Sunday, September 30, 2007
Driven to Succeed
Driven to Succeed: Trucker Country's Official Monthly Newsletter
January 26, 2007 Driven to Succeed: January 2007 Edition
Hello from the desk/steering wheel of Jim Purcell. I hope you had a great Christmas and holiday season. Happy new year!
For more information about the CB Radio, including CB Radio Basics, CB terminology, CB 10-codes, Trucker CB Radio Communication, and CB Radios and Accessories for sale, go to Trucker Country's CB Radio Center.
January 26, 2007 Driven to Succeed: January 2007 Edition
Hello from the desk/steering wheel of Jim Purcell. I hope you had a great Christmas and holiday season. Happy new year!
| For new and future truckers, Trucker Country has recently launched Get My CDL! The New Trucker Career Center. From there you can access the State Directory of CDL Resources and Truck Driving Schools. Also, there's free CDL Practice Tests to help you get ready to pass the official CDL tests and get licensed! Finally, there's "Trucking Made Easy" the Complete E-Series of guides I wrote and put together for anyone interested in becoming a trucker and succeeding at the trucking job and life on the road.
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This month I want to talk a little about effective CB Radio communication for truckers on the road.
I've heard many drivers say they don't use the CB Radio or prefer to keep it turned off unless they need to use it for information, directions, etc.
First, I agree that often times it's tough to listen to the nonsense that comes out of the CB and into your truck... the so-called "Sesame Street", infantile noise you hear, especially in the bigger truck stops. Sometimes you even hear it while driving down the road... rudeness, profanity, racism, you name it.
However, here's the point. You NEED to have a CB Radio in your truck and you NEED to keep it turned on. I'm writing this just minutes after having to swerve and just barely miss some lumber and drywall that was in the right lane of I-55, just south of St. Louis. There was another big truck in front of mine who should have told me what danger was approaching. (The driver also had to swerve at the last second, which means he should have been watching further down the road - but that's another subject for another time).
He should have said, "southbound, watch out for some debris in the right lane at mile marker #123". He also should have immediately moved over into the left lane if possible to both avoid the debris and to allow following vehicles to better see the road.
Bottom line, as you're driving down the road, keep your radio turned on. At the very least, keep the volume low enough to hear your stereo, but loud enough to hear important transmissions.
| Important Uses For Your CB Radio: 1. Knowing what the road is like ahead of you, including road construction, traffic, and weather conditions. And, of course, bear reports. For trip planning information and resources, go to The Trucker Country Trip Planning Center. 2. Passing the time while going down the road, etc. 3. Helping others (and yourself) keep alert, especially while driving at night. Notice that I didn't say help keep "awake". If you're getting tired, pull over at a truck stop or rest area and get some sleep. No load is worth risking your life or the life of others out there!
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I should mention this as well - Don't just listen to other drivers and gather information for yourself. Help out your fellow drivers and give them information which will help them stay safe and informed about the road ahead.
That's all for now. Drive safe out there!
Jim Purcell
President, Trucker Country
Hola Mexico!
9/17/2007
Stagecoach Cartage and Distribution, an El Paso-based trucking company, became the first U.S. trucker to haul a shipment across the U.S.-Mexico border. The truck went through the Nogales, Ariz. commercial border crossing at approximately 9 a.m. Friday on its way to Obregon, near Hermosillo, to deliver a load of plastic resin.
"Today is historic. We're giving U.S. trucking companies the opportunity to compete in a new market that they have never before been allowed to penetrate," said John H. Hill, FMCSA Administrator. "These opportunities will help reduce costs for American consumers and businesses while increasing trade efficiency at the border and maintaining safety on America's highways."
Thousands of Mexican commercial trucks operate every day in U.S. cities like San Diego and El Paso and last year made more than 4 million crossings into border commercial zones, which extend approximately 20-25 miles into the United States. U.S. commercial trucks, however, have never had the authority to operate in Mexico.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced the start of a cross-border trucking demonstration project that would expand current border operations to allow up to 100 U.S. trucking companies to operate in Mexico and up to 100 Mexican trucking companies to operate beyond commercial zones in the U.S.
Hill said every company, vehicle and driver participating in the program must pass a rigorous safety audit and inspection before being allowed to participate in the demonstration project.
Transportes Olympic, a Mexican trucking company based in Nuevo Leon, last week became the first Mexican carrier to operate beyond U.S. commercial border zones, as part of the demonstration project.
Also last week, the U.S. Senate voted to block funding for the test program to allow Mexican long-haul trucks to operate in the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement. That was followed a day later by a Senate vote on the Transportation Funding bill that contained the Byron Dorgan amendment to stop funding for the Mexican truck program.
Opponents of the border program include the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) and the Teamsters union.
Stagecoach Cartage and Distribution, an El Paso-based trucking company, became the first U.S. trucker to haul a shipment across the U.S.-Mexico border. The truck went through the Nogales, Ariz. commercial border crossing at approximately 9 a.m. Friday on its way to Obregon, near Hermosillo, to deliver a load of plastic resin.
"Today is historic. We're giving U.S. trucking companies the opportunity to compete in a new market that they have never before been allowed to penetrate," said John H. Hill, FMCSA Administrator. "These opportunities will help reduce costs for American consumers and businesses while increasing trade efficiency at the border and maintaining safety on America's highways."
Thousands of Mexican commercial trucks operate every day in U.S. cities like San Diego and El Paso and last year made more than 4 million crossings into border commercial zones, which extend approximately 20-25 miles into the United States. U.S. commercial trucks, however, have never had the authority to operate in Mexico.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced the start of a cross-border trucking demonstration project that would expand current border operations to allow up to 100 U.S. trucking companies to operate in Mexico and up to 100 Mexican trucking companies to operate beyond commercial zones in the U.S.
Hill said every company, vehicle and driver participating in the program must pass a rigorous safety audit and inspection before being allowed to participate in the demonstration project.
Transportes Olympic, a Mexican trucking company based in Nuevo Leon, last week became the first Mexican carrier to operate beyond U.S. commercial border zones, as part of the demonstration project.
Also last week, the U.S. Senate voted to block funding for the test program to allow Mexican long-haul trucks to operate in the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement. That was followed a day later by a Senate vote on the Transportation Funding bill that contained the Byron Dorgan amendment to stop funding for the Mexican truck program.
Opponents of the border program include the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) and the Teamsters union.
Ice Road Truckers
I've been hearing a lot about the History Channel's show 'Ice Road Truckers' and finally had a chance to watch it tonight. These men risk their lives to make $1000 a day bringing supplies to diamond mines in Canada's Northwest Territory. If you find yourself with a free Sunday night, check it out. History Channel, Sunday at 10:00 PM.
In the mean time, the link I included is to the show's minisite. They have some awesome videos on there that are three minutes or less and give a pretty good idea of the dangers involved.
In the mean time, the link I included is to the show's minisite. They have some awesome videos on there that are three minutes or less and give a pretty good idea of the dangers involved.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Sunday Herald
October 29, 2006
Haulier than thou;
REAL LIFE;
With a national shortage of truck drivers, the government's attention has shifted to finding jobs for the girls, and even though women currently only account for two per cent of truck drivers, they are shattering stereotypes in a male-dominated world with their passion for big lorries. Vicky Allan hits the open road to meet some of the growing band of female truckers
BYLINE: Vicky Allan
SECTION: MAGAZINE; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 2678 words
HIGHLIGHT: Photographs Kirsty Anderson
Left: Sue Chappelhow, in her 44-tonne articulated lorry which she drives daily from Penrith to Falkirk, says one of the reasons she got her truck driving licence was so she could drive her horses around, transporting them to various shows, and enabling her to enjoy her passion for riding
Above: Lorry driver Mick Munday, who stopped for the night at the Europa transport cafe, off the M74 near Lesmahagow, says the odd female truck driver is brilliant, but "the others shouldn't be behind the wheel"
Previous pages: Andrea Gardner, who is a truck driver for Bullett Express based in Bothwell, Lanarkshire, also talked her husband, previously a baker, into switching trades and taking up trucking for a living
Julie Farren, who works for the family business Farren's Freights, says her father was a truck driver, and she had never thought of doing anything else. She says, "It's always stuck in my head that this was what I wanted to do."
THIS is a man's world, even now. In the Europa Services near Lesmahagow, Mick Munday ploughs into a plate of chips, peas and gammon steak, smeared with mustard. His hair, a long silver sweep, looks as if it belongs cased inside a motorbike helmet.
Munday eyes me sceptically at first, then begins to tell his story. He likes strangers, he says, likes them better than people he knows well. I'm here to ask about female truckers, I tell him. What does he think of them? "The odd one is brilliant, but the others shouldn't be behind the wheel. They're useless some of them, but the good ones are very good. But I suppose that's the same with men. There's some arsehole men drivers as well."
Munday has been driving on and off for 39 years. He likes the lifestyle, the independence, the way you meet people briefly at a stop, hear their stories then get back in your truck and head on down the road. Most people's stories, he says, contain some tragedy. For a while he lived with a female trucker; they spent their weeks coming and going, only sharing time together on a Wednesday. "Handling the vehicle, she was brilliant, but her attitude on the road was disgraceful. It was, dare I say it, like a lot of women have got. They think you've got to make room for them all the time. She'd wrangle them out as good as anybody. But her idea was everybody else had to get out the way of her."
Only two per cent of the truck drivers in Scotland are women. This means that at any given time at a truck stop, it's unlikely you will come across a woman, unless she's dishing up chips behind the canteen counter. The punters will usually be male. In other words, the scene will be rather as it is at 4pm on this Wednesday, a smattering of men dotted across the sun-streaked grey formica tables, and a couple of women in white caps on food. A few tables away from Munday, a Welshman and two Aberdeenshire drivers discuss the matter of women in trucking.
