Originally Posted by
saab2000
For my first two years at Southwest I drove from GRR to MDW. It was 186 miles from my house to the employee parking lot. As mentioned, drives like this get old quickly. I bid AM trips so I generally had to come in the day before and to avoid the worst traffic I usually wanted to arrive by 4 PM, at the latest. I used the usual MDW crew hotel. Nothing fancy but not awful either.
I normally left by 1 PM and with the 1 hour time change I got in between 3 PM and 4 PM. Half a day shot and $86 on the hotel and half a tank of gas. Plus the general wear and tear on the car associated with a lot of miles.
I decided to move to domicile and couldn't be generally happier with my decision. My friends are back in GRR unfortunately but honestly, I barely saw them anyway with the crappy commute.
I try to get trips that finish early just because I like them and sometimes I had a trip with just one leg back from the east coast, finishing by like 7AM. There were times I got home by noon with the 1-hour time change loss but on normal days I'd get home late in the afternoon and sometimes early evening. Again, half a tank of gas gone, half a day gone and another 186 miles of tire and brake wear, as well as the stress of drive, which is loaded with heavy truck traffic for about 80 miles of the trip.
Folks told me I'd regret my decision and that I was an idiot to move to Illinois but I have zero regrets. Whatever extra I pay in cost of living is easily negated by not paying a minimum of $500/month in commuting costs and probably way more than that in the real world. I have more days at home now and like living here. The same folks told me I'd hate living in Illinois. They were quite wrong.
I won't tell anyone where they should live. We all have to make our own decisions. But my decision to move about 35 minutes from MDW couldn't have been more right for me. I may live in domicile at another domicile when upgrade time comes but I'll never be a regular commuter again. Maybe temporarily, but never permanently.
One note: Even though I diss my 186 mile former drive, it was still better than flying. Other than traffic and those driving vagaries, I controlled my own get-home destiny and there's something to be said for that.
Real cost of commuting is not a tank of gas and a $80 hotel bill. It's TAFB vs TAFHome that matters. You spent about 18 hours per trip getting back and forth to work (1pm for a 5am show, and a 3 hour drive on the backend). With trip rigs that means missing out on 5 hours of pay compared to living on the employee lot, or at least 4 hours of pay for living within a reasonable distance. 4 trips per month, 10 months er year (vacay, training, sick) is at least 150 hours of missed pay (before HOT/SNOT missed opportunities). So about $30K for an FO, $45K for a CA per year, more than 2 million based on a 30 year career. That said, I commute, by air, and it is worth it to me to live where I do.