I drive a Semi delivering raw baking materials(donut mixes, flour, sugar, pre-made frozen bakery goods, buckets of all the kinds of fillings, packaging and etc...) to mostly bakeries/donut places, a small amount of regular restaurants and some ice cream places. Ya, great job for a bodybuilder with a big sweet tooth and majority of places offer free food to you :banghead: .
We do all local routes, so just about all of us come home same day we leave out except for the handful of guys, like me, that have one overnight route. Will leave out one day, stay in hotel for the night, next day finish up the rest of the route and end back to warehouse.
It's actually a pretty physical job, all the mixes, flour and stuff are in 50lbs bags and a lot of it you will have to handle by hand, twice. Pick it up, throw it on a 2 wheeled standing cart, wheel the 500lbs over to where it goes then pick it up and put it where they want it. Will usually have anywhere from 30,000-40,000lbs in the trailer and usually 50-70% of it will have to be handled by hand. Thank God that we have lift gates and power jacks to be able to bring all that crap as close to the doors as possible.
The best things about the job are I'm always moving around (could not do an office job!) good pay with lots of overtime pay, awesome benefits, paid holidays off, always off weekends, and the fact that I'm out there I don't have a boss over my shoulder busting my balls about nothing.
Worst things are it's a lot of responsibility/stress, as in dealing with customers, picking up cash/checks, making sure your tractor and trailer doesn't have some major problem that could possibly have you end up killing yourself or others, SUPER IGNORANT people driving around you that do not understand that these things weigh over 80,000lbs fully loaded(average car weighs 3000-5,000lbs) they do not stop like a car and will obliterate just about anything when going close to or at highway speeds. And last but not least, the somewhat crappy hours/sleeping schedule. I work on average 12-14 hour days, start times are anywhere from 12:00am to 3:00am, you're done either when you hit 14 hours or when the trailers empty.
I might work 2 days then off a day then work another 2 and really can't ever get a good sleeping pattern going, end up oversleeping on weekends then start at midnight on Monday and majority of the time I don't even end up going to sleep before the start of that Monday route (stimulants a must, dextroamphetamine prescription is a literal life-saver).
LOL, I did not expect to go into so much detail but for some reason just wanted to keep typing.