to get automated into a much cushier job over the next decade with self-driving vehicles. Instead of driving a truck for 11 hours a day, you babysit a truck-driving machine and make sure everything runs fine and gets loaded/routed properly, which is essentially a desk job. Lowered accident rates and insurance premiums pays for the upgrade, even without an increase in the allowed hours of service regulations.
Not needing a college education is another huge plus, since it means I get working sooner and with less out-of-pocket expenses front-loaded onto it.
Anyhow, it’s not something that makes sense as a long-term plan. It’s something to do to loot roughly $100k over three years after living expenses and then get out.
Have you actually done the calculations that convince you you could retire on $40k? Because that seems awfully optimistic to me.
Let’s make the following optimistic assumptions: (1) You will be able to invest the money so that it grows reliably at 4% over inflation. (2) You will only need the money to last you for 25 years (e.g., because after that some rich family member will die and leave you a big pile of money. Or because after that you will die and not care any more). Then, taking inflation to be zero for convenience (the alternative is to inflation-adjust all the numbers, and because of the form of assumption 1 this is equivalent but uglier), if my scribblings are correct then you can afford to spend about $2500/year.
Living on $2500/year in the US seems really, really tough.
And that’s assuming none of the $40k actually needs to be spent on the acres, the garden, and the yurt.
The $40k was more roughly the number I had in mind for getting set up somewhere. Land, yurt, gardening tools, and food expenses for a year or two. My ongoing costs would be property taxes, food costs if gardening doesn’t work out, and water/electricity (or budget for upkeep/maintenance/replacement on my own systems).
Gardening can be an income stream, too—selling fresh vegetables at a farmer’s market (or effective income stream in offsetting food costs). But that’s probably not wise to count on—it keeps my position dependent on not failing at gardening.
It’s really getting the living expenses down that’s important, though. If I can meet my needs cheaply enough, then it’s really not that big of a deal if I have to pick up a shitty job later.
The research I’ve done also suggests that it’s fairly straightforward to get on disability. That would more than cover incidental expenses at $500/month.
Anyhow, I kind of rambled for this, but that’s mostly because it’s not particularly thoroughly thought out. It’s more out of a suspicion that it takes much less money to live a happy life than most Americans think it takes, and that the common error mode is spending too much time making money to try to fulfill your needs, rather than simply fulfilling your needs with more effort and less money.
Doesn’t this lead to the risk that your pay will drop as you face competition for the position with an increasing number of willing unskilled workers?
I’ll have an experience edge over recent graduates by the time that happens. Besides which, the better working conditions would more than make up for it.
Worst case scenario is that I cross-train or cross-certify in truck maintenance, as “someone who can get the damn truck rolling again in an emergency” is going to get a much better paycheck than “someone who picks up the phone when the damn truck stops”.
Actually, the real worst case scenario is that I lose my job and get out of trucking in general.
My father (in his mid 40s) recently took up trucking to help pay off credit card debt (my parents claim to be good with money, but I do not predict they’ll pay off anything in their lifetimes barring winning a lottery or living much longer than average). He also owns an electrical/construction contracting business, so he only takes a maximum of one load a week (he usually does much less; more like one or two a month). He hauls steel, primarily from Tennessee and Arkansas to Texas (other trips come up, but I haven’t heard of him accepting any). I think each trip is supposed to net him $1000, although there isn’t a reliable schedule on when he gets paid—basically whenever the people in charge get to him in their list of priorities. (He also wound up working for a business in which one of his high school friends has a lot of status, which probably makes it easier for him to bug them about when he’s getting paid—although at any given moment they seem to owe him around $5000, from what I hear.)
So just generalizing from the one datapoint, your $30-40k/year sounds about right.