"Live and let live, " says one of them. Another laughs. "I used to know a lady driver, " he says, "called Jo The Dyke. She was big, like. She used to knock all the men. She thumped them. She was a rum girl she was. I haven't seen her in a long time." The third smiles. "Some people say women shouldn't do the job, but I dare say, why not?" Meanwhile, at the canteen, the women tell us there have been a couple of women in during the past day, one at breakfast time sat at the back right-hand corner of the room on her own reading a book. The owner of Europa, Manio, says he has only talked to three or four in his years running the place. If there is any oestrogen here, it must be in the water.
It would be easy to assume, on an afternoon like this, that there were no women truckers out there. One driver gave me a guess-estimate that there are perhaps only one in 2000. But the fact is that they do exist and, with a current shortage in drivers, the government and logistics sector hope their numbers will soon increase. Over the last year, their target for recruitment has been women and, with the help of the Scottish Executive, Skills for Logistics set up a women-only training scheme. Here in Scotland, Anne Halliday is one of the instructors at Glasgow Training Group. She is evangelical in her recruitment of women to the cause.
"When I'm speaking to girls in the pub or when I'm at a party, or whatever it might be, I'm saying to these girls, try truck driving. They've got a rubbishy shop job and they're getting paid minimum wage and I say, 'As opposed to being hassled in a shop with some 17-year-old manager, you could be out in a truck, on your own, doing your own thing, and earning a really good wage'." She believes there is a simple reason why women do not consider the job: it does not cross their minds. "They just think of shop work, they think hairdressers. A mother is never going to say to her wee daughter, 'when you grow up maybe you'll be a truck driver'."
As a young girl, Halliday grew up watching Pigeon Street. Long- distance Clara, a female truck driver with wild, curling hair and an independent lifestyle was, for her, a kind of role model. A song from the show declared, 'Long-distance Clara drives a juggernaut/Way down the motorway to the busy port/Long-distance Clara - nothing's too far away/Picking up and dropping off, load after load'. It's surprising, perhaps, that more women didn't go on, under her spell, to get behind the wheel. "I really honestly believe, " Halliday says, "that in order to get girls to do it, it's just a matter of telling them that they can. I think girls still look at the trades and jobs like driving as a world that they're not part of."
Still, even Halliday would never have thought of it as a career if she hadn't trained in heavy goods driving through the Territorial Army. It is perhaps indicative of the narrowness of the industry's draw that most of those women working in it came to it through family connections. They are the daughters of truckers. Their brothers and sisters drove trucks.
They grew up with the idea that shifting a large truck was almost a normal life skill.
Parked up in a services in Bothwell, a nine-year-old girl sits high in the cab of a truck next to her father. It's her school holidays and he has taken her out for the day on the job. Andrea Gardner, a driver for Bullet Express, points out the girl. That could have been her about 17 years ago.
"I used to go out on the lorries with my dad. Summer holidays and things like that. I just loved it. I thought being in a big lorry, dead high up, was dead powerful. My dad took me everywhere, he took me up north. He says I would just play houses in the passenger seat and I'd eat all his sandwiches. You were king of the road because you were in this big thing."
When she got older, she went into haulage herself, as a transport manager at first, which she still does as part of her job now. Her enthusiasm was so great that she talked her husband, once a baker, into switching trades and trucking for a living. It was, however, only earlier this year that she gained her Class 2 licence and started driving herself.
Gardner is neither a tomboy nor a girly-girl. She wears immaculate false nails, painted with tropical palms, the souvenir of a Florida holiday, but also wears jeans and thick-soled boots. As a child, she played with Barbie dolls, not toy cars. "But I loved the powerful fact of my dad's lorry. I used to wash it for him at the weekend, get all the flies off the front of it. And I love the industry. I think you have to be really thick-skinned to work in transport; it's all banter, it's a laugh, it's a carry on, you've got to give as good as you get.
But it's a relaxed atmosphere. Obviously the language content can be a bit high, but it's water off a duck's back, nothing's personal."
Though her husband was behind this new career, her dad wasn't quite so sure. "I'm not saying my dad was not supportive. He said, 'It's not a job for a woman', because of all the heavy lifting and things involved. 'But, if you want to do it go out and prove everybody else wrong, do it.' And my mum, she was scared. 'Oh no, you're not going to drive one of those big things are you?' Again it's back to the male/female thing ... I'm a wee girl."
Gardner, like many of the women I talked to, sees one of the great advantages of HGV driving as a career as its flexibility. Though this seems improbable, given its image of long-haul trips stretching out for weeks at a time away from home, much of the short-distance work is compatible with family and other commitments. For Gardner, these are her twoyear-old daughter, who goes in daily to nursery from noon till 5pm after spending the morning with her mother. Both parents work full-time, but on different shifts, her husband finishing at 5pm, she around 8pm.
For Sue Chappelhow, the commitment is her horses, and just earlier in the year she came third in her class at the Horse Of The Year Show. A sporting career like this takes time and commitment. "I don't think I could have got a job to fit round my horses as well as this one. It's a job you can juggle if you've got children, split shifts, and night work. There are loads of jobs out there, not just long-haul, lots of different varieties of job."
I meet Chappelhow at the Falkirk Asda depot following her daily morning cake delivery. It's 11am on a Monday and she has been up since 5am, a relatively late start for her. Normally she wakes at 2am and is back home in Cumbria by now, ready for an afternoon with her horses.
Chappelhow is a trucker's girl - her father owns a tipping-truck company - but that's not the only reason she got her licence. She got it because she wanted to be able to drive her horses around, to transport them from show to show. The two HGV activities seem to blend together in her family. There had always been, when she was growing up, horses, tractors and trucks. Almost everyone in her family had a licence. Her mother had one; so did her aunt, and so it was natural that she did.
"My mum just started because she was helping dad out. You've got to bear in mind that when she started she would have been about 4ft 11ins and about size six - if that - a tiny minuscule person. But she used to get on fine. And then they didn't have power steering either. She used to literally have both hands on the steering wheel to haul it around." Like Gardner, Chappelhow has exquisitely filed French-polished nails, the result of skills picked up in her own previous training. Before trying her hand as a trucker, she took a beautician course in Northern Ireland. Now she sees no going back to that field. A convert to trucking, she says, only if she shatters both her legs will she give it up, she enjoys it too much - the lifestyle and the money are too good. "The money is much better than most jobs. My friends have been to university and they're struggling to get jobs. They are not even on half the wage I'm on and I feel sorry for them. Looking at my school year, there's a handful of us have got our own houses. I'm 24 and I've had my house 18 months now."
Both Chappelhow and Gardner say they have rarely had men be rude to them about their driving. There is, however, the occasional reaction of disbelief when they tell someone what they do. "The best one, " says Chappelhow, "is blokes if you're out and stuff. 'What do you do for a job?
Nah, you can't drive wagons.' They look at you and think you have to be 6ft God-knows-what and 6ft wide. It is going back to stereotyping and it's got to be banished. The only people who ever come out with comments about women not being able to drive trucks are men that are inadequate at the job. I've had it a couple of times but you just ignore it and think, well, how sad. It's them that have got the inferiority complex."
How does this all translate on the road? Twenty-year-old Julie Farren at Farren's Freights takes me out for a drive. She pulls off gently, unselfconsciously, and a clumsy driver myself, I admire her poise. She likes, she says, the power of being in the raised cab. Like Gardner, she was taken on summer holiday trips by her father, long-distance jobs to London, with treats like the pictures or a swim at the end of them. "I never really thought of doing anything else. It's always stuck in my head that this was what I wanted to do." Driving along, I watch the eyes of the drivers in the other trucks. It's hard to say if they look longer or harder than they might normally do. "When I'm out driving, " she says, "sometimes I can tell people are looking at me thinking, is that a woman?"
Perhaps the most interesting route to a trucking career is Halliday's.
Originally the boss of her own cleaning business, she made the jump from a female-dominated field to the male world of trucking. It wasn't an obvious one at first. When she first got her HGV licence through the Territorial Army, she didn't imagine she would ever use it outside the TA.
It seemed, simply a good security blanket and fallback, after all, "with a Class 1 or Class 2 licence, you're never going to be out of work". It was only several years later she was badly injured as a passenger in a truck accident in the TA, that she was forced to reconsider her work. She would do something that was easier on her injury than the cleaning business; she would, bizarrely given the cause of her accident, drive trucks for a living. "I think, in a way, it's kind of therapeutic. That's the worst thing that has happened to me in my life, that injury, caused by a truck accident. And now I'm doing something that I really enjoy and it's still within that sphere. It feels like a suitable pay-off."
Halliday, who has experienced two such contrasting fields of work, believes there is no real difference in aptitude of the genders to either job. "The best employee I ever had, for the cleaning business, was a man. He was by far the most thorough employee I had. And in terms of teaching women driving, I see no difference. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Some of the men are good, some of the men are bad. They say men are more spatially aware, but I don't know whether it's been proven. But on the other side of the coin, women are supposed to have peripheral vision. So who's the better driver? I think it's just down to the individual. I think honestly the reason more women aren't in trucks probably goes back to the time when there was no power steering."
