Hubby Just Started New Career and Is Having a Tough Time of It

After previously being in car sales, and then being unemployed for 4 years (for a variety of reasons that I won't go into - just suffice to say it worked for our family and kept DD out of day care), my husband needed to get back into the work force and decided to pursue truck driving. He did not want to go back into car sales, he saw that there were a lot of truck driving jobs advertised, even here in MI, and he had considered doing it before way back when. He did his research, enrolled in a school to get his CDL, and completed it sucessfully. He got "pre-hired" by a company, completed 10,000 miles of on-the-road driving with a trainer, passed their tests, and so then got fully hired with his own truck.

He's been gone from home for almost 4 weeks and until this week, everything had been going well. His long-term goal is to eventually find a local job where he'll be home every night and weekends (or at least most) but figures he'll need at least a year's experience first. We talked about it a lot, we knew it would be tough, but figured it was only temporary and we could get through it. But then this week, he's getting frustrated and feels like the company is messing with him. He took his first solo load from Texas to Calgary. Orginally they told him it had to be delivered by 8 am Tuesday, then later told him it didn't have to be there until 2 pm. Everything was fine until they called him at 2 IN THE MORNING on Tuesday (while he was sleeping in the truck) asking where he was - apparently they gave him the wrong information and he was supposed to make the delivery at 2 am instead. So he started driving up there (was still 2 hours away) but twice they gave him the wrong address where the delivery was supposed to be made. Then he was stuck there for 2 days because they didn't have another load for him. He was ticked because he felt they knew it was going to take him 3 to 4 days to make the trip from Texas to Calgary but they couldn't make arrangements for him to get another load right away. Then they got him one this morning. He was to drive down to Alabama to pick up a load, then deliver it to Salt Lake City. Ten minutes after he sets out, they call him and tell him it's been cancelled, so he has to go back to the truck stop to wait some more. He told me this happened to another guy 4 times in a row - they got him a load, he set out, and then he got called back. Four times!

Naturally he is really frustrated. He gets paid by the mile. He was paid for the initial training he did, and now that he is a full hire, he got a small pay raise but after that first load, it's been one thing after another. He told me he heard about trucking companies doing this - they lure you in, everything is great at first, then they start messing with you. He's talking about quitting already and trying to find a local job now, but isn't sure. I told him he probably needs to try sticking it out, because every job comes with a certain amount of B.s. and he needs to understand that. He told me he wants to stick it out, and can deal with a certain level of B.s. if he's getting paid a decent amount, but if he's only going to make $300 a week and have to be away from home and his family all the time, it's not worth it to him. In a sense, this had been the story all his life, according to him - he wants to work hard, he can do the job well, but the powers-that-be make it difficult to impossible for him to make a decent living (it was the same story in the car sales business). I told him I understood how he felt, but it would be a shame to give up now, and I also expected him to have another job already lined up before he quit this one. I am not dealing with him being unemployed and stuck at home all the time anymore and not knowing what to do with himself. I get right now that it's hard, and I am sure he is missing us and homesick to a degree, but him talking about quitting already is making me nervous. He's trying to see if he can get a few days off to be at home to see if that will help.

If any of you happen to have husbands, or know someone else, (or even you yourself) who is employed in truck driving, is this typical? How much is someone expected to put up with in order to have a job like this? I was really happy that he finally found something and made the effort to make it happen, but now it seems like it's not what it is cracked up to be - but I don't how much of that is the company, the entire business itself, or just him and his attitude (he's always been the type to start getting a pissy attitude about things when they don't go the way he thinks they should). So while I am trying to be supportive, I don't always know how sympathetic I should be all the time. I am frustrated for him, but part of me also expects him to just suck it up.