Friday

TGIF

I am an engineer for a plastic Thermoforming Company. We manufacture large plastic parts from sheet material by heating it in an oven similar to a pizza oven and then pulling it over a mold with a vacuum which stretches it to the shape of the mold. It is then cooled and ejected from the mold and the excess material is trim away. The excess material is removed with hand routers and holes and other shape are cut into the part. It is physical and hot work. Parts can measure up to 4 X 12 ft and are heated up to 500 degree. It the summer temperatures reach 120 degrees in the plant and even hotter around the machines. While the next part heats in the ovens and cools on the molds, the part that is pulled from the mold is being hand routed. They are still hot as they are being worked on.

Mexicans make up about 90% of the working plant. They are paid $6.25 - $7.25 an hour. They are hard workers and will take a lot of sh** from the owner. They are hired through temporary service companies that check for their legal status. The company keeps them as temporaries for a year or more with no benefits before hiring them as a company employee. The company lost a lot of their employees when they started cracking down on the illegals. It has gotten harder to get them because now they are checking the SS numbers. Also very few here speak English.

We are in a very economically depressed area. Carrier Air Condition Company, Emerson, and several large well paying companies moved to China. These moves have then in turn caused several support companies to close. It has left the area with a lot of unemployed or under employed skilled workers that are now competing for low paying jobs with the Mexicans.

We have a large Mexican population in this area due to it being a large nursery area. Nursery work is physically hard work. When we had higher paying jobs here the only people that nurseries could get besides the Mexicans were broke down alcoholics. They didn’t show up for work 3 days a week. The nurseries pay $6.00 an hour and the Mexicans flock here for these jobs. They work long hours and live in cheap housing that is owned by the nurseries. Health insurance for them is non existence. Where I work the company pays 60% of the insurance for the employee and non for family. I pay roughly $50.00 week for my portion of my insurance and an additional $160.00 for my wife. That is weekly! So you figure it out. The Mexicans makes $6.25 hour grosses $250 week with 40 hours before deductions. The plant only works them 5 days or 40 hours every other week. The rest of the time they work 4 days or 32 hours. Most of them choose not to take the insurance even for themselves, forget insurrecting the family. This saves the company another $300.00 month when they don’t take the insurance. Between the unemployed and the uninsured Mexicans we have a large percentage of the population uninsured in this area.

I guess the next question would be what would happen to the area without the Mexicans. I can only speculate on that. For one thing crime would be less. The Mexicans account for 50% of the crime in this county. The companies would have to pay and treat employees better. Some owners would have a hard adjustment to make.

The owner of this company could certainly afford to pay better. They just finished a two year remodeling of their home complete with elevators. They purchase a very nice 500 acre farm and that included 5 houses and horse barns. They live very well traveling, buying expensive vehicles, boats and toys, etcetera. They have complained about having to pay so much. How are they expected to compete against foreign completion with our minimum wage so high? They have actually said this. A company needs to make a profit or they won’t stay in business but greed has its way of becoming addictive. Where is the balance for this? Without the cheap labor of the Mexicans there would probable be a better balance between the owners and the employees. The nurseries would have the biggest issue. They would have a difficultly getting the help needed even with the slow economy. I don’t advocate sending the Mexicans back unless they are illegal’s. We do need to control our borders and limit immigration based on employment of our own people.

I am not trying to trash anyone here but only to inform you with the issues. The solution is complicated. But for me, I am ready to try to find a better situation than I now have. Driving a truck may not be the answer but I need the change. I have become resentful of doing a job that I am over qualified to do for less than I made 20 years ago. I may not make more driving a truck but it is not all about the money. I refuse to be taken advantage of!

The Beginning

The Beginning

Well it’s not the very beginning of my change in careers but the beginning of my post. The real beginning started about 3 months ago when I decide that I was going to go this route (no pun intended). I talked to people that drives and did internet searches. I have learned a lot of what is going to be required to do this.

I have gotten my CDL learners permit and my DOT physical. I have applied to Tennessee Tech @ Nashville and now I am waiting to get into a class (hopefully January 2008).

There are a lot of ways to get your training. Pay for it yourself with a private school ($4,000 - $5,000). Or you can go to one paid for by a company and be obligated to them for one to two years. These schools are for about 3 weeks, 5-7 days a week and 10 hour day boot camps. I chose a community college for $1,200 that is 7 weeks and 7 hours a day 5 days a week and am paying for it myself. Quite honest I couldn’t afford the cost of the other schools and didn’t want to be obligated to a company for that long. I plan to work some part time also while going to school, something that I couldn’t do with the others.

How did I decide to get into this field? Well I have looked at many things without finding one that I feel that I could apply myself to. If you look at my profile you see that I have been in manufacturing for 40 years. I love to build things and recently have built a couple of houses and remodel a couple including the one that I am in now. I enjoy that and even started a remodeling company. I did a lot of quoting, spent the time and travel just to have people to do it themselves or not at all. I was getting too much quoting and too little work. It is hard physical work and I wasn’t established enough to make any money at it. I could probable have stayed with it and build a reputation and made it work but it was going to be more work that I wanted to put to it. Besides the jobs that I was getting wasn’t jobs that I enjoyed.

I have always tried to live by my motto; if you aren’t excited about a job, don’t take it.
I try to live life to the fullest. I do things with enthusiasm and make ever effort to be the best. If I don’t enjoy it or be good at it, then I can’t do it. I won’t settle for mediocrity.

I am not delusion about driving a truck. I know that it is long hours, hard and stressful work, neither of these brother me. I have always worked hard and long hours. If I am doing something that I enjoy then it isn’t hard. I can make more money doing what I have always done if I was willing to stay with it but I am not. I am burnt out and want to change. I will be 60 in March 2008 and plan on working at least 10 more years. I can not bear to think of doing what I do now for 10 more years.

What do I want and expect from driving a truck? I want to do over the road for a few years. I love this country and have been in 44 states with my other travels. My wife is going to ride with me so we can see the county together. I can travel and be paid for it. I want to visit all 50 states before I go to that big truck stop in the sky. I am sure that it will grow old but doesn’t every job.

I am now in a holding state waiting to go to school so much is not happening here for a while. I plan on posting regularly but for now it will be more about my life than about trucking. Once I get into school and on the road, I will focus more on the trucking aspect.

I hope these posts will help someone or at least that you enjoy them. I welcome your comments positive or negative.