Trucking: Just a job or a Lifestyle
It’s 0500, the moon is shining above you in a starry sky as you ease onto the interstate. You bring your rig up to speed, and reach for the CB mike to ask for a bear report. By the days end, you will have dealt with traffic jams, stupid 4-wheelers cutting you off, lumper’s, shippers and receivers, truck stops that aren’t really truck stops any more, the fact that you are going to have a problem finding a parking spot when it is time to stop for the night, and the loneliness that comes from being away from home for days or weeks and your family and friends. You take a shower, go to sleep or wake up in a different city every day.
No one will argue that being a truck driver is anything but a hard life and that it takes the right kind of person to do it and be successful. But is it just a job or is it a life style?
You can watch the sunrise in the east and a few days later, watch it set in the west. You can drive through the national Forrest in the summer and enjoy the beauty of the lush green leaves on the trees. Or you can ride through the painted dessert and marvel at all the rich colors of the land. You can watch the wind blowing through a field of corn or wheat in the mid-west in the morning and be in awe of the massive expanse of the Rocky Mountains in the evening. You can watch the waves crash on a shandy beach as you drive along the coast in your shorts one day and the next watch the snow fall as it gently comes to rest on the hood of your truck as you reach for a heavy coat so you can get out and to fuel it.
Websters defines ”lifestyle” as “the typical way of life of an individual, group, or culture”. By that definition, trucking is a lifestyle. But there is also an attitude and a passion that goes along with it. When I write or tell stories from my experiences of the road and being a truck driver, I call the cab of my truck, “My office with a ever changing view”. For me that is what it is. I have driven an 18 wheeler in all lower 48 states and parts of Canada, Iraq, and Kuwait. (Yes, even in Iraq, I viewed it the same way.)
Yes, being a truck driver is a job, but to do that job, you have to be willing to live a certain lifestyle. All the things I have touched on above are just a small portion of what a truckers life is like on the road. There is so much more to it. For me, it s a passion. Truckers feed America, cloth America, put a roof over America’s head, and when behind the wheel, controlling 80,000 pounds of freight and steel, we hold Americas life in our hands. The decisions we make while doing our “job” can be the deciding factor in someone else’s life. Will daddy or mommy make it home from work today? Will you have milk for your cereal in the morning? Will you have gas for your car so you can get back and forth to work? Will you have the shingles for your house after high winds from a hurricane has ripped them from your roof? Will you have a coat to protect you from the cold in the winter? Will your tree have presents under it for your children on Christmas morning? Will our military have the ships, tanks, hummers and artillery that they need to protect our Country, our freedoms, and the American way of life?
The old saying that “without trucks, America stops” is true, freight trains can only carry it so far. A truck has to get it to the store. Behind the wheel of that truck is a man or woman that is willing to live the nomadic lifestyle that it takes to keep this country’s heart beating. We eat, sleep, breath, and live the roads of America. We miss holidays, birthdays and anniversaries hauling America what they need to survive.
So is trucking just a job, like any other job?
Or is it a way of life…… a lifestyle that means so much more to us and to our Country?
You tell me!!
