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
While on vacation in Scotland, we stayed in a town that we could get to by train, but there were a few places nearby that we needed to get taxis for. On one day, we had a taxi driver with the thickest Skye accent you can imagine while still being understandable. He was clearly a taxi driver for the opportunity to chat with people, he had a blast just rambling off stories for us, and we enjoyed him quite a bit. On the ride back later that day, we had a different driver, who was clearly a taxi driver for the driving. Only our presence in the car was keeping him from going 20 or 30 over on the narrow winding roads of the Scottish countryside, and I kind of wanted him to let loose.
A cabbie on the Isle of Skye or other parts of the highlands would be pretty cool.
As far as accents go, the Skye accent has nothing on the Uist accent, especially now that Skye is absolutely overrun with tourists. Many years ago I had a 6 month assignment in Glasgow and worked with a guy from Uist. Even other Scottish co-workers had a hard time understanding him.
Gosh, Even less understandable than a Glasgow accent?
My oldest son is a transfer agent for a big company that rents box trucks… He basically transfers vehicles and trailers between locations to address demand as well as to their service bays.
He works full time and is home every night. He tells me it beats the pants off being a delivery driver or rideshare operator.
He rarely has to deal with people other than his boss and the dispatch team.
When I told him that he’s a living NPC, he first started to get angry, but then broke into serious laughter when he realized that I’m right and that he wants to own his NPC status.
“Living NPC” – perfect.
I do not know about best but I have a list of driving jobs I will look at once I retire.
Lot runner/dealership shuttle
hotel airport shuttle
Parking lot shuttle driver
Etc.
Those are not great but they would get me out of the house.
Not mine, that’s for damn sure. I’m in building materials, drive 5,000-6,000 miles a month calling on customers and prospects. In a RAM 1500 Classic, which, at least I’m not running a personal car into the ground anymore, but its pretty terrible to drive, handles like garbage, rides almost as bad, and has a terrible seat
Spotting semitrailers at a Postal Service mail processing facility. Most traffic was professional drivers, snow and ice didn’t matter much ’cause going slow anyway, even jockeyed trailers at an indoor loading dock for awhile. Got outa the truck several times an hour to check with the workers on the dock, etc.. so no long haul boredom and loneliness.
Not sure if this counts, but any salaried or paid-by-the-hour job that involves driving.
I’ve never been so relaxed behind the wheel as when I worked as an arborist.
Nothing like sitting in bumper to bumper Toronto traffic, getting paid, watching the sun rise over the skyline across Humber bay. We’re enjoying some lattes and classical music on the radio, while my second climber reads the Globe editorials beside me.
Maybe it’s the fact you’re headed to take down a 90ft oak tree overhanging a ravine that just makes you appreciate that peaceful drive, rush hour traffic be dammed.
On your way home, exhausted but triumphant- covered in saw dust and smelling of two stroke exhaust- you take the scenic route down city streets, listening to music and enjoying the sights and sounds of the city.
Some automotive YouTube personalities seem to have pretty cool “driving” jobs, buy or build something interesting, hoon it around for a bit, sell or distroy it, rinse and repeat.
Also being a development engineer for performance cars seems like it would be pretty cool too. Not only do you get to drive cars in anger, you get to have a hand in how those cars subjectivity feel. Sometimes you might get to do something really cool. See the Chevy engineers that set the Ring records.
Over the summers, I worked for a construction company that worked all over the state of AZ. I was their delivery driver for small equipment as I didn’t have a CDL. The largest truck I drove was a stake bed with split axel. They would send me all over the state to deliver stuff to job sites. Some areas where pretty blaaa, like Yuma. There were a lot of cool areas up north like in the Payson area and Pinetop area.
When I was a senior in high school, I finished classes by noon time. I’d eat at school and go to my part time job delivering office supplies all over Northern Virginia, and now and then into DC and Maryland. As a 17 year old, that old Econoline van with the engine between the front seats was a lot of fun to drive. I made all of $1.50 an hour and loved it.
My last big boy real job-job paid position was as an employee of Uncle Sam. Swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and everything (damn fool that I was… turns out there are no backsies! Crap!)
Said job was with the Census, for several months as an enumerator for the big 2020 shebang. And then a coupla years later, working for that same massive outfit on their ongoing Current Population Survey, whence most all of the employment numbers come (bet most of you didn’t know that.)
