Money-Saving Suggestions

[IvebnEvryWr,Man]

Please post suggestions on what you do to try and save money while on the road!

My husband drives OTR from Sunday-Friday. We spend over $100 a week at the grocery store for groceries for at home, PLUS he uses at least $100 a week for on-the-road food! Since none of his food cost is reimbursed by his company(), this is really killing our bank account!

What do the rest of you do?

[Cerberus]

Tha is just the trucking is now. When i first started it would only cost me about 50$-60$ a week to eat. When i was last out there i noticed it is more around the 130$ to 140$ range now. And i even carry a plug in cooler, stop at wally world each week for truck groceries and drinks. The way i would do it out there would be, i either ate a really good breakfast or good dinner each day and just fast food it for the meal i didn't sit in a restaraunt for. For lunch i would just eat sandwichs or use truckstop microwaves to heat something up out of the truck. Being in a truck and having a household to take care of a family back home is like running 2 households. Back in the day when there was good money to be made it was easy to do. Now with the combination of the economy and the flood of new drivers put in with the lack of freight, people are falling fast. He might want to look into LTL and foodservice driving jobs. At least that would put the money he spends on the road back into the bank account and he would be home every night also or at least more so than now. If he does decide to go the other route , there are several good LTL and Foodservice guys here who can help him with some really good advice. Hope this helped you out.

[Rv833]

What I used to do when I ran otr was...

I am a soda drinker (diet caffine free) so I would buy a case and stick it in my cooler with ice. Each day, I would find a Subway or some sort of fresh sandwich shop and buy a footlong. Have them cut it in half. Typically I would eat half about 9am then the other half after I shutdown for the day. Bring condiments from home to keep sandwich fresher.

Snickers or granola bars are a quick pick me up if you find your running low on energy.
refill on ice and other essentials during the week at Wally world.

If there are no health issues -- those generic cup of soups at Walmart are like 30 cents and can make up 1 meal a day. I wont do more than that because of thier high sodium content.

1 case of Soda $6.50 (4 per day for 6 days) Water free almost anywhere

6 Sub sandwiches $42.00

1 bag of Ice
granola or snickers $10 if not less
Cup of soups

Under $60 for the week

[Haus-Kat]

Could any truckers suggest where to buy a decent small refrigerator or suggest what brand we should buy? My husband is a truck driver and has tried to keep food costs down by buying a small refrigerator for his truck and taking food with him so he doesn't have to buy so much take-out food but every small refrigerator he has purchased had broken down within a month! He bought a Haier brand small refrigerator at Walmart and two large-size plug-in Coolers (I don't recall where he bought them). I think they were Igloo brand. They both broke down swiftly as well. I thought they might have broken because they were really made for people to buy for like college dorm rooms and such and not meant to be kept in a truck and that maybe the internal parts got loosened or something from the vibrations of being in a constantly moving vehicle. I'm wondering if there are small-sized refrigerators that are made especially to be kept in trucks or RV campers that would be more rugged and last longer.

[Gonfercoffee]

At a hundred dollars a week for the driver he's pretty much got it down to bare bones now

[Cerberus_Kelpie]

Whatever one eats, it usually warms up when it gets to where it's going.
Cold food on a cold day doesn't mean one will remain cold nor does hot food on a hot day keep one hot.

I'll buy 50-80 bucks of food then stock the truck BEFORE I leave the yard.
I generally buy canned food as in Noodles stuff, meats (not spam or related garbage), tuna, other canned things like Fruits and Veggies.
I'll take a loaf or two of Bread and keep it under the Bunk for cooling purposes.
I'll have 3-6 gallons of Water which lasts longer w/o a Coffee maker.

When I cleaned out the last OTR truck I was in (in September '08) I still had about 30 pounds of canned goods from the many stocking maneuvers over 2 years.

Truck SLOPS anymore are not worth the hassle of eating at because they all have basically the same offerings, taste, service, prices and they're only getting WORSE.
---
If one cannot BUY FOOD BEFORE LEAVING the house to take with on the road, one is either financially independent or foolish.
If one can plan a trip from pickup to delivery, why cannot one plan on food needs as well??

...and there are some that still wonder why there are such out of shape truckers around this country...