Warmer Today

It's starting to warm back up here in "Sunny" Florida. Thank Goodness! My foot felt good enough today that I went back to work. I can't put any pressure on the front of it so it completely messes up how I'm walking. I did make it through the day though.

Got home and checked my email and had one from the lady we will be driving for. She gave us hotel information and we firmed up the date for orientation. Feb 15th!! Orientation will be two days from 7 AM to 6 PM.....I'm sure that will be somewhat of a drag to get through.

John enjoying a peaceful moment before our new journey

At work today, the store manager came up to me and let me know that she heard my husband and I will be leaving. She asked me a few details about what we would be doing. She couldn't get past the fact that we would be together 24/7 in the truck. Her comment was that we must have a far different relationship than she and her husband do because there's no way she would spend that much time with her husband...It's funny, I've been there for 11 months now and this is the first time she came to me and had a conversation with me. It took me leaving for her to come talk to me. She said she was sorry to see us leave but congratulated us on our new venture. Then informed me that she was going to work the snot out of me till I was gone. And she wonders why no one likes her?

Freezing in Florida

It's funny that we moved to Florida in 2005 from Indiana because we were tired of the cold winters and now we are having a record setting winter here in Florida. Wait a minute, that's not really funny after all!

To make matters worse, I have been sick twice in the last month, was just getting over the second round and starting to feel good again and managed to jam my foot into the recliner and most likely broke my middle toe, although I am not going to bother going to the Dr. to have it checked out. I have taken off work for the last two days because it is so painful I can't put any weight on it. It's actually feeling a little better today so I guess I will have to haul myself back to work tomorrow.....not looking forward to it.

Really can't wait to start our new job next month. I am so nervous about getting started. Especially after the fiasco with Conway. I just want to get to orientation, get our truck, and make our first delivery. Then it will all seem real to me. I got an email from the lady whose truck we will be driving and she admitted that she is really nervous about handing the keys over to us. I wrote her back and told her I don't blame her and I don't know if I could do it myself. That's another thing that worries me. I hope she doesn't get cold feet and back out at the last minute. Especially after we have given our notice at work.

Oh well, if that happens, then we will just have to work something else out. We know now though that this is what we want to do, whether we drive for her, buy our own truck or find another owner to drive for. We will make it happen. We do eventually want to buy our own truck. We talked to a couple who are really pushing us to just do it now and not even bother driving for someone else. I'm just not that brave though.

Hopefully we will get our W2's soon. That's really all we are waiting on right now. I want to get our taxes done, as well as our son's and my parents. Somehow I ended up being the family tax preparer. It would be really great if we all get a nice tax refund. I'm sure my boys will since they are OTR truck drivers. With all the tax changes this year though, not sure yet how it will affect mine and my husband's returns. Keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

You know, calling in sick from work and sitting at home should be more exciting. Guess it would help if I could walk freely without pain. Then I could use this time to get things done around here, but then again, if I could walk without pain, I wouldn't have stayed at home.....what cha gonna do?

My first Post....

Wow, am I ever behind the times. I have followed other peoples blogs for quite some time but never felt the urge to have my own. Until recently. It looks like my husband and I are finally going to get to do something that we have been wanting to do for quite some time and I want to keep it documented so that I can look back on it and see if it was anything like we expected as well as keep track of our travels.

If all goes well, next month (Feb 2010) we will start our new career with expediting. Expediting is a form of OTR truck driving with a twist. Our truck will be a straight truck with a 20' box for freight. It will have a daycab with a 96" sleeper with most of the comforts of home. No shower or toilet, however, there are trucks out there that do provide those. Just not our truck. At least not the one we will start out with.

Since this is my first post and just in case someone out there in the world may happen upon this blog and take an interest, I suppose I should give a little background on us. We have been married for 27 years, have 2 sons in their 20's who live out on their own. We are both in our 40's with no real ties at home. We were born and raised in Indiana and lived there until 2005. We moved to Florida because we were sick of the cold winters. We both got very lucky and found jobs here in Florida that actually paid more than the ones we had in Indiana. However, then along came the economic recession and by by went the jobs. After not working for a year, we decided to go to truck driving school and get our Class A Cdl's. We went to a very good school at Mid Florida Tech, a community college which is part of Orange County Public Schools in Orlando. I very highly recommend this school for cdl training. We graduated and got our cdl's in Feb of 2009, all ready to go off on our new adventures only to find out that the recession had worsened and now driving jobs were even hard to come by.

We had applied to Conway Truckload and and were accepted by them. We went to their orientation in Feb of 2009 in Joplin, Mo. We made the mistake of thinking that we were hired. After all, they had done all of our paperwork and brought us out there, right? No. They take you there and put you through their testing and then select who they want to keep and who gets sent home. Needless to say, in our group, we got sent home and the drivers who already had experience got to stay. What a nightmare that was!! We had to take a Greyhound Bus home from Joplin, Mo to Orlando, Fl. First time either of us had been on a greyhound. Not planning to do that again!!

Anyway, got home and called every trucking company we could think of, and there were none that were hiring student drivers at that point. We were very discouraged and had no idea what we were going to do to survive. Luckily for us, one of our friends is a manager at Walmart and she helped us get jobs there. All I will say on that subject is that it kept us from starving.

We were so traumatized from the way we were treated at Conway that we didn't even think of driving anymore after we started at Walmart. At that point we were just so thankful to even have a job. However, as anyone who has ever worked at Walmart would probably tell you, it is not easy nor enjoyable, nor profitable working there. After about 7 months there, I started researching driving jobs again and somehow managed to stumble upon information about expediting. I mentioned it to my husband to see what his reaction was, and basically he said, Hell Yeah! When can we start?

I am the type of person who has to thoroughly research something before I am willing to get involved in it. So I began scouring the internet and learning all I could. I posted some questions on an expediting forum and received a private message from a lady who offered us an opportunity to take over driving her truck. Very sadly, her husband passed away from a heart attack and she will not drive it without him. She had read my posts on the forum and said that we reminded her of her and her husband. We began communicating by email and I let her know that we wouldn't be ready to start driving until after the first of the New Year and she said that was fine.

We had to go ahead and get our Hazmat Endorsements and our Passports, which we finally received in the mail yesterday. We will also be working on getting a clearance from the Dept of Defense for government shipments. Those actually pay better than regular loads.

We gave our notice at work yesterday and let them know that Feb 5th would be our last day there. That was an awesome feeling (and scary). It's really hard to give up a job in this economy. Even though the job sucks, but sometimes, you have to have faith and just do it or your fear will never allow you to live your dreams!

This is the truck we will start out driving. 2006 Sterling