In the whole of her time driving, she has never had a man ask her what a woman is doing driving a truck. "I don't know that men say that kind of thing, or if they do, they're the same kind of guys who would joke over fat people and people with beards." She recalls that when she did her licence at the TA, she did so at the same time as a man. He went on straight away to try and get a job in the industry, and hated it. The men, he said, would never help him out; they would just stand and laugh at him trying to reverse a trailer. Halliday found the opposite. "The first couple of weeks I was out, if I drove into a truck stop and it was really busy, I actually would just get out and ask somebody. I'd go, 'Look I don't want to kill anybody, could you help me, talk me through it or just park it for me. The guys were always brand new and they always said to me, 'I was there once, I remember what it was like'."
The problem with recruiting women into trucking was never really whether women could drive or not. Nor was it that they might not be strong enough to move the weights around. Rather it was one of image.
There is an aspect of trucking which while alluring to some, remains the put-off for others, and for women in particular: the so-called trucking culture. It's the greasy food, the chips and pie, the lack of comforts, the absence of fellow female company. Truck stops have that air of belonging to another age, of even another place, a particular version of masculinity. It's easy to see why women might not want to hang out there. It also takes a certain mentality for long haul. Mick Munday has it.
So does the Welshman on the nearby table, who says, difficult as he thinks the industry is getting, he wouldn't get out of it. "I couldn't go home and be with her at home every night. I like the lifestyle, aye. I'm home Friday to Sunday. More than that and we'd be at each other's throats." And women, sometimes, have it too. But if they don't, that doesn't mean trucking is not for them, just that it might be short haul, not long, for packed lunches not truck stop lunches and home to look after the kids by evening.
It's easy to portray trucking as a hyper-masculine, sexist industry, but that would be doing it an injustice. Most men, after all, share a view rather like Munday's: that there are good and bad drivers of both genders. Munday gives examples either way. Recently he watched a woman undertaking a particularly tricky reversing manoeuvre while delivering in Castleford. She pulled into the yard through a set of gates, perfectly, in one go. "I took my hat off to her, " he says. "A good woman driver is the best, better than any bloke."
October 29, 2006
Haulier than thou;
REAL LIFE;
With a national shortage of truck drivers, the government's attention has shifted to finding jobs for the girls, and even though women currently only account for two per cent of truck drivers, they are shattering stereotypes in a male-dominated world with their passion for big lorries. Vicky Allan hits the open road to meet some of the growing band of female truckers
BYLINE: Vicky Allan
SECTION: MAGAZINE; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 2678 words
HIGHLIGHT: Photographs Kirsty Anderson
Left: Sue Chappelhow, in her 44-tonne articulated lorry which she drives daily from Penrith to Falkirk, says one of the reasons she got her truck driving licence was so she could drive her horses around, transporting them to various shows, and enabling her to enjoy her passion for riding
Above: Lorry driver Mick Munday, who stopped for the night at the Europa transport cafe, off the M74 near Lesmahagow, says the odd female truck driver is brilliant, but "the others shouldn't be behind the wheel"
Previous pages: Andrea Gardner, who is a truck driver for Bullett Express based in Bothwell, Lanarkshire, also talked her husband, previously a baker, into switching trades and taking up trucking for a living
Julie Farren, who works for the family business Farren's Freights, says her father was a truck driver, and she had never thought of doing anything else. She says, "It's always stuck in my head that this was what I wanted to do."
THIS is a man's world, even now. In the Europa Services near Lesmahagow, Mick Munday ploughs into a plate of chips, peas and gammon steak, smeared with mustard. His hair, a long silver sweep, looks as if it belongs cased inside a motorbike helmet.
Munday eyes me sceptically at first, then begins to tell his story. He likes strangers, he says, likes them better than people he knows well. I'm here to ask about female truckers, I tell him. What does he think of them? "The odd one is brilliant, but the others shouldn't be behind the wheel. They're useless some of them, but the good ones are very good. But I suppose that's the same with men. There's some arsehole men drivers as well."
Munday has been driving on and off for 39 years. He likes the lifestyle, the independence, the way you meet people briefly at a stop, hear their stories then get back in your truck and head on down the road. Most people's stories, he says, contain some tragedy. For a while he lived with a female trucker; they spent their weeks coming and going, only sharing time together on a Wednesday. "Handling the vehicle, she was brilliant, but her attitude on the road was disgraceful. It was, dare I say it, like a lot of women have got. They think you've got to make room for them all the time. She'd wrangle them out as good as anybody. But her idea was everybody else had to get out the way of her."
Only two per cent of the truck drivers in Scotland are women. This means that at any given time at a truck stop, it's unlikely you will come across a woman, unless she's dishing up chips behind the canteen counter. The punters will usually be male. In other words, the scene will be rather as it is at 4pm on this Wednesday, a smattering of men dotted across the sun-streaked grey formica tables, and a couple of women in white caps on food. A few tables away from Munday, a Welshman and two Aberdeenshire drivers discuss the matter of women in trucking.
"Live and let live, " says one of them. Another laughs. "I used to know a lady driver, " he says, "called Jo The Dyke. She was big, like. She used to knock all the men. She thumped them. She was a rum girl she was. I haven't seen her in a long time." The third smiles. "Some people say women shouldn't do the job, but I dare say, why not?" Meanwhile, at the canteen, the women tell us there have been a couple of women in during the past day, one at breakfast time sat at the back right-hand corner of the room on her own reading a book. The owner of Europa, Manio, says he has only talked to three or four in his years running the place. If there is any oestrogen here, it must be in the water.
It would be easy to assume, on an afternoon like this, that there were no women truckers out there. One driver gave me a guess-estimate that there are perhaps only one in 2000. But the fact is that they do exist and, with a current shortage in drivers, the government and logistics sector hope their numbers will soon increase. Over the last year, their target for recruitment has been women and, with the help of the Scottish Executive, Skills for Logistics set up a women-only training scheme. Here in Scotland, Anne Halliday is one of the instructors at Glasgow Training Group. She is evangelical in her recruitment of women to the cause.
"When I'm speaking to girls in the pub or when I'm at a party, or whatever it might be, I'm saying to these girls, try truck driving. They've got a rubbishy shop job and they're getting paid minimum wage and I say, 'As opposed to being hassled in a shop with some 17-year-old manager, you could be out in a truck, on your own, doing your own thing, and earning a really good wage'." She believes there is a simple reason why women do not consider the job: it does not cross their minds. "They just think of shop work, they think hairdressers. A mother is never going to say to her wee daughter, 'when you grow up maybe you'll be a truck driver'."
As a young girl, Halliday grew up watching Pigeon Street. Long- distance Clara, a female truck driver with wild, curling hair and an independent lifestyle was, for her, a kind of role model. A song from the show declared, 'Long-distance Clara drives a juggernaut/Way down the motorway to the busy port/Long-distance Clara - nothing's too far away/Picking up and dropping off, load after load'. It's surprising, perhaps, that more women didn't go on, under her spell, to get behind the wheel. "I really honestly believe, " Halliday says, "that in order to get girls to do it, it's just a matter of telling them that they can. I think girls still look at the trades and jobs like driving as a world that they're not part of."
Still, even Halliday would never have thought of it as a career if she hadn't trained in heavy goods driving through the Territorial Army. It is perhaps indicative of the narrowness of the industry's draw that most of those women working in it came to it through family connections. They are the daughters of truckers. Their brothers and sisters drove trucks.
They grew up with the idea that shifting a large truck was almost a normal life skill.
Parked up in a services in Bothwell, a nine-year-old girl sits high in the cab of a truck next to her father. It's her school holidays and he has taken her out for the day on the job. Andrea Gardner, a driver for Bullet Express, points out the girl. That could have been her about 17 years ago.
"I used to go out on the lorries with my dad. Summer holidays and things like that. I just loved it. I thought being in a big lorry, dead high up, was dead powerful. My dad took me everywhere, he took me up north. He says I would just play houses in the passenger seat and I'd eat all his sandwiches. You were king of the road because you were in this big thing."
When she got older, she went into haulage herself, as a transport manager at first, which she still does as part of her job now. Her enthusiasm was so great that she talked her husband, once a baker, into switching trades and trucking for a living. It was, however, only earlier this year that she gained her Class 2 licence and started driving herself.
Gardner is neither a tomboy nor a girly-girl. She wears immaculate false nails, painted with tropical palms, the souvenir of a Florida holiday, but also wears jeans and thick-soled boots. As a child, she played with Barbie dolls, not toy cars. "But I loved the powerful fact of my dad's lorry. I used to wash it for him at the weekend, get all the flies off the front of it. And I love the industry. I think you have to be really thick-skinned to work in transport; it's all banter, it's a laugh, it's a carry on, you've got to give as good as you get.
But it's a relaxed atmosphere. Obviously the language content can be a bit high, but it's water off a duck's back, nothing's personal."
Though her husband was behind this new career, her dad wasn't quite so sure. "I'm not saying my dad was not supportive. He said, 'It's not a job for a woman', because of all the heavy lifting and things involved. 'But, if you want to do it go out and prove everybody else wrong, do it.' And my mum, she was scared. 'Oh no, you're not going to drive one of those big things are you?' Again it's back to the male/female thing ... I'm a wee girl."
Gardner, like many of the women I talked to, sees one of the great advantages of HGV driving as a career as its flexibility. Though this seems improbable, given its image of long-haul trips stretching out for weeks at a time away from home, much of the short-distance work is compatible with family and other commitments. For Gardner, these are her twoyear-old daughter, who goes in daily to nursery from noon till 5pm after spending the morning with her mother. Both parents work full-time, but on different shifts, her husband finishing at 5pm, she around 8pm.
