Vantaggi
Most of the time, they will try to get you home for the weekend or at least home with two full days off. Trucks come with bunk heaters, inverters, TVs and a small fridge. Newer Kenworths have auto start CDL training provided at in-house institute. Otr 21 day out, regional 5 days out.
Svantaggi
Good luck making more than 1500 miles a week as a southeast regional driver. You will do a lot of sitting. Went from running 1800-2200 miles a week through the summer to struggling to break 1500 miles from about October to January. Otherwise, I lived on protection pay of 880 a week before taxes. I blame the owners, Heartland Express. Trailers can be rough but I don't blame the techs, I blame the drivers for not doing there part in reporting damage or other service issues. Size differences in trucks. If you're otr, you get a typical high rise sleeper if you're regional, you practically get half a sleeper and a pull out drawer as a fridge instead of a typical mini fridge. Fuel solution once routed me to truck stops within a regional range. Before I quit, fuel solutions would only route me to the Heartland terminal in Atlanta or the Millis terminal in Cartersville regardless if I'm only 50 miles away or 187 miles away with 2/8-3/8 of a fuel left. Forgot to mention the regional trucks have roughly half the fuel capacity as the otr trucks.