I don't know what your life changing experience was, nor do I need to know.
I don't need to slam you hard as I expect you've probably done that yourself more than once.
Life changing events can run the gamut from suddenly becoming a care taker for a family member to facing the consequences for poor decision making. If it was the former, you have my sympathy, if it was the latter, feel free to slam yourself again.
Few line drivers would have had the opportunity to go local on short notice. If I were in that position 13 years ago, my choices would have been take a leave of absence or quit. I'm not sure if FMLA was an option then.
I don't know if my yard is atypical or not, but my yard has several 20 year drivers that will never be able to do better than a PM shuttle. And, that is 20 years on the road board uninterupted. A new tractor in my yard is anything with less than 500,000 miles on it.
Having said this, I hope that you can see that one board would enable people to be job vultures, waiting to swoop in and grab that gravy run while bypassing all the BS that long time roadies have dealt with waiting for their shot at the gravy.