For Sue Chappelhow, the commitment is her horses, and just earlier in the year she came third in her class at the Horse Of The Year Show. A sporting career like this takes time and commitment. "I don't think I could have got a job to fit round my horses as well as this one. It's a job you can juggle if you've got children, split shifts, and night work. There are loads of jobs out there, not just long-haul, lots of different varieties of job."
I meet Chappelhow at the Falkirk Asda depot following her daily morning cake delivery. It's 11am on a Monday and she has been up since 5am, a relatively late start for her. Normally she wakes at 2am and is back home in Cumbria by now, ready for an afternoon with her horses.
Chappelhow is a trucker's girl - her father owns a tipping-truck company - but that's not the only reason she got her licence. She got it because she wanted to be able to drive her horses around, to transport them from show to show. The two HGV activities seem to blend together in her family. There had always been, when she was growing up, horses, tractors and trucks. Almost everyone in her family had a licence. Her mother had one; so did her aunt, and so it was natural that she did.
"My mum just started because she was helping dad out. You've got to bear in mind that when she started she would have been about 4ft 11ins and about size six - if that - a tiny minuscule person. But she used to get on fine. And then they didn't have power steering either. She used to literally have both hands on the steering wheel to haul it around." Like Gardner, Chappelhow has exquisitely filed French-polished nails, the result of skills picked up in her own previous training. Before trying her hand as a trucker, she took a beautician course in Northern Ireland. Now she sees no going back to that field. A convert to trucking, she says, only if she shatters both her legs will she give it up, she enjoys it too much - the lifestyle and the money are too good. "The money is much better than most jobs. My friends have been to university and they're struggling to get jobs. They are not even on half the wage I'm on and I feel sorry for them. Looking at my school year, there's a handful of us have got our own houses. I'm 24 and I've had my house 18 months now."
Both Chappelhow and Gardner say they have rarely had men be rude to them about their driving. There is, however, the occasional reaction of disbelief when they tell someone what they do. "The best one, " says Chappelhow, "is blokes if you're out and stuff. 'What do you do for a job?
Nah, you can't drive wagons.' They look at you and think you have to be 6ft God-knows-what and 6ft wide. It is going back to stereotyping and it's got to be banished. The only people who ever come out with comments about women not being able to drive trucks are men that are inadequate at the job. I've had it a couple of times but you just ignore it and think, well, how sad. It's them that have got the inferiority complex."
How does this all translate on the road? Twenty-year-old Julie Farren at Farren's Freights takes me out for a drive. She pulls off gently, unselfconsciously, and a clumsy driver myself, I admire her poise. She likes, she says, the power of being in the raised cab. Like Gardner, she was taken on summer holiday trips by her father, long-distance jobs to London, with treats like the pictures or a swim at the end of them. "I never really thought of doing anything else. It's always stuck in my head that this was what I wanted to do." Driving along, I watch the eyes of the drivers in the other trucks. It's hard to say if they look longer or harder than they might normally do. "When I'm out driving, " she says, "sometimes I can tell people are looking at me thinking, is that a woman?"
Perhaps the most interesting route to a trucking career is Halliday's.
Originally the boss of her own cleaning business, she made the jump from a female-dominated field to the male world of trucking. It wasn't an obvious one at first. When she first got her HGV licence through the Territorial Army, she didn't imagine she would ever use it outside the TA.
It seemed, simply a good security blanket and fallback, after all, "with a Class 1 or Class 2 licence, you're never going to be out of work". It was only several years later she was badly injured as a passenger in a truck accident in the TA, that she was forced to reconsider her work. She would do something that was easier on her injury than the cleaning business; she would, bizarrely given the cause of her accident, drive trucks for a living. "I think, in a way, it's kind of therapeutic. That's the worst thing that has happened to me in my life, that injury, caused by a truck accident. And now I'm doing something that I really enjoy and it's still within that sphere. It feels like a suitable pay-off."
Halliday, who has experienced two such contrasting fields of work, believes there is no real difference in aptitude of the genders to either job. "The best employee I ever had, for the cleaning business, was a man. He was by far the most thorough employee I had. And in terms of teaching women driving, I see no difference. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Some of the men are good, some of the men are bad. They say men are more spatially aware, but I don't know whether it's been proven. But on the other side of the coin, women are supposed to have peripheral vision. So who's the better driver? I think it's just down to the individual. I think honestly the reason more women aren't in trucks probably goes back to the time when there was no power steering."
In the whole of her time driving, she has never had a man ask her what a woman is doing driving a truck. "I don't know that men say that kind of thing, or if they do, they're the same kind of guys who would joke over fat people and people with beards." She recalls that when she did her licence at the TA, she did so at the same time as a man. He went on straight away to try and get a job in the industry, and hated it. The men, he said, would never help him out; they would just stand and laugh at him trying to reverse a trailer. Halliday found the opposite. "The first couple of weeks I was out, if I drove into a truck stop and it was really busy, I actually would just get out and ask somebody. I'd go, 'Look I don't want to kill anybody, could you help me, talk me through it or just park it for me. The guys were always brand new and they always said to me, 'I was there once, I remember what it was like'."
The problem with recruiting women into trucking was never really whether women could drive or not. Nor was it that they might not be strong enough to move the weights around. Rather it was one of image.
There is an aspect of trucking which while alluring to some, remains the put-off for others, and for women in particular: the so-called trucking culture. It's the greasy food, the chips and pie, the lack of comforts, the absence of fellow female company. Truck stops have that air of belonging to another age, of even another place, a particular version of masculinity. It's easy to see why women might not want to hang out there. It also takes a certain mentality for long haul. Mick Munday has it.
So does the Welshman on the nearby table, who says, difficult as he thinks the industry is getting, he wouldn't get out of it. "I couldn't go home and be with her at home every night. I like the lifestyle, aye. I'm home Friday to Sunday. More than that and we'd be at each other's throats." And women, sometimes, have it too. But if they don't, that doesn't mean trucking is not for them, just that it might be short haul, not long, for packed lunches not truck stop lunches and home to look after the kids by evening.
It's easy to portray trucking as a hyper-masculine, sexist industry, but that would be doing it an injustice. Most men, after all, share a view rather like Munday's: that there are good and bad drivers of both genders. Munday gives examples either way. Recently he watched a woman undertaking a particularly tricky reversing manoeuvre while delivering in Castleford. She pulled into the yard through a set of gates, perfectly, in one go. "I took my hat off to her, " he says. "A good woman driver is the best, better than any bloke."
a youtube interview.
the first two minutes are odd and unnecessary. but the interview is pretty cool and sometimes raw.
topics covered:
how have things changed since you started driving? (in the past 5 years)
how do you feel about road rage (and new drivers)?
what's it like being away from family/friends for so long?
what scares you the most about being a trucker?
quote: "it can be a damn lonely life, the life of a trucker."
Chill with Ice Road Truckers
Randy Cordova
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 6, 2007 12:00 AM
Hugh Rowland has emerged as one of TV's most engaging reality stars this summer, thanks to a surprise hit called Ice Road Truckers. The Arizona Republic
Jul. 6, 2007 12:00 AM
"Every time I come down here, they say it's as popular as hell," says Rowland, visiting Los Angeles from British Columbia for a publicity tour. "They don't show the (expletive) thing up in Canada, so everyone thinks I'm full of (expletive) when I say I'm on TV."
Just how big is Ice Road Truckers? The debut episode last month drew 3.4 million viewers, a record for the History Channel. Subsequent episodes have retained as much as 90 percent of that audience. The majority of viewers are men: Probably the same guys who made Deadliest Catch a success for the Discovery Channel.
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"We knew we were on to something different," says Dolores Gavin, the show's executive producer. "There was an energy around this that was very unique and different. It was hard to define."
On the other hand, the show itself is almost ridiculously easy to explain. The title tells all: The show focuses on six men who haul supplies over a 300-mile long ice road. That's all, folks.
But in this case, simple means compelling.
One thing that makes the show so riveting is the breathtaking photography of Canada's northwest region. The show is filmed with high-definition equipment for spectacular results. If you have an HDTV, Ice Road Truckers is visual catnip.
Then there are the truckers themselves, an appealingly ragtag group of men. Alex Debogorski, a veteran driver, has 11 children and seven grandchildren. At the other end of the spectrum is 21-year-old T.J. Tilcox, a trucker who hates the cold. Go figure.
Rowland is kind of the grand poobah of the show. He owns four trucks and has spent more than two decades in the business. He was initially skeptical when he was approached about doing the program.
"It surprised the (expletive) out of me actually," he announces. "I thought, sure, come up and film me, but I don't know what you're going to see. But then when I saw the DVD of the first episode, I thought it was pretty cool."
The show's origins can be traced back to a 2000 episode of Modern Marvels that focused on ice road truckers. The program earned positive feedback from viewers.
"We knew the audience had a kernel of interest from that show," Gavin says. "Then our take was that it is more than just a dangerous job. It's this whole bizarre world up there with sub-zero temperatures and a race against the clock before the ice melts."
The show's buzz was fanned by a theatrical trailer that played in movie houses a month before the premiere.
"Kudos to the marketing department for that," Gavin says. "A lot of things just came together at the right time to make this a great show, and that was a big part of it. People would see the trailer and think, 'People are driving on ice? What is that?' "
The show is such a hit that a DVD release is already scheduled for Nov. 30, and Gavin says there are talks of producing another series.
As for Rowland, he is enjoying his 15 minutes in the spotlight. During his recent visit to California, a typical day consisted of radio and print interviews, plus an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel's talk show.
"I'm just going with the flow," says Rowland, who confesses he hates reality television. "I'm in a nice hotel room. They take me to supper and for drinks, and it's all covered."
As for getting money for being in Ice Road Truckers? Guess again.
