Where Can a Trucking Career Take You?
One of the biggest advantages of becoming a trucker is that you can travel all over the country. You can see places and meet people you might not be able to if you had chosen a different career. When you’re first starting out, think about where a trucking career can take you.
How Far Do You Want to Go?
When you start your trucking career, you’ll notice that there are two possible distances you can travel. One is long haul, and the other is a local trip, so you’ll be staying close to home.
Long Haul Trucking
If you’re looking for new challenges every day, then long-haul trucking could be the path to take. This job is also known as over-the-road or OTR. You’ll take your cargo from one end of the country to the other, on hauling jobs that will take a few days to complete each time.
Close to Home
Alternatively, you can stay closer to home and choose local trucking jobs. You’ll generally be assigned to the same city or state in which you live. This means you’ll have multiple runs in a single day. You’ll also be responsible for interacting with your customers. Occasionally, you’ll be given regional routes which will take you a few states away, but it isn’t as long as a long haul job.
Specialization
You can also choose to specialize. That means you can become a hazmat trucker or a tanker driver. When you’re a hazmat driver, you carry potentially dangerous cargo such as poisons, flammable liquids, or chemicals. It sounds exciting, but you will need more training and certification from the government. If this sounds too intense, you can become a tanker driver instead.
A tanker driver is responsible for transporting fuel, water, and cement, among other liquid cargo. You will also need more training to learn how to navigate through unpredictable road conditions and pass more tests while you are earning your CDL license.
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