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My husband was an OTR truck driver, but now he's in Afghanistan

Karleen - posted on 11/02/2009 ( 3 moms have responded )

I'm new to the group...So hello to everyone!
My husband was an OTR truck driver for many years. Before that he worked over the road laying gas pipeline...so he's been gone from day 1.
I remember the days he was OTR, only home on weekends & sometimes it was every other weekend. Get home Friday night leave Sunday so he could have the load there by 6am Monday morning. If he had to go to CA, then he left after he washed his clothes. We live in Illinois.
We have 3 girls: Olivia 9, Kallie 7, & Amelia 5. The two older ones remember when daddy was a truck driver, but Amelia doesn't. When Amelia was 4 months old my husband went to work for Haliburton/KBR which took him to Baghdad, Iraq. He drove runs base to base delivering ice to our soldiers & anything else they needed. He was there for 3 years. The last year was a change, he got a job in the office and was over about 40 truck drivers. May of 2008 he took a job with a different company and moved to Afghanistan. There he was incharge of destroying military equipment. DRMO is what they call it. 1 1/2 years later he's still there. He'll be home for R&R tomorrow....for 14 whole days. He has been home other times....he's home 2 times a year. One of those visits is for 14 days the other for 28. They are allowd to come home 2weeks every 4 months with 28 days home the day you started. As of Nov 1st he will be promoted to site manager and have to move back to Iraq.
He can come home anytime he wants to, but finding a job where he can be home during the week is hard. To us it makes no sense to come home and take an OTR truck driving job where he'll be gone all week and maybe home every other weekend for as little as 48 hours.
Sometimes you wonder if this is the right thing or not...

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Melissa - posted on 03/20/2013

My husband is the OTR Truck Driver as well, awesome thats your hubby is serving our military the way he does! My hubby has always worked and been home every night till now...... he started driving about 5 months ago, and he has only been home 3 times, just for 3 days , once he was gone for 2 months! Its been very hard on my daughters, so he put in for time off, then got a new job, where he started today! He is suppose to be home every week for 2 days, I pray their not lying to him about that! I can feel your pain, and its hard to Know if your doing the right thing in that type of situation, I will keep you and your family in my prayers!

Janet - posted on 11/06/2009

Thank you for your husband's service to our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. You have also made a very big sacrifice for our troops to be able to get the supplies they need. My husband has been deployed twice in the past 4 years to Iraq with the Army Reserve. Do your best to support a relationship between your children and their dad, whatever that looks like. Email, video conferences, care packages - actions often speak louder than words. I hope that your husband does his part in this relationship as it is a two way street. Try to parent together and tell the children that there are decisions you make only after consulting with their dad. Also have dad provide the parenting role without you at times. I have found that if the kids see dad saying "yes" or "no" to requests they see him as a parent much more often instead of a visitor. When we are single parents so much of the time it is easy to just do it all ourselves, even if that gives the message that daddy doesn't really have a role. I have found this reduces the stress for me too. Sometimes I have to get really insistent to my husband to step up as he lives in such a different world and that gets frustrating, but I keep trying.

Sheri - posted on 11/02/2009

Hi Karleen, I know what you're saying, "if it would be worth it?" my husband was trucking OTR for 6-9 weeks at a time. We have 4 kids ranging from 19-6 years old. I told him that I couldn't take that any more. So he traded for a different load. Now he's home every week, but some times it's for only 24 hours. My kids are in school and I work in a school too,so half of that time we aren't even around to see him. I'm not sure there's a perfect solution. On the bright side the trucking industry is perking up, but with that is the fuel prices. We own our own truck and trailer but that can bring along with it more responsibilities. My husband has been trucking for almost 15 years. He loves what he does but hates missing out on so much of the kids' lives. It's hard. Good luck!