"We don't making nothing off of it," he says.
You figure with the show being so popular, he'd earn a little something.
"Well, I kind've said that, too, but we don't know if it's going to fly," he says in a low voice. "But we'll see. This whole TV thing is different. It's like a whole other adventure."
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/tv/articles/0706iceroad.html
From Billboard to Hollywood
| From Billboard to Hollywood By Sean Kelley
Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon and a year later released the first of a string of trucking movies that glamorized the cowboy image of truckers, and an icon was born. While the late 1970s and early 1980s were a high water mark for the trucker as celebrity, truckers have always been portrayed and courted by the entertainment industry. From the first trucking song in the 1930s to recent television shows, truckers, for better or worse, have been the stars of the road. On the radio One place where the trucker image has been particularly at home is on the radio. Travelers and road warriors have always been the subjects of ballads. As early as 1939, a song called “Truck Drivers Blues,” written by Ted Daffan, was hot on the charts. The song did so well, that Columbia signed Daffan as an artist, even though someone else performed the song. As the trucking industry matured in the 1950s and ’60s, the songs did too. Terry Fell penned “Truck Drivin’ Man” in 1954 and the song became an instant hit. It’s been recorded by dozens of artists and been a hit several times, including a version by Dave Dudley, a singer who made a living off truck-driving songs. Other artists tapped into the trucker lifestyle, too: Dick Curless, Bill Kirchen, Jerry Reed, Del Reeves, Red Simpson, Red Sovine and Dale Watson all made money singing about truck drivers. Trucking radio host Bill Mack, a longtime veteran of country music and trucking culture, says truckers have an eternal appeal in pop culture. “They are travelers,” he says. “They’re not just isolated to one spot geographically. People have always been interested in those who travel.” Truckers appeal to songwriters and listeners because the image of a trucker is something everyone can identify with, says Mack. “Truckers themselves are obviously important people in our culture. It’s their spirit. They’re intriguing to a degree. And they have a bit of mystique. When a motorists passes a truck, there’s a mystery about them.” That’s one of the reasons why some of the most popular songs have been about truckers. The biggest trucking song remains “Convoy,” which hit the top spot on both pop and country charts. The song helped its writers sell 20 million records in just a few years. It even convinced millions of Americans to buy CBs for their cars and homes. More importantly, perhaps, it spawned several movies and television shows. At the movies Bill Fries, the personality behind the fictitious “Convoy” singer C.W. McCall, says the success of the song created a race among movie studios to capitalize on the cowboy image of truckers. While MGM, which released McCall’s records, struggled to produce a movie version, Universal Pictures quickly put together the Burt Reynolds classic Smokey and the Bandit, and released it in 1977. The movie became the third highest grossing film for that year (behind Star Wars and Rocky) and is the 55th highest grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation. Two sequels followed with less success. The movie Convoy came out a year later, but was not as popular. Fries says much of that has to do with the popularity of the song “Convoy,” which had peaked and faded. “We thought the movie came out much too late,” Fries says. “Long after the peak. The song hit No.1 in January 1976. You could still hear it on the radio a year later in 1977. But it was a golden oldie by the time the film producers got the movie going late in 1978.
Television also got in the act with NBC’s “B.J. and the Bear,” a comedy series about a trucker and his pet chimpanzee that ran from 1979 through 1981. While most of the movies of the era portrayed truckers as affable, if not law-flouting, heroes, others began showing truckers in a negative light, reviving an image that even Hollywood director Steven Spielberg capitalized on in his film debut. Spielberg’s movie, Duel, preceded the late ’70s craze and used the public’s fear of big rigs to spook moviegoers. In it, a truck bears down on a motorist for miles and miles. More recent films also play on these fears; Breakdown and Joy Ride portray truckers as sinister villains. Mack says the cowboy image popularized in the 1970s may have played out, especially as the mainstream media has often portrayed truckers as drug users and road menaces. The image was so tarnished by the mid-80s that the American Trucking Associations started its Road Team to reverse the trend and portray truckers in a more professional light. Recently, Mack says, “The truckers have stood up more, and expressed themselves in a manner in these last few years that have left a better image. They’re not looked on as just old boys and girls running down the highway without any sense. There’s a greater respect now.” That may also be showing up in pop-culture again. Television network TNN launched “18 Wheels of Justice,” which featured an FBI agent posing as a truck driver. Again, the trucker was a hero. While the show faltered and was cancelled, it caused a lot of industry interest especially from truck maker Kenworth, whose T2000 was a central character on the show. The show was an example of pop culture influencing trucking as well. Kenworth used the show in its marketing and invited the show’s stars to its booth at truck shows. In the 1980s, the company also marketed a special James Bond edition W900. The truck’s paint scheme matched that used in a stunt in a James Bond movie. The trucks became collector edition rigs. So have trucks from the TV show “B.J. and the Bear.” Pop culture has also been important to the life of Truckers News. The earliest issues featured movie and music reviews and articles on country music stars like Dolly Parton, Crystal Gayle, Donna Fargo and Tom T. Hall. Truckers picked up the magazine, in part, to read stories about their favorite musicians. Articles about truckers who follow Jimmy Buffet and even drivers who haul musicians have graced the pages. So have old musicians who lionized truckers years ago. Four decades after his performance of “Six Days on the Road” was a hit on pop and country radio stations, Dave Dudley is still making a living off trucking songs. Last year he released American Trucker, an album featuring 10 new trucking songs including “You Ain’t Gonna Truck With Us” and “Don’t Mess With U.S. Truckers.” Mack, who currently hosts a trucking radio show on XM Satellite Radio, says those kinds of comebacks are putting a positive spin back on the tarnished trucker image. And the songs are popular with a new generation of truckers. “I’ve played Dudley’s songs a lot,” he says. “Trucking songs are hot all over again because of that album.” Maybe trucking movies will stage the same kind of comeback too. http://www.etrucker.com/apps/news/article.asp?id=28679 |
Simpsons Episode with truckers
Maximum Homerdrive
"Maximum Homerdrive" originally aired on March 28, 1999, during the tenth season. Following is a breakdown of the episode, including a synopsis, favorite quotes, and guest stars.
It does not suck to be you
Pamela Hayden and Tress MacNeille.
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Homer takes the family to a steak restaurant named The Slaughterhouse that allows you to choose your steer. Homer challenges truck driver Red Barclay to a steak-eating contest when Red advises Homer not to eat the largest steak on the menu. Red wins the contest, but dies of beef poisoning. Feeling guilty, Homer vows to take Red's truck and make Red's last delivery to Atlanta.
Back home, Marge and Lisa buy a musical doorbell from Señor Ding-Dong's Doorbell Fiesta. No one comes to the house to ring the doorbell, not even the pizza delivery guy or Milhouse. Finally, when they ring it themselves, the doorbell sticks and plays its tune, "Close to You", over and over.
On the highway, Homer falls asleep at wheel, accidentally discovering that the truck has a mechanism which drives the truck itself. When Homer shares his story with the other truckers, they reveal that all trucks have the Navitron Autodrive. They also swear Homer to secrecy.
Homer enjoys the Navitron Autodrive by trying to hit an old lady, and by sitting on the hood of the truck while it's driving. When the other truckers spy Homer's activities, they start a convoy and attempt to stop him. But Homer, as usual, inexplicably avoids their road block and makes Red's delivery.
Back in Springfield, a mob of townspeople has gathered at the Simpson's front door. The doorbell is keeping everyone awake. Just before Chief Wiggum shoots the doorbell, Señor Ding-Dong arrives and fixes it just in time.
Marge says, "It's time we opened up a can of whup-tushie on this situation."
http://animatedtv.about.com/library/weekly/aa081800a.htm
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Truck driving gets feminine touch
Truck driving gets feminine touch
Posted 9/9/2006 4:52 PM ET
Posted 9/9/2006 4:52 PM ET
CARLISLE, Pa. — Seized by the all-American impulse to hit the open road, Jackie Walker quit her paramedic job and began driving 18-wheelers three years ago.
Divorced and childless at age 69, Nancy Finley logs 10,000-12,000 miles a month driving across the United States and Canada.
Toni Chandler began driving big rigs to earn more than the $7.50 an hour she was making as a security guard and to see the country on her employer's dime.
These women represent the changing face of the American trucking industry. The driver of that big rig on the interstate may not necessarily be a man. Women are increasingly getting behind the wheel of trucks small and large, from tractor-trailers that haul merchandise across North America to smaller delivery trucks on local roads.
There were 129,000 women drivers in 1995 and 154,000 last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the American Trucking Associations. Their numbers peaked at 183,000 during the post-Sept. 11, 2001, economic doldrums before falling back.
The number of women is expected to climb as the trucking industry targets female retirees and empty-nesters as part of a strategy to fill thousands of driver vacancies. Millions more trucks are expected on the nation's roads in the coming years because retailers rely on them to keep their shelves stocked as Americans buy more.
Women no longer endure as many stares, or hear as many propositions or sexist comments, Walker said. But she still feels she must prove herself to male drivers, especially while performing the challenging tasks of backing and parking the tractor-trailer rig. After all, truck driving remains a male-dominated profession — about 5% of the more than 3 million U.S. truck drivers are women.
"You get comments like, 'Where's your husband? Does he let you go out here like this?' " Walker, who's single and 30, said at a truck center in Carlisle, Pa., operated by her employer, Schneider National. "You stay focused and do your job."
"Typical" males, she said, "stand around and watch if you can park. ... I've had men offer to park for me because they thought I was going to hit their truck."
