Retirement

I retired on the 3rd of November 2023, the day before my 35th wedding anniversary. My goal was to retire in the summer of 2023 but with the economy the way it is and everything costing so much I couldn’t bring myself to the thought of retiring. Sure I wanted to. It was all I had thought about the last several years. At one point I had considered working till I was 70 until a friend said, “No No No” when you get eligible to retire you retire and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

My dad passed away on the 11 of April 2023 at the age of 89. I guess that was my first inkling that I really needed to think about retiring. I wasn’t getting to work very much because the freight business wasn’t shipping very much freight for whatever reason. They blamed it on the independent truckers out in California but it wasn’t them causing the delay it was the teamsters. So, I went and talked to an orthopdeic doctor about my left foot. My big toe was doing this serious thing of almost turning 45 degrees pushing my other toes on top of one another. He said I wouldn’t be off but a couple of months, fine by me I can make more money being on short term disability than I can working only one to two days a week, some weeks not at all. So, the surgery wasn’t painful, I really didn’t have any pain issues but at one point I realized I couldn’t move my other toes. I went to rehab for about 2 months and that fixed the problem. I ended up being off for 5 1/2 months.

Before I could go back to work I had to have a DOT physical. Driving a semi truck in my line of work, it is one of those requirements that has to be met. The places we had always gone to were gone and the new place couldn’t accomadate us due to some kind of software glitch in their system. I had heard horror stories from other drivers about the new place. They weren’t wrong. Because I had heart surgery in August of 2020 to fix a defective heart valve DOT says I can only have a one year physical instead of a two year. I didn’t have heart surgery due to heart disease, I was born with it that way. They don’t care. So, this doctor that I can barely understand is telling me that the letter I got from my Cardiologist clearing me to drive is insufficient and he needs all my medical records from my Cardiologist. I was dumbfounded. I asked him why and he said that I would have to come see him every year for my physical and he wanted all the information to see if I qualified for a clear physical. I alwys hated going to places like this because they literally hold your job in the palm of their hand. If you don’t pass something, good luck keeping your job. By the time I finally got my physical cleared and approved I was a nervous wreck, and he wondered why my heart rate was so high.

So, I went back to work in early October drivng up and down I-40 every day and realized that I just didn’t want to be there anymore. With all the new drivers that are on the road now days from foreign countries that know nothing about the rules of the road and their employers telling them to put it in gear and mash the pedal it can be a very stressful day. The first week I was back I almost got run off the road twice and was brake checked more than I cared to be. My truck would only run 64 miles an hour and the company I worked for refused to turn them up even when every other trucking company around had done so. They were saving fuel was what they always told us. What a crock, you can’t save fuel if the rpms are turned down so much it can’t pull a hill with a moderate load. I was trying to work through the end of December but after that first week I knew I didn’t need to be there. So I contacted my boss to see if I could retire out early. We had a bunch of drivers sitting at home not getting to work anyway. So, I left. I had been with the company for a little over 30 years. I figured that was enough. I told my wife I am starting to enjoy this retirement thing even if it has only been 4 months since I retired. I sleep weird hours which drives my wife crazy. I go to the range and shoot my pistol when I want to, I drive down to the deer woods just to walk around see how things are. Now, to get back to bowling.