You’ve been sitting behind the wheel for a few weeks. What you want now is some home time with lots of room to spread out and relax. Several states in the Great Plains, the upper Rocky Mountain Region, and the Northwest U.S. offer all the room you could want! And if you like driving with limited traffic, jobs in these regions are ready and waiting. Consider placing Montana, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Nevada, and Utah on your truck driving home base wish list. Wide open spaces abound with low population densities and lots of ranchland. And if you’re worried about finding a job, there is high demand for truck drivers through each state, most of which have some of the lowest unemployment numbers in the U.S. You might haul everything from cattle to minerals to wind turbines. But if all that wide open space gives you an itch to move, you’ll find interstates with the highest speed limits in the country. Head to the highway, open up the throttle, and get some diesel pumping through your truck’s veins (all while driving safely, of course). North Dakota is another state where the pace of life is far slower than speed limits and wind speeds. So, hook onto a trailer full of wind energy, and see if you can reach your destination before it spoils!
Geographic Advantages
North Dakota’s location in the upper tier of states bordering Canada provides for international movement of freight and it is crossed by a major route between the Northwest Coast and Chicago. In recent years, technology allowing for the extraction of crude oil from sands has greatly increased North Dakota’s importance to the U.S. economy.
Bordering State/Countries
North Dakota is located in the upper tier of states bordering Canada to the north, South Dakota to the south, Minnesota to the east, and Montana to the west.
Products Moved by Trucks
Whether they are exported out of state, out of the country, or simply remain in the state for use in-state, according to the latest data from World’s Top Exports, the following are the primary products moved by truck drivers and industries offering truck driving jobs to those calling North Dakota home:
- Crude petroleum oils
- Light petroleum oils
- Corn
- Wheat
- Mechanical front-end shovel loaders
- Tractors (excluding track-laying)
- Track-laying tractors
- Ethanol (denatured)
- Saturated acyclic hydrocarbons
- Colza oilseed, rapeseed (low erucic acid)
North Dakota’s Highways
North Dakota interstates include only 2 major routes totaling 580 of the state’s over 177,000 lane miles of roadway. Interstates are as follows:
I-29 from South Dakota state line to Canada
I-94 from Montana state line to Minnesota state line
1 Auxiliary interstate highways
For more information on North Dakota and its truck driver jobs, visit: www.ndmca.org