Balancing life, work
The daughter of a truck driver, Walker shrugged off such annoyances and began hauling loads from Texas to Maine to Florida, spending weeks on the road at a stretch. Now she has a different job with the Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider that allows her to drive shorter distances and return home to York, Pa., every night, although she still puts in 14-hour days as she did before.
Women have always worked in the trucking industry as dispatchers and office staff. Some, like Rochelle Gorman of CalArk of Mabelvale, Ark., own trucking companies. But the growing trend is women sitting in the driver's seats, Gorman said.
Most women drivers pair up with their husbands or partners for long-distance trips. That helps women feel safer and also reassures their family members worried about safety in remote places.
Like Walker, Finley is a rarity among women truckers — she drives solo. Finley said she and other women turn to trucking for the same reasons as men: The opportunity to travel and earn good money and benefits in a rapidly expanding industry.
Gorman said CalArk was one of the first trucking companies to switch to automatic-transmission vehicles about a decade back. That has caused a jump in the number of women applying to her firm. Of the 850 drivers CalArk uses, 100 are women. Unlike the old days, long-haul truck drivers no longer have to manually load and unload heavy cargo. That's also encouraged women to sign up.
Women easily land jobs after they finish driver training — sometimes beating out men — because they're viewed as safer drivers, said Tony Marra, who runs a transportation institute at Prince George's County (Md.) Community College in suburban Washington. It's a well paying and stable career for someone without a college degree with annual starting salaries around $33,500, he said.
Seasoned truckers like Finley, who lives in Okmulgee, Okla., earn $50,000 or more plus benefits.
Money mattered to Chandler, but the bigger draw was the freedom to travel. At a Carlisle truck stop, she spoke fondly of delivering freight in Portland, Ore., and taking a couple of days off to take in the sights in her favorite city.
Chandler, 45, and her 53-year-old husband, Leslie Paugh Jr., have a mobile marriage. They sold their house and live out of the 18-wheeler that belongs to her employer, CalArk. If they need a break, they check into a motel or stay with relatives in Virginia, Florida or Texas.
Chandler acknowledged their lifestyle works for them because they have no children. She discouraged women with children from taking up long-haul trucking. She and her husband have been traveling together for 10 years; Chandler does all the driving and Paugh navigates.
Not a 'paid vacation'
But Finley cautioned against romanticizing the trucker lifestyle as "one continuously paid vacation."
For one, it can get lonely. Safety is also an issue, but drivers said they take precautions like staying in touch frequently with family, remaining inside the vehicle after hours and sleeping near well-lit areas.
And driving a rig requires skill and concentration and is a lot harder than driving a passenger vehicle because of the higher weight and more complicated handling. Then there are health and sanitation considerations: How to avoid a sedentary lifestyle when spending so much time behind the wheel? How to skip daily showers and still stay clean? What to do if you have to use the restroom and there's not a facility in sight?
Such practical concerns transcend worries about sexism, said Finley, who's employed by Tulsa-based Hoffmeier Inc.
She acknowledged that she loves it when men are surprised by the sight of a petite woman driving a big rig, hauling hazardous substances such as jet fuel.
Once when she got lost in South Carolina, Finley pulled into a strip mall parking lot. A young man saw her climb out the truck and his "jaw unhinged. He looked like I'd hit him right in the eyes with a pole or something. He just turned around and walked off," she said.
"I have heard women out there — men hit them, (are) rude to them. That's never been my experience. You meet a jerk once in a while. Who doesn't?"
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By Barbara Hagenbaugh, USA TODAY BORDENTOWN, N.J. — Companies have created jobs at a sluggish rate in the past few years, but there's one occupation for which employers can't hire fast enough: truck driving.
A severe shortage of drivers could hurt the U.S. economy, which relies heavily on trucking. Those in the industry say openings number in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. The shortage is unlikely to end soon. The government estimates the number of truck drivers will rise 19% from 2002 to 2012, making driving one of the fastest-growing occupations during those 10 years. Trucking companies are trying to fill jobs by offering drivers cash bonuses and prizes such as boats and vacations to refer fellow drivers who switch to their firms. Base pay is rising, and trucking companies are guaranteeing drivers more time at home. Firms are offering generous 401(k), stock option and health care packages and other perks. Truck stops now have massage therapists and Wi-Fi computer technology. Still, the number of drivers is woefully inadequate. It's not just an issue of recruiting. Retaining drivers has become a constant headache: The turnover rate at large trucking companies was 116% in the second quarter, according to the American Trucking Associations. "I define this as the most serious problem the industry has," says Duff Swain, president of Trincon Group, a transportation consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio. Companies he has been speaking to recently say 10% of their trucks are idle because they can't find enough drivers. It goes way beyond trucking. Trucks carried more than three-quarters of the goods that traveled in the USA in 2003. If there aren't enough drivers to haul the nation's products, the economy runs the risk of stumbling. Plus, if drivers can be found only by raising pay and benefits, those costs could be passed along and eventually could show up in higher consumer prices. "If we don't have enough truckers, then the whole global transportation system bogs down and just makes life difficult and less lucrative for retailers and other businesses," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com in West Chester, Pa. Truck driving's a tough job The shortage is perplexing, given that job creation has been lackluster and 8 million people were unemployed in September. But issues unique to the industry are keeping jobs empty. Truck drivers often stay on the road for weeks at a time, keeping them away from family, friends and the comforts of home. That can make driving a tough sell. "You have to like it to be in it," says Kevin James, 45, of Rochester, N.Y., a driver for 22 years. He travels coast-to-coast with his girlfriend, Carrie Green, 43, who became a driver four years ago after she was laid off from Kodak, and their three dogs. "It's as much a lifestyle as an occupation," says Jim Larson, a former driver who teaches at Smith & Solomon Driver Training, adjacent to the truck stop. "For those of us who are crazy enough to enjoy it, there is no better way to make a living." What's behind the driver shortage: •Demand. After sinking into recession in 2001, the economy has picked up speed in recent quarters. That means retailers need more goods on their shelves, and manufacturers need more parts to build machinery. Demand is especially strong this time of year, as stores stock up ahead of the holiday shopping season. Also leading to increased demand is businesses' desire to keep their inventories lean to reduce costs. This just-in-time technique means that businesses receive fewer bulk orders, and when they place an order, they need speedy delivery. That requires more drivers. •Age. Mirroring the U.S. population, the average age of truck drivers is rising, meaning more are retiring or nearing retirement. Plus, the government bans truck drivers from crossing state lines until they are 21, creating an impediment to recruiting drivers as they graduate high school. By the time they are 21, many workers have been trained in other occupations. •Bottlenecks. More traffic on the nation's roads means it takes longer for a driver to get from one stop to another. That means more drivers are needed to haul existing demand. Additional port and border security following the Sept. 11 attacks has also contributed to longer trips. Every 3% decline in trucking productivity requires an additional 60,000 trucks to haul the same amount of freight, estimates Bob Costello, chief economist at the American Trucking Associations. •Regulation. Trucking firms and drivers say new rules on how many hours truckers can spend on the road, implemented in January, have fueled increased demand for drivers. The rules add an hour to the time a trucker can drive before stopping to rest, but also require a longer break between trips. The new rules also state that once the clock starts for the day, it can not be stopped. That means time for meals, bathroom breaks or other rests count toward driving time, potentially leading to reduced time on the road. •Pay. The average annual pay for a truck driver was $32,134 according to a July 2003 survey by the Labor Department. That was slightly above the average pay for all so-called blue-collar occupations, but below the $37,784 average for all workers. Although base pay — cents per mile — has risen 22% in the last 10 years, inflation has risen 27%. Some in the industry and economists argue pay needs to go higher. "There are not an awful lot of people who are raising their children to be truck drivers," says Scott Arves, president of the transportation sector at Schneider National, a trucking firm in Green Bay, Wis. "Until we are able to move wages up significantly, I'm not sure we are going to be able to attract vast amounts of people." Trucking companies, which are also facing record diesel prices and huge increases in insurance costs, have been able to pass along some pay increases to their clients. But with competition stiff, they say there are limits to how much added cost they can pass along, which limits how much driver pay can rise. Owner-operators, drivers who own their trucks and contract with companies, say they're having an especially tough time passing along higher costs. Corey Coffin, 34, is getting hit on both sides. He owns three trucks and is having trouble finding people to drive them. At the same time, he's paying more to fuel the truck he drives, although he hasn't added up his costs for the year, yet. "I don't want to look at it," says Coffin of Lockeford, Calif., who has been driving for 14 years. •Lifestyle. Even if pay were to rise substantially, it's still unclear if the trucking industry would be able to recruit drivers. Truckers, often lonely while spending weeks on the road, also can develop health problems, such as bad backs from sitting for hours at a time, and obesity, associated with grabbing often-unhealthy food on the go. Nearly 7% of truck drivers and couriers suffered from non-fatal work-related injuries or illnesses in 2002, above the 5.3% seen among all workers, according to government data. High demand for drivers All this means that truck drivers have become hot commodities. "It's almost like they're athletes being drafted out of school," says Larry Caringi, placement director at Smith & Solomon, who says some students go from being unemployed to, six weeks later, earning at a rate of $50,000 a year. Kathy Shepard, 47, of Delran, N.J., received her trucking license Sept. 23 and was hired less than two weeks later by UPS. With a lifelong passion for travel, she decided to go into trucking after being laid off from her job in the billing department at a trucking firm. She is making $14.70 an hour to start, 34% more than at her last job, and her pay is set to go up in a month. "Everything is just falling into place," Shepard says. "I'm still pinching myself." Many trucking firms are trying to emphasize that once someone goes into the industry, there are many paths their careers can take. Last week, Tracey Edwards, a recruiter for Swift, the nation's largest trucking company, told a group of students about his time at the company, which has included stints as a driver, a trainer and now a recruiter. "This is a career now, this is not a job," Edwards says. His presentation could have easily been given to a group of MBAs: It focused on the company's 401(k), stock purchase and health care plans, as well as a discussion of frequent-flier miles. Trucking firms are also trying to become more family-friendly, offering drivers the option to take their spouses, kids and pets on the road. Many are developing regional routes, where a driver sticks to one region. If a load needs to go from Maine to California, the trailer could be passed from one trucker to another across the country, like in an Olympic relay race, giving the drivers more time at home. Some carriers are offering tuition reimbursement programs and are giving their drivers newer, plusher truck cabs that some nickname "condos" to make the time on the road more pleasant. Other firms are turning to expensive incentives. Little Rock-based Maverick Transportation not only gives its drivers cash bonuses for referring drivers who sign up with the company, the drivers enter drawings for prizes. In January, Maverick gave away a Harley-Davidson motorcycle worth more than $16,000. Maverick recruiting manager Brad Vaughn says his 13 recruiters also try to make their efforts more personal, sending birthday, graduation and get-well cards to prospective drivers and their families. "I'll ask, 'Did little Susie win her T-ball game?' " But while trucking firms have gotten more creative in their approach, drivers such as Gary Word, 56, of Scottsboro, Ala., predict it will always be difficult to find people who can adjust to the lifestyle. "I just enjoy the freedom of the road," says Word, whose truck, "Style N Grace," shines from a lot of care. "I wouldn't be interested in anything else." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Portrait of the road
By Truckers News Staff
Behind the camera, photographer Kim Reierson is fearless. Whether she’s crossing the powdery-white mountains of Wyoming or stopping for three cups of coffee in a truckstop, Reierson can extract years from moments, snapping photos of ordinary people whose faces tell the story of life on the road.
