You could call Carter Burnett’s career a turn-key operation.
When he turns the key in the ignition of the truck he drives, Carter is on the job, piloting a $250,000 piece of equipment carrying a payload likely worth a lot more and tracking an endless parade of variables to make sure he gets products where they need to be, when they need to be there.
It can be tiring and stressful, but Carter enjoys the independence that comes from not having a boss looking over his shoulder. Best of all, when he turns the key to shut off the engine, he leaves the job behind … unlike people who constantly worry about workplace responsibilities.
“Once I step down from the cab, I’m no longer at work,” he says.
Carter hadn’t always planned this career. When he left high school in Owensboro, Ken., he headed off to college because that’s what people said you needed to do to be successful. But that didn’t go the way he planned. After a while, he was back home working construction.
Then he got an unexpected opportunity: He could learn to drive trucks like his dad and grandad, for the company that employs his dad. Although he had never imagined following in his father’s footsteps, Carter was encouraged by the fact that his dad had made a rewarding quarter-century career out of driving a truck. And the company, Evansville’s JR’s Expedited Freight, was offering to pay for the training Carter needed to get a Commercial Driver’s License. In exchange, Carter signed a two-year contract.
That was about 18 months ago, so now you’ll find Carter on the road a few days each week, driving hundreds of miles at a time, usually between Henderson, Ky., and Virginia Beach, Va. It’s a job that requires sharp time-management skills and trustworthiness – after all, you’re in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and cargo – and you have to balance the time away from home with the freedom you get when you are home.
As unexpected as a career in the trucking industry was for Carter, he plans to stay, albeit not always on the road. He hopes someday he’ll find a role to play that keeps him closer to home, where he can be with family and spend more time tinkering with cars.
Regardless, though, he is confident he’ll consider himself a success, despite what he thought when he left high school.
“Success isn’t defined by what degrees you have and what colleges you went to,” Carter says. “Success is, ‘Am I doing something I enjoy?’ Because if I go home every day and hate what I’m doing, I’m not going to think I’m successful.”
