Getting paid to do something you love is the ultimate embodiment of non-sarcastically livin’ the dream, but when what you love is driving, there are probably far more driving-jobs that are not the dream than jobs that are. Despite the topshot, I would put pizza-delivery driver very low on my dream-driving-job list.
Likewise, I imagine being a long-haul trucker is no picnic. There’s the romance of the open road and all that, but I think I would find driving a big rig and maintaining the extra-high situational awareness the job demands to be highly taxing. That, and it’s an endless game of beat-the-clock, and I would fold under the stress.
Naturally, the peak driving jobs are the most scarce. At the tippy-top, you’ve got pro race car driver, and test-driver for Ferrari or Porsche or Lamborghini (etc., etc.), which probably has a lot of overlap with pro racing driver. Along with sheer scarcity, the qualifications required – you know, driving really fast, really really well – make it highly unlikely that I’ll be within a million miles of those roles.
A driving job I could definitely get into and do well is long-distance delivery driver, like Farrah Haines. She and her 1,000,000-mile, bull-bar’d Hyundai Elantra have stuck with me ever since 2018 when I read her story. All day, alone, listening to music and podcasts and books in a comfy car with a great stereo (but I don’t think I’d choose an Elantra, I’d probably go Prius) sounds pretty great to me.
UPDATE
Stephen Walter Gossin DM’d me a nice submission for today’s AA, but I missed it. Here it is now!
From ’98-’00 I was a Dominoes delivery driver after class while attending UNC Wilmington. “Dinner Rush” was from 4:30-8:30pm, so that’s when the Ogden, NC (a suburb of Wilmington) needed 5-8 drivers on hand – especially Friday and Saturday nights. That meant 4-5 hour shifts, which were perfect after a long day of classes and writing papers.
Ogden NC has grown exponentially in the past 26yrs, but back then, traffic wasn’t too bad, you got $7/hr plus $.75 for mileage for each run you completed, plus tips. It worked out to about $12.50/hr which was great money back then for a college kid with an ’80 Civic and $300/mo room rent. You always ended up taking home a pizza that the kitchen messed up on also that would otherwise be headed for the trash. Zipping that little manual Honda in and out of subdivisions and cul-de-sacs with some good tunes blaring and a pocket full of tips was so much fun, I sometimes forgot it was “work.” My favorite job outside of writing for this website in my 46 years on this planet.
Well shoot, now delivering pizza sounds fun.
Top graphic image: Stranger Things/Netflix
I delivered pizza in a CO college town for several years in the late ’80s…it had its ups and downs. The driving itself wasn’t bad, but customers eat their own babies. Then our store started selling these deeply discounted pizzas (we got a percentage of every delivery) and we (the drivers) would actually lose money on the deliveries…that’s when I decided I’d had enough.
I’ve always liked the idea of hotshot delivery driving, but there’s probably caveats to consider that I haven’t thought of.