For her new book, Eighteen: A Look at the Culture That Moves Us, Reierson spent five years taking pictures of people and places that represent American truck driving. Her obsession with truck driving didn’t take root until after Sept. 11, when she drove from New York City to Santa Barbara, Calif., to meet her mom. During that trip and for the next five years, she hung out in truckstops and interviewed drivers, asking to take their portraits and see the cabs of their trucks. The resulting images are candid, poignant photos of exhausted drivers asleep in their cab beds, brash young truckers with huge belt buckles and cowboy hats, trucker families at home and on the road, and more.
“These men and women are who make this country run,” Reierson says. “I wanted to show that in an honest yet elegant way.”
A California girl transplanted to Bolivia to live with her mother’s family, and then back to California and finally to Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2000, Reierson is an artist with a heart for the American working class.
“I had always been into cars,” Reierson says, “but it dawned on me that my dad was a trucker. Subconsciously, I think I had been trying to tap into that.”
Reierson’s father spent most of his time on the road. She never knew him very well, and after her parents divorced when she was in college, she stopped speaking to him. He never knew she was working on the book.
“I guess I’m waiting for the right moment to send him a copy,” Reierson says. “I want to see the public reaction first.”
Reierson took Eighteen to the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky., in March. The reaction from the New York City art community had been encouraging, but Reierson wanted to see what truck drivers thought about her photos.
“Their reaction seemed to be, ‘Wow, for the first time I’m seeing a book that shows exactly what it’s like for us,’” Reierson says. “They were impressed that someone was showing the way it really is.”
For two weeks, Reierson rode with truck driver Tim Young and recounted her experience in the only essay in the book, “Two Weeks With Tim.” After meeting Young in a truckstop and talking with him for an hour and a half, the photographer packed her bags and headed out on the road. After crossing 20 states together, the pair ended their trip at his family’s home in Alabama to say good-bye.
Reierson writes, “We said our good-byes the morning I left. … The way I felt reminded me of the lyrics of a Brad Paisley/Dolly Parton duet: ‘Yeah, when I get where I’m going, there’ll be only happy tears. I will shed the sins and struggles I’ve carried all these years.’”
Eighteen is part homage to the American trucker, part human-interest story and part personal memoir of Reierson’s travels on the road.
Her photos are stunning flashes of color, emotion and light. Real faces sit behind steering wheels with pets, children and coffee. Trucks roll along a highway white from a fresh blizzard and idle next to a wall splattered with graffiti. A large section of the book is devoted to portraits of American truck drivers, each different but all with the tired eyes of hard workers. One trucker sits in the driver’s seat wearing a baseball cap, looking into the face of his young child.
Reierson’s devotion to her project shows in not only the photos, but in her commitment to studying trucking for as long as it took to immerse herself in the culture that moves America.
“There are so many surprise nuggets you can find on the road,” she says. “There is something very special about crossing the United States like this.”
Once upon a time, truck drivers knew each other, Reierson says. Waitresses recognized truckers and had their meals ready when they walked in the door.
The most surprising thing Reierson learned, in spite of the immense size of the industry, is that truckers are still like family.
“They look out for each other,” she says. “They have the attitude that ‘the rest of America may not know who we are, but we know who we are and we are going to take care of each other.’”
Check out photos from Eighteen: A Look at the Culture That Moves Us at the Robin Rice Gallery Exhibition at www.robinricegallery.com.
--Rachel Telehany
Where to purchase Eighteen: A Look at the Culture That Moves Us: Kim Reierson’s website.
The Chrome Shop Mafia, LLC.
4538 Highway 43
Joplin, MO 64804
(417) 627-0004
Elizabeth Truck Center
878 North Avenue
Elizabeth, NJ 07201
(908) 355-8800
Source.
By Truckers News Staff
 Kim Reierson |
For her new book, Eighteen: A Look at the Culture That Moves Us, Reierson spent five years taking pictures of people and places that represent American truck driving. Her obsession with truck driving didn’t take root until after Sept. 11, when she drove from New York City to Santa Barbara, Calif., to meet her mom. During that trip and for the next five years, she hung out in truckstops and interviewed drivers, asking to take their portraits and see the cabs of their trucks. The resulting images are candid, poignant photos of exhausted drivers asleep in their cab beds, brash young truckers with huge belt buckles and cowboy hats, trucker families at home and on the road, and more.
“These men and women are who make this country run,” Reierson says. “I wanted to show that in an honest yet elegant way.”
A California girl transplanted to Bolivia to live with her mother’s family, and then back to California and finally to Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2000, Reierson is an artist with a heart for the American working class.
“I had always been into cars,” Reierson says, “but it dawned on me that my dad was a trucker. Subconsciously, I think I had been trying to tap into that.”
Reierson’s father spent most of his time on the road. She never knew him very well, and after her parents divorced when she was in college, she stopped speaking to him. He never knew she was working on the book.
“I guess I’m waiting for the right moment to send him a copy,” Reierson says. “I want to see the public reaction first.”
Reierson took Eighteen to the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky., in March. The reaction from the New York City art community had been encouraging, but Reierson wanted to see what truck drivers thought about her photos.
“Their reaction seemed to be, ‘Wow, for the first time I’m seeing a book that shows exactly what it’s like for us,’” Reierson says. “They were impressed that someone was showing the way it really is.”
For two weeks, Reierson rode with truck driver Tim Young and recounted her experience in the only essay in the book, “Two Weeks With Tim.” After meeting Young in a truckstop and talking with him for an hour and a half, the photographer packed her bags and headed out on the road. After crossing 20 states together, the pair ended their trip at his family’s home in Alabama to say good-bye.
Reierson writes, “We said our good-byes the morning I left. … The way I felt reminded me of the lyrics of a Brad Paisley/Dolly Parton duet: ‘Yeah, when I get where I’m going, there’ll be only happy tears. I will shed the sins and struggles I’ve carried all these years.’”
Eighteen is part homage to the American trucker, part human-interest story and part personal memoir of Reierson’s travels on the road.
Her photos are stunning flashes of color, emotion and light. Real faces sit behind steering wheels with pets, children and coffee. Trucks roll along a highway white from a fresh blizzard and idle next to a wall splattered with graffiti. A large section of the book is devoted to portraits of American truck drivers, each different but all with the tired eyes of hard workers. One trucker sits in the driver’s seat wearing a baseball cap, looking into the face of his young child.
Reierson’s devotion to her project shows in not only the photos, but in her commitment to studying trucking for as long as it took to immerse herself in the culture that moves America.
“There are so many surprise nuggets you can find on the road,” she says. “There is something very special about crossing the United States like this.”
Once upon a time, truck drivers knew each other, Reierson says. Waitresses recognized truckers and had their meals ready when they walked in the door.
The most surprising thing Reierson learned, in spite of the immense size of the industry, is that truckers are still like family.
“They look out for each other,” she says. “They have the attitude that ‘the rest of America may not know who we are, but we know who we are and we are going to take care of each other.’”
Check out photos from Eighteen: A Look at the Culture That Moves Us at the Robin Rice Gallery Exhibition at www.robinricegallery.com.
--Rachel Telehany
Where to purchase Eighteen: A Look at the Culture That Moves Us: Kim Reierson’s website.
The Chrome Shop Mafia, LLC.
4538 Highway 43
Joplin, MO 64804
(417) 627-0004
Elizabeth Truck Center
878 North Avenue
Elizabeth, NJ 07201
(908) 355-8800
Source.
Trucker, a Portrait of the Last American Cowboy
| (thing) by prole (35 min) (print) | ? | 2 C!s | Tue Aug 29 2000 at 8:40:59 |
Written in 1975 by Jane Stern, over the course of three years. Stern gathered the material from the fables of truckdrivers, straight from their own mouths, gathered in truck stops and while riding shotgun with them. Trucker would appear at first glance to be little more than an obscure coffeetable book, enhanced photojournalism.
