It's a Team's Life
Quality of Life
While speaking at an Expediter University Workshop one of the attendees asked about quality of life as a team driver. What a great question and to me more important then "Can I make any money with that little truck?"
What is Quality of Life (QOL)? The standard of health, comfort, and happiness experienced by an individual or group.
When our kids where young we had a great QOL as we both had a job where we were able to spend weekends with our girls. My job also let me use comp time so I was able to attend the many activities the girls were involved in and make that time up. During this period of our lives we had a great QOL as we had quality family time.
Once the kids left for college our QOL changed to unsatisfactory overnight, as our jobs did not satisfy our needs. So we started searching and trucking was what we knew we wanted to be involved in. We made a couple false starts before finding what we needed to have QOL once again.
Our lifestyle does not fit everyone and each person or family needs to figure out his or her needs. We figured out that we like waking up in a different areas of the country, we like having time while away from home to explore an area where we are stopped. For us the ability to see sites we would never have seen if we were to take a weeks vacation made up for missing the Sunday BBQ or the many family birthdays we miss.
Family members often ask how can we stand never knowing what we are doing the next day or even with in the next minute. My answer is it does not matter to us, if we are not under a load we are always ready within a few minutes to put the truck in gear and take off across country. When we are moving we are making money so that is incentive to always stay prepared.
If we are pre-assigned on a load we have free time that we can plan out to fit into what we want for our QOL. Sometimes we see the sites and other times we stay in the truck and get caught up on work and cleaning the truck inside and outside. Our truck is no different then our home and it takes a lot of upkeep to stay shiny and clean.
The idea for either of us, Bob going back to punching a clock, and me going back to a desk job is abhorrent to both. When working our former jobs we were often looking forward to Friday and dreading Mondays. Now the days we dread are holidays (no freight), snow, ice, and wind days.
Everything is a balance and we have to have enough income to meet our current needs and to put away for the future, enough time off to enjoy life, and control over our daily life to determine if what we are about to do is safe, or if we need to wait the weather or conditions out.
Quality of Life is very important and one thing that we are careful of is to not "Wish our Life Away". Living in the moment and enjoying how we make our living is what keeps us excited about getting up ever day to see what is over the next horizon.
Since we have to work we have found what fits our overall needs for the current time.
Truck Driving friends on the East Coast Truck Driving friends on the West Coast
Bob & Linda CaffeeTeamCaffeeSaint Louis MO
Expediters since January 2005
[email protected]
Expediting isn't just trucking, it's a lifestyle;
Expediting isn't just a lifestyle, it's an adventure;
Expediting isn't just an adventure, it's a job;
Expediting isn't just a job, it's a business.