Said work required wheels. Lotta short-trek drivin’, just for those 3-4 hour shifts. It was all my disabled ass coujld do, but I enjoyed the challenge, even though the pay (of course) is kind of an insulting joke.
Learned a hell of a lot about my fellow residents, all classes, from the gated McMansion estates to literal dirt-road mobile homes. Came to find that most people are pretty damn great and want to help when they can.
Only $.51/mile, but my elderly G35 was paid off.
Yes, it sucked down petrol like it was a renewable resource, so I was probably only coming out slightly ahead on that end of deal.
I do wish I could’ve kept that last gig, but it turns out my immune system is garbage (long story) and my oncologist came the closest to scolding me over my desire to return to work she’s ever done.
I’m not trying to brag or anything, but being a service agent for a rental car place was pretty awesome as a young gearhead.
It offered constant exposure to brand new cars, which in my case the best Chrysler/Dodge had to offer from 1998-2000, as well as a sprinkling of Mitsubishi products, AND Ford Crown Vics (because there was no Chrysler ‘full size car’ available at the time). It was like being an auto journalist, without the mandatory article word counts.
I also got to ferry around customers to and from their final destinations, which was awesome – paid to drive around, and half of the time it was by myself. We also had to pick customers up at the airport in a huge Ford shuttle bus with the 6.8L V10 – a great way to earn cash tips!
I did absolutely terrible, awful, reprehensible things with the rental cars, too. The Crown Vics taught me about the TC OFF light and power braking.
I discovered that there was absolutely nothing that prevented you from pulling the parking brake on a Dodge Neon with 8 miles on it at 90+ mph.
All of the Dodge Durangos we got were SLT trim (with the 5.9 Magnum) and quite impressive, including their ability to scale huge mountains of snow and remain there for weeks because we couldn’t get it back down.
I also got air that would make Shaun White blush in a Mitsubishi Galant, and drove an Eclipse Spyder through a sleet storm with the top down.
I’ve also hit a bridge expansion gap in a Dodge Ram 3500 15-passenger van at 110 mph; puckering doesn’t even begin to explain what my asshole did at that moment.
I should be dead, and don’t ever, EVER buy an ex-rental. What you think a customer does to them pales to what the employees do to them.
The statute of limitations has run out, but I’ll confess to similar hooning as a dealership car runner- We treated customer cars with a smidgen of respect, but rentals were race cars for us!
Local delivery for any parts store.
There’s a reason so many chill old dudes do the job. There’s no strict schedule, and you usually have a circuit of regulars who you shoot the shit with.
It’s a stellar way to earn cash while also staying social.
I did it for a few days back in my early 20s, when our delivery drivers both went out sick, and they pulled us from the shop floor based on lowest seniority.
It was so low stress, that I actually went stir-crazy and worked 6 hours of the evening shift when I got back to base.
But, the older I get, the more appealing it is. I was wound like a spring back then.
Nice. An older parts runner (O’Reilly I think) often comes by when I’m at my local mechanic and always enjoys a pleasant banter.
They often see the people at these shops weekly, if not daily. It’s a great retirement gig if you like talking to people and otherwise don’t get out much.
Not sure about best, but coolest?
“…I don’t sit in with you while you’re running it down. I don’t carry a gun. I drive.”
Edit – or for the purist: “my kinda work is hard to come by.” “It depends on where you look.” “It depends on who you are.”
I enjoyed my 4 months as a UPS seasonal driver. I had a normal route and did about 120 stops per day.
Walked about 10 miles a day, dropped 15 lbs, was outside which was sometimes nice / sometimes bad.
$28 / hour and that was more than 10 years ago.
I did enjoy delivering pizza back in the day. I also had a stint delivering for a chinese place which was even better because of the colorful crew that worked there. My favorite was a guy from England who came over on a student visa that had expired and was ashing dishes for under-the-table pay.
Best driving job? WRC driver
oh hell yeah, this would be a blast
I think Timo would disagree.
Timo’s the codriver, though. Different job.
I drove tow trucks for a while, and it was actually pretty cool. I would think delivering pizzas or driving for Uber would be monotonous, but every call in a wrecker is unique in its own way.
After the dot-com bubble imploded in the early naughties I found myself working as a courier (a surprisingly large number of couriers I met were out of work IT guys) for a few years. I drove for 8-10 hours a day M-F and put 50K+ a year on my car during that time. Yep, on MY car, we were all 1099 contractors with no benefits and paid entirely by commission for the runs we did. There were parts of the job that I miss, I truly enjoyed bombing around town all day long as quickly as I could and I always volunteered for any runs that went out of town (up to 3-4 hours away).
