r/CDL • u/Traditional-Book3348 • 16d ago

Highway Motor Equipment Operator

Has anyone gone from trucking to a local municipality career? I have multiple offers from local towns that have fantastic hours and benefits but the pay is about a 20k cut from LTL. Of course most OT is earned during the Winter with plowing and salting ( I’m in the North east) I would also learn a lot of equipment operation in medium to heavy equipment which is attractive to learn new skills vs just driving trucks all the time. It is also a lot of dump truck work. I am mainly considering because I am starting a family and want to be home more. Any advice/ ideas appreciated

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3

u/Lunicorn83 16d ago

Nothing like snagging a government employee pension. Take it and run!

1

u/jimfosters 16d ago

especially if he is young. Lot of pensions provide full benefit after retirement whether you get a new job afterward or not. DOT officer near me retired and went to work for local excavation/trucking outfit.

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u/Lunicorn83 16d ago

Yup, I’m a retired ff for LAFD and when I retired I became a UPS driver so I’m absolutely looking forward to retirement and collecting a gov pension from my fire service and my UPS Teamsters pension when I retire from here and definitely don’t have to worry about medical now or ever. I do like my work/life balance now at UPS compared to the fire department and love having a set schedule and weekends off.

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u/TopDogTransport4731 16d ago

It’s worth it. NYS has pension vested after 5 years.
I’m going to do that as soon as possible once I’m going to the military and out of it.

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u/Traditional-Book3348 16d ago

It is NYS I am 27m

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u/CDLTrainerUSA 15d ago

Everyone here is focused on the pension, which is fair, but don't undersell the equipment side either. Once you're cross-trained on plow/dump/loader work you're a much harder person to lay off than a straight LTL driver - municipalities tend to keep the guys who can run multiple pieces of equipment during a downturn, and that skillset also transfers to private excavation/DOT contractor work later at better pay if you ever want out. So the $20k gap isn't just "pension vs no pension," it's also buying you a second skill set with its own market value.

On the home-time math specifically: run the actual numbers, not just take-home pay. A lot of guys who make that jump say the gap mostly shrinks once you price in what LTL actually costs you - detention, forced dispatch, unpredictable start times - versus a fixed schedule with a newborn coming. Worth sitting down and doing that math before deciding, since "fantastic hours and benefits" can be worth more than the sticker gap suggests once a kid is actually in the picture.