I am back! It has been about 4 1/2 years since we were OTR but we are out on the road again. If you followed my other blog, and somehow make your way to this one, I will try to catch you up on what has been going on. Well, the short version anyway. If you are new and happen to stumble upon my blog, then WELCOME! Happy reading!
Due to my fathers health, we came off of the road in 2010. I think in my head I was thinking that his health was worse than what it was, so I wanted to be back home and close. Now I realize he is not on his death bed, THANK GOD, and we have gotten back in the truck. For four years we worked at Empire Paper in Lubbock, Texas. It is a facilities supply company and we started out doing local delivery for them. After two years I moved into Customer Service and after a year of that I moved over to Sales. J (my husband and better half) was a driver for two years and then moved into a Field Service Tech position. It is a GREAT company, and GREAT people. After four years, the lure of the truck started pulling at us but we wanted to stay close to home.
In October of 2014, we moved our RV down to Big Lake, Texas and went to work hauling water in a tanker for Nabors in the West Texas oil fields. The money was awesome, granted we were working 70 hours a week, but the money is in the overtime. Things were going well until February when it got very slow. Oil prices had tanked and they stopped drilling and started closing in some of the wells. That meant the water we had to haul was drastically cut back. We went from 70 hours a week to maybe getting 30-35 and that wasn't going to cut it. We still keep in touch with drivers that we worked with previously while we were OTR. After talking to a few of them, we made a decision to come back to the road.
June 1st of this year we started with Forward Air. So far we are really happy with them. We will just have to learn more about their terminals and routes and that should only take about two months to figure out. We are on the LTL side, so we go from terminal to terminal and it is all drop and hook. No customers to deal with! YAY!! Now, this pays a bit less that the TLX division that goes customer to customer, but we decided it was worth a little less pay to not have that hassle.
We have a 2016 International LoneStar, and it is sweet! We are leasing, but at the end of the lease, there is a $1 buyout, yes, one dollar. So the truck will be ours and they consider us Owner/Operators and not Lease Operators. We are still going to look around and save up some money and maybe go the conventional route of buying another truck, because it will be cheaper to have a monthly payment as opposed to a weekly payment. Plus, if we are going to be paying this much money for a truck, I really want a truck with a custom sleeper. That is something we will consider when we start looking. But this was our foot in the door to get back on the road and we can't complain.
On a personal note, this February, our daughter Jessica and son-in-law Ruben gave us our first grandchild, Elijah Cole!! He is absolutely precious and we can't wait to see him again. We were there when he was born, but haven't been able to get back. Hopefully in the next month we will make that happen.
We also bought a house in Lubbock that is in a constant state of remodeling. We got a lot done, but now that we are on the road, my mother (who lives with us) is taking care of getting a contractor out to get it finished up. We got the majority of the stuff done, so for now it is just finish work they will come in and get done. Of course, there is a bathroom that is going to be enlarged and completely re-done, and our master bath needs tile put up, but one project at a time is all we can afford!
It feels really good to be blogging again! I hope you stay tuned for more of our adventures!
T-Net
P.S. If you DID happen to follow my previous blog, Smokey is alive and well, but he is not on the truck with us this time. After we came off the road he ended up having knee surgery from all of the jumping in and out of the truck. So now he is enjoying a nice lazy life of luxury at home with my mom and our other dog, Dexter, that we acquired after we came off the road. :-)
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