It's not, though. You want a book that will induce a mindfuck? If you're American, with any sense of what it's like to need to go, you'll find in reading this that there's a long trail of not-so-archaic mythology responsible for that common desire in all of us, at least a little bit. In a country whose idols are loners and anti-heroes, it's no wonder we give a certain prima facia respect to the solitary individual, alone with the land (or the road).
Sociology aside, this book is beautiful in its romanticizing of the trucker and his lifestyle (forgive the gender-specific pronouns; remember this was written in the early 70's). If you've taken a road trip or ridden the Greyhound, you know how this feels. Watching towns you have no connection to roll by, driving through flat midwestern darkness, seeing nothing but the patch of road before you illuminated by your headlights. The aching desire to stop for an hour, to stretch your legs, and the accompanying determination that you will reach X location within Y length of time. The difference between a car you use only for a short commute, that you keep free of trash and wash every other week, and the car you've lived in for a week or more, sputtering into its final destination thick with road dirt, floor obscured by crumpled packaging. There's an accompanying pride. After a while motion becomes an addiction and comfort claustrophobic. That's what this book's about.
Trivia, myths, and other concepts garnered from Trucker:
- If you think about it, there are an awful lot of similarities between cowboys - real cowboys - and old truckdrivers. Stern makes her point well.
- Men in truckstops talked about their trucks, or the road. They didn't bring up personal problems, least of all a longing for home. A truckstop is not a bar, and truckers didn't go there to find solace in mutual suffering. They went to eat and get some coffee, to get out of the truck and to see a human face in the days before CB radios.
- Some truckers work nine-to-five for a company, and though they may do it as well as anyone else on the road, the long-haul truckdrivers are the real cowboys. Many owned their own trucks and were in constant debt maintaining them. When they got a little bit ahead, the surplus money went into their truck. Trucks have pet names and nicknames and personalities, in the eyes of people who can tell the difference. In such a large vehicle, a trucker's life depended on the quality of his truck, thus the most seemingly unimportant of traits would be a long-considered feature in any investment.
- Ironically, 'cowboy' was an insult, meaning someone who spent too much time grooming himself or his truck.
- "The history of our country is a saga of motion. It is the story of a nation infatuated with pulling up stakes and moving on. We are a people who wash off past failures along with the dust of the road, people who believe the best surroundings are the ones that change, the best home is one that moves, and the best friends are the ones we'll meet tomorrow."
- Sleeping compartments have been located all over the truck, even underneath, equipped with emergency brakes. The sleeper cab was the result of the bitching of a single Seattle truckdriver.
- Truckers began using amphetamines in the 50's, called west-coast turnarounds, black mollies, bennies, or mini-thins.
- There used to be a whole class of establishments catered specifically to truckers. Segregating against whomever they chose. Not just truck stops, but brothels and casinos. There was a truck stop called Naked City where all the employees (including Miss Nude America) worked naked. Some truck stops had signs in the window reading, "Money spent here by black drivers will go to the KKK."
- At the time this book was written, bigotry was nothing many white American males were ashamed of. There is much harsh language directed at women, 'blacks', hippies, and 'homos'. But it was not uncommon for truckers to become lovers. Partners who drove a truck together would once in a while end up 'buddy fuckin' '. Men who professed their heterosexuality would develop a stringent set of standards to be met by any man they'd sleep with. Most truckers, apparently, cheated on their wives.
- California drivers considered themselves the best (not suprising, as regional pride abounded), and were more or less looked down on by other truckers. They decorated their trucks more than other cliques, but claimed they had the most dangerous road to drive - the California Grapevine.
Favorite characters:
- Jerry, exhibitionist truckdriver. Liked to ride around empty roads in nylon briefs and cowboy boots.
- Truck stop waitresses with huge bouffant hairdos in cheap nylon uniforms, serving thick, hot, black coffee and overdone mystery meat. Selling pills from a stash in the ladies' room, tempting all the God-fearin' truckers.
- Roland who rode bulls in the rodeo, starred in Lil' Abner for extra cash, sold makeup to hookers, and drank fresh blood. "I'd rather die on the road than live off it."
- Jean Sawyer, founder of the National Woman's Trucking Association, who collected blond wigs. Had two Cadillacs and three kids headed for juvie. Did time in jail, preferred the color red.
holy anger.
AMERICAN TRUCK DRIVERS SCREWED BY BUSH
By Frosty Wooldridge
March 5, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
President Bush announced that Mexican truck drivers will be allowed on America’s highways within sixty days. Soon, he’ll announce that Mexican drivers will “do the jobs that American truckers won’t do.”
How many ways can an American president screw his own citizens? On Bush’s watch, America’s poor suffer job losses in landscaping, construction, dry wall, hotel, restaurant, lawn mowing, retail, fast food, roofing, taxi and dozens of other trades. On Bush’s watch, outsourcing, insourcing and offshoring work cost American citizens 1,000,000 jobs. On Bush’s watch, America’s manufacturing sector lost 3 million jobs. On Bush’s watch, over 10 million illegal aliens crossed our borders in six years. On Bush’s watch, hundreds of thousands of killers, drug dealers, rapists and child molesters roam free in America.
Now, President Bush drives his serrated knife into the heart of American truckers.
Why? Soon, Mexican truck drivers will undercut wages of all American truckers, just like Mexicans destabilize wages from construction workers, roofers, landscapers and other trades.
This is a reality check from a man who has driven the big rigs across 48 states. As a teacher in the 70s, my salary at $5,400.00 a year, barely kept me above the poverty line. Each summer for 24 years, I loaded, drove 1,500 to 2,000 miles across America, and unloaded for United Van Lines. I busted my hump. I worked 70 to 100 hours a week. Don’t tell the DOT. I earned four times as much money in three months as I made in nine months teaching math and science.
What did I discover? American truckers consist of the finest, most dedicated and outstanding professionals in the world. Their office is America’s Interstates. They’ve got to be 100 percent perfect 10 hours a day as they drive 40,000 pounds of freight down the expressway. “Breaker one nine, you got the Rubber Duck here; what’s your 20?” CB radios make up their communication network. They listen to country and western music; wear cowboy boots and baseball caps. Truckers fill your life with food, clothing, cars, gasoline, mail and everything else. America moves by trucks. I still carry my CDL.
As a teacher and a trucker, you need to know what I know. The average Mexican trucker tops out with a 6th grade education in a foreign language with Third World educational standards. For starters, 63 percent of Mexico’s 104 million people remain illiterate. What does a 6th grader think about? Mostly: me, now and perhaps recess in ten minutes. They lack critical thinking skills and cognitive reasoning of an adult.
That means Bush allows thousands of substandard, uneducated Mexican truck drivers on America’s highways at 70 milers per hour carrying 40,000 pounds of freight. It means that every accident they cause will leave American families as collateral damage.
You can expect the following:
- Bush allows substandard, uninspected 18 wheeler trucks on America’s highways driven by drivers who read and write in Spanish at a 6th grade level, but allows them to give a safety check of their trucks from a Third World perspective. That’s like giving your 6th grader the keys to the car and tell him to be careful as he drives through downtown Denver at rush hour.
- Bush allows thousands of Mexican drivers who have never seen a snow storm or driven in our insane traffic. That’s like giving your 6th grader the keys to your car and have him learn how to drive in a snow storm in downtown Chicago.
- How about Mexican drivers delivering tons of drugs into our country in false bottomed or walled trailers?
- How about Mexican truck drivers delivering even more illegal aliens?
- Mexicans possess an unusual propensity for drinking. How many of you want to drive on the same road as a hung over or drunk Mexican truck driver?
- How about terrorists paying Mexican drivers to carry WMD into the USA?
As soon as Mexican drivers establish themselves, American trucking companies will start hiring them for half or even a third of American wages. The reasoning will be, “Mexican truckers drive cheaper.”
Soon, Bush will say, “Mexican truckers do the jobs that Americans won’t do.”
Somewhere in the middle of this little shindig Bush created, American truckers will strike back. Their anger will seethe below the surface as they drive down the Interstate. They’ll see Mexicans at their truck stops. They hear them speaking another language. They’ll see Mexican flags in Mexican trucks. They’ll see baseball caps that read, “Your New America.”
First you’ll hear of an incident where an American trucker cut the air lines or deflated the tires on a Mexican truck. Then, you’ll hear of huge pileup with a Mexican truck. Later, you’ll hear about American truckers playing cowboy football with their leather boots with Mexican drivers used for the pigskin. Following that, you’ll hear about riots in the truck stops with American truckers busting Mexican heads.
It’s not too much for illegal aliens taking away hotel jobs from American workers, landscapers, drywallers, painters and fast food workers. It’s yet another thing to take jobs away from American truckers. Four million truckers’ families depend on a living wage that will be taken away by Mexican drivers. American truckers are big, smart, savvy and protect their own. They’re not going to take kindly of Mexican truck drivers horning in on their work.
Bush made huge mistakes; 9/11, WMD, Iraq, open borders, total failure with Katrina, ‘the surge,’ federal debt, outsourcing our jobs, homeless, America’s schools, hospitals overwhelmed, prisons overloaded with illegals, American deaths from drunken illegals and much worse.
But giving Mexican trucker drivers jobs over our American truckers will prove a national disaster. It proves to me that Bush doesn’t understand nor does he care about American workers and he most certainly doesn’t care about American truckers. That’s a big ten four!
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