As someone who used to travel about 75% of my time for a living (I audited law firms), I can say honestly that unless you're in a situation where you're put up in good hotels, given a good expense account (e. g. one that's realistic) and you don't have too much junk to carry, being a road warrior stinks.
Consider -
* you carry everything on your back, like a snail. Even if your luggage is on wheels, inevitably you will need to lift it into the trunk of a rental car or cab, onto your hotel room bed, etc. It took a very long time to get rid of the calluses on my left hand (I got them holding a briefcase. On my right shoulder, I had the laptop and my purse. In either hand - I used to switch - I'd hold the handle for my rolling suitcase).
* the food is unfamiliar and you can't possibly diet in any meaningful manner. The only universal diet item is coffee.
* hotels are unpredictable. Some are good, some aren't, and many do not have meaningful amenities (who needs an outdoor pool when it's 20 degrees outside? Who needs a fireplace in the room if it's not going to be used?).
* hotels also are not always well-suited for the use of technology. Things have hopefully changed a bit, but when I was on the go, everything was dial-up, and it was often a pain to find an outlet. I used to carry both a plug extension cord and a phone extension cord. Oh yeah, I also carried a three-to-two adaptor. If you travel internationally, you'll also need a bunch of international power adaptors - laptop batteries will not last long enough for you to use only them. Eventually you will have to plug into a wall somewhere.
* travel is filled with delays and inconveniences. It's worse now than it was when I travelled. But even then, there were delays, bad food, dingy airports and long stretches of boredom. Because of all of this, I used to do my best to find places to plug in my laptop and work. And yeah, that means 50 hour weeks. Oh yeah, I was never paid for overtime (exempt employee) - so welcome to doing stuff for the company for free.
* it killed my weekends. Because it's more professional to start work on Monday mornings at 9 AM, rather than Mondays in the late afternoon, I used to either leave super-early on Monday or late on Sunday. Again, free work time handed over to the company. Either way, too, you've got the trip hanging over your head all weekend.
* it will wreak havoc with your relationships. Mr. J and I found it was tough to reconnect after I'd been away for several days. I was exhausted and had a mountain of laundry. He was tired of doing all of the work around the house and hadn't had anything more homemade to eat than cans of soup. How do you reconnect when all you do is travel, think about travelling and try to unwind from travelling? This schedule killed the marriage of one of my colleagues and was doing damage to that of another colleague. As for us, we survived because I was switched to a different kind of job.
* economizing on company money is a pain and often unrealistic. We were given $25/day for food. Yep, that was even for Manhattan, DC and other places where they'd laugh at that kind of money. Plus you were required to stay in cheap hotels, so many of them didn't include breakfast. More free stuff for the company - anything over the allocated expense account came out of my pocket (yes, I could have claimed that, but I was damned if I did that, as my performance reviews were partly based on me spending as little expense money as possible. This is hard to do when you handle a territory that includes New York City, Albany, DC, Newark, Trenton, Wilmington, Richmond and Charlotte).
I would never, ever go back to a road warrior job. Even if it was under good circumstances and all of the conditions I've mentioned above were satisfied, there is no way I would ever, ever, ever go back to that life.
