...I will never go home. The truck will be my home. Will I go insane? Will being out full time off set some of the disadvantage of being a solo straight truck driver....
If you make the truck your home, it may offset some of the disadvantages of being a solo driver but it will also trigger a significant financial disadvantage that may lead you to reconsider your strategy. It has nothing to do with being solo or team but with taxes.
If you do not maintain a home other than your truck, you cannot take the very significant per diem tax deduction. I am not up on the current numbers as to what this deduction is worth each year. Perhaps another Open Forum member can provide them. You will want to find out what the value of the per diem deduction is to you and compare that with the cost of maintaining a home.
A year after we became expediters, Diane and I determined that we no longer wanted or needed the house we then owned. We were on the road almost all the time and it seemed that the only reason we were going home was to take care of the house. So we simplified our life, improved our finances and boosted our productivity by selling the house, our cars and most household goods.
At that point it would have been easy to make the truck our home but we set up another residence to preserve the per diem tax deduction.
Our official residence is now rented space in a relative's house. The rent is nominal but a contract exists and payments are regularly made to prove to the IRS that this is a bona fide residence for us. It is our permenant address which appears on our CDLs and to which our mail goes. We pay taxes in that state, county and township. We are registered to vote there.
For tax purposes, your home does not have to be a house but if it is a truck and only the truck, you lose a significant deduction. This may be a bigger issue for same-household teams than for solo drivers because each team member gets the deduction - one household, two deductions. A solo driver get the per diem deduction only for him or her self.