The more runs you did the more $$ you made so the trick was to keep the dispatcher impressed. I never burned a run and got everything down before the courthouses closed but more importantly I had them convinced that I was the fastest driver they had. Any time I had to pull up to the office I’d drive like a complete asshole sliding sideways into parking spaces, if I saw another driver out on the streets I’d blow pass them with a quick beepbeep, and anytime the dispatcher called me I’d roll down the windows and downshift so it sounded like I was driving like a bat out of hell.
Part of that was an act but I’ve always been a spirited driver so most of it came naturally. I’d try not to frighten or piss off other drivers as much as possible but anytime I could I’d dive into turns with all 4 tires complaining.
One of my summer jobs while in college was delivering flowers. I enjoyed tooling around in an air-conditioned Malibu wagon all day. The best part was delivering flowers to women, where their reactions were everywhere. Some were reduced to joyful tears while others threw them in their trash can by their desk. Some even thought that I was the one giving them, like I was fulfilling an erotic fantasy. The not so entertaining times were when I delivered to people in hospitals, then delivering for the same folks at funeral homes a few days later.
I did that seasonally, working the Big Flower holidays! I was paid per delivery and was able to load up my 1964 Ford Van with all the big routes!
While not a driving job per se, my job as an engineer allows me to use my custom-built velomobiles to visit job sites, and I get paid the standard IRS vehicle mileage rate. They cost almost nothing to operate.
I think being a race car driver would be the best job possible. Get paid big bucks to hoon? I’m on board with that.
That’s gotta be the most peak “engineer succeeding at life” story I’ve ever head of lmao.
Tourbus driver for the Swedish bikini team.
Don’t worry, we’ll catch our break too. Just have to keep our eyes open.
Sorry, pizza delivery is the best. Having a car that smells like pepperoni and cheese is the dream!
Working as the original Top Gear cast sounds like a dream job to me, record yourself doing ridiculous tests and talk about cars, entretain a lot of people, fly all around different regions to drive somewhere else that a lot of people doesnt get to experience, sounds like a dream.
I’ll echo what @Rad Barchetta said, that was my dream job as a kid! More realistically, the folks who deliver rich folks’ cars up and down the coast to their summer/winter homes sounds like a very fun gig. Endless road trips in someone else’s fancy car? A little stressful, but undoubtably fun
The folks who get to test drive a bunch of cars and then go write about it on the internet seem pretty lucky to me.
Jason Camissa certainly has one of the best jobs in the world, track testing the peak of automotive engineering past and present, and making videos and podcasts talking about it. It’s peak employment, and peak automotive content.
I’d hate to talk to the camera that much, I think Randy has the better job.
I always thought I’d be terrible at old Top Gear.
“I’m driving a Ferrari woo hoo!”
“I’m driving a McLaren woo hoo!”
Pros: Neat cars! All the time! Plus, you can hold companies that build hot garbage accountable for goofing it up, which is pretty rewarding.
Cons: Everything is work, and even more so on the enthusiast side, and way more so if you have to produce your own photos and video. Build something neat? Work. Race the car? Work. Errands in a test car? Work. Have something go fubar in the test car when you just want to get a damn coffee? Oops, have to write about that later. Work. Driving fast because you really have to poop and notice hey, the handling kinda stinks in this specific way? Guess I’ll log that while dropping a log. Work.
Also, screens. My gosh, I hate touchscreens. Capacitive-touch controls are like Screens Lite and can go straight to hell, too.
(More pros than cons, all things considered. I really, really hate touchscreens, though. Crappy 2020s UI design should be considered an occupational hazard.)
That’s a good point. Nothing ruins a hobby like turning it into a job. I think I’d rather keep driving as a thing I enjoy, not something I have to do for a living.
Thanks for doing what you do so I don’t have to!
Yeeeeeah. I’ve been a lot happier pivoting over to the regular road car beat since I can still satisfy that need to call out nonsense and use my need to hoon somewhat, but I can do a hobby and go to events and not feel like I have to write about them.
The more collaborative roles out there where you can split responsibilities are the better ones, though. I do kinda envy the folks who can land a “Top Gear”-type host role since it’s another one where a lot of the work is distributed among a number of specialized roles (camera operators, writers, editors, etc., etc.), freeing up more free time to run away and do other stuff, but I don’t think I have the personality for that, haha.