The Office

09JULY10 The Office Originally uploaded by Sarge Jan08

"Averaging 52-55 hours per week, well over two-thirds of it is spent in this cab. Even after 11 hours of work, here I sit for 30-60 minutes to get to the dock for another 20 minutes of being unloaded." (Photo Description) My office is the cab of a 2006 Kenworth T300. Although it was paid off in January, the payment savings are still not reaching my pocket. Repairs that have been put off during the slow economy of the past two years are now eating up the funds that were going toward the purchase. There are a couple more months of this and maybe more if anything else pops up. As with many truckers these days, I am one major repair away from being out of business. I love the job itself, but the profits have gone in the tank. Three and four years ago when the economy was moving along, profits were high and work was plentiful. When the economy hit the breaks, the work load dropped sharply. With the volume drop came the feeding frenzy of the sales teams as they all undercut the competition in order to take business from one another. Rates have been painfully reduced. Even though it has gotten a little busier, the profit level has not bounced back. If I could sell the truck for a good price, I would give serious thought to getting out of the business. Like every other industry though, bouncing back is slow and labored. It will be a long time before we see the prosperity that existed earlier in the past decade. Unfortunately the supply of these trucks outweighs the demand for them. Thus a good price is highly unlikely and an okay price is sketchy at best. So the way it looks at this point, I will continue to add onto the 234,202 miles that I have put on the truck to this point.