The Way of the Battered Husband Ep. 6 - My First Few Months as a Truck Driver

Hey there Hive, it's been a while. Really sorry I haven't posted in quite a while, I've been a bit busy with life that I had little time to write anything. Even if I had the time to do so, I don't know what to write about. Consider this as the continuation of The Way of the Battered Husband series of blogs I've been sporadically posting in the Network.

To put you up to speed, I've began thinking of ways to earn a living while the market is still down. Although I could just go back to being employed somewhere, salaries in our country is usually never enough to maintain a family's lifestyle, and those that do will leave us with very little time with our baby girl.

A few months back, when my mother-in-law shared an idea for us to migrate, we were all for it. So we decided to pursue tracks that can help us boost our credentials to move over there. I decided to try my hand at hauling since driving is considered a skill and I personally love to just drive around. So I saw it as a win-win for me.

I took a technical course on driving heavy vehicles such as trucks in our country's Technical Skill Development school which we just call TESDA here. after a month of theoretical and practical courses I finally achieved my competency certificate and a professional license to drive.

That's one part down, but I don't have a truck to start out with, and like I said, salaries in our country is miniscule especially skilled labor. Luckily, as I was checking around for opportunities, my Fraternity Brother said that he has a truck just laying around and he could let me borrow it just so I can start. We shook on it and I took the truck while giving me half a year of free rent.

The truck was a fixer upper though, to make it road worthy, I had to fork over a lot. Almost enough for a down payment on a new truck. The thought of getting the short end of the stick reared its head, but I didn't let that get through to me. "Just stick to the plan and give it everything you got."

The first few trips we made netted a loss because of unforeseen instances like dirty enforcers trying to find every bit of violation they can pin on you. So they can squeeze you into either bribing them to turn a blind eye or coughing up money to clear the violation and get back your license at a later date.

It scared me to see that 80% of my trips were like that, it actually made me stop for a bit from making a trip because I'd just lose money again if I go unprepared. With the help from a buddy of mine that I take as my helper on trips, we tried to look for ways on how to minimize those incidents. We joined groups of fellow truck drivers, and asked for their advise. We couldn't just let the truck sit there and not earn so we still took "no-brainer" trips, those that had routes that don't pass any checkpoints and are just short distances from the garage. So far the system works, now I just have to find a way to take more trips while still minimizing the risk of getting stopped for another violation.

I won't bore you with that though. I'll just leave a few pics from out trips and maybe talk about them a bit.

We carried small things.. (Stairs Mold)

and we carried big things.. (Movable Basketball Court)

we delivered one thing a great distance.. (Griller Kiosk)

we also took a lot of things over a short distance.. (10 7ft Tall Refrigerators)

we helped friends move to a new home..

and we also helped strangers in their local campaign..

I guess if you all are interested, I can continue blogging/vlogging the trips we do, that way I can continue putting out content here on Hive. I'll leave my one meme at the end and I hope to see you all in the next one. Good bye!