Is it time to go?

I have been a transportation manager for 31 of the 37 years I have been in the transportation business. Over the years, I have enjoyed much of the time I've spent working in both the railroad and trucking industries.  I have put much of my personal energies into my work.  I live and breath transportation.  In the few years of my professional life that I spent outside of transportation, I have yearned to return, and I have.  However, now I wonder if my energies are appreciated or even wanted.  

When I began my love of transportation, all one had to do to be noticed and therefore improve one's position was work hard, learn everything possible about one's current position and then learn the next position even before being offered a promotion.  Hard work payed off.  I progressed from lowly switchman to a prestigious line management position.  In that environment I learned that the best way to lead a force was to pull my team along, coaching when necessary, teaching when needed and encouraging at every step of the way.  As a result of those efforts, work place injuries were reduced, productivity was increased, revenues improved, and morale was high.  

Along came the time, however, when those efforts were not appreciated.  The corporate moguls turned a corner and wanted those of us in the field to work hard to "lie in wait" for employees to err and then hold hearings to determine that these employees should be sacked.  When management style went from coaching,teaching, and leading to pushing, testing and immoral "gotcha" moments, I elected to terminate my relationship with the railroad I loved.  I cannot justify, in my own mind, that kind of behavior.  I still have to live with myself.  I have to look at myself in the mirror each day.  I tendered my resignation and left my position.

I began my love of trucking in much the same mind as I began my railroad career.  I again wanted to begin my trucking career at the bottom.  I went back to school and learned how to be a truck driver.  I found a fledgling company, and I drove truck for a couple of years.  Then I was asked to come into the office and take over a portion of the company that needed strengthening.  It was another challenge that I enjoyed.  I learned much and I hope that I have contributed much.  I left the trucking industry for a few years to chase a dream.  I learned, though, that I am a better truck driver than Insurance Salesman and I returned to the trucking company I loved.  

I still work for that same trucking company.  I love the owners, I love my co-workers, I enjoy doing what I do.  I ride for the brand, as I always have done.  I am fierce in my defense of my work, my subordinates, my peers, and my company.  So much so, in fact, that I was told yesterday that I have a "bad attitude".   We have changed management and management styles over the past year or so.  Again we are going  back to the style of leadership that causes me concern.  And so I am at a crossroads.  

I am of a mind to return to driving.  I love driving, but current regulations are such that it is difficult to want to do so.   Government seems anxious to drive transportation companies out of business. 

Some of my peers and family think I should not return to driving, but should hang in there and do whatever I need to do in the office, even if it violates the values I hold so dear.  

What should I do?  I invite your comments.