Jayplay's Natalie Johnson investigates the lives of commercial vehicle drivers
In high school restaurants of the Oak Grove High School Travel Park looks smells and feels just like a truck stop only to. There are a few high looking whiteness, all under 30, with their hair either hastily pulled back or badly permed. There is a long salad buffet with few taters. The aroma is a curiously comforting, Saturday-morning smell of greasy breakfast food and stale cigarettes. And dead ahead is a low, beige coffee bar patronized by three customers.
The first is an overweight woman with a cigarette in hand. She's got peroxide blonde hair and long, fake purple nails with a flowery decal stuck to the tip of each one. A few seats down is a man who looks to weigh 300 pounds. Camel Lights next to his coffee cup, and sporting a red plaid shirt and a huge belt buckle. The third customer, half the size of his companions and bald, is lighting up a Marlboro Ultra Light 100. Red veins etch into his cheekbones and nose.
Their dialogue is a slow, ambling discussion that can easily be paused to light a cigarette or abandoned to get back on the road. It alternates between "son of a bitch"-riddled diatribes about lousy dispatchers and tall tales about impossible weather, traffic or exwives. The breaks for laughter are frequent and prolonged. Eech is generous with his smoky, wheezy guffaw. Everyone's a stranger by the civilian world's standards, but teasing insults and empathetic kindness come out as easyi as they do among old friends.
And that's just how truckers are: easygoing and grateful for a few moments' conversation and story swapping. They don't judge the man who admits to seven children and four ex-wives, and they don't forget to tip their waitress. The stereotyping ends with appearance and mannerisms. Truckers are wise, good-hearted people. They're fairly educated too. According to a profile in Newport Communications, roughly half of truckers have some college education. Approximately 90 percent have a high school diploma or equiv
integral yet often overlooked
I'll up for you," says Dieter Reyes, server and driver for 10 years. He wont he saw at a truck stop, "If it trucks, you'd be naked, without a well nothing to eat."
Life on the road
responsible to any inquiry about what made him as a trucker hard, but they find ways around it. In Henry's early years, he would often walk up to a farmhouse and ask if he could join its residents for dinner, offering to pay for his plate. His presence was never turned down, but his money was every time.
Loneliness manifests itself in a lot of ways, not the least of which is the infamous "truck stop love," anonymous homosexual encounters at roadside stops. Reyes says he has been approached more than once by a "babe booey," the advertising call and nickname for gay drivers on the CB, the "citizen band" radio used by truckers to communicate with one another.
Back at home, drivers usually have a miserable record of personal relationships. Studies consistently show that truckers have a higher rate of divorce than the national average. They aren't sheepish about admitting to numerous failed marriages, but they don't complain about the horrors of divorce, either. They simply move on. For most, driving is a lifelong marriage to the road. It's not just a job, it's a lifestyle.
Every aspect of Paul Stephens' life has been influenced by his trucking career. When he does make it home, he seldom can stand to be there for more than a few days. In his 34 years of truck driving, he's spent more nights in the cab of his truck than in his own bed. It's hard for him to get comfortable in a bed, so when he's at home, he often fires up the truck in his driveway and sleeps there.
There are few other jobs that entail as much private thought as truck driving. Each day holds between eight and 11 hours of solitary confinement.The trucker's legal workday recently got extended. Last month, the Bush administration reaffirmed a 2004 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rule change that extended the allowed workday from 10 to 11 hours.
Henry says that good drivers use obstruction-free driving time for mental planning so that in the event of bad weather or a collision they're ready. He describes a sort of audible sofa "what if" game, with no situation being too outlandish to plan for. On the lighter side, music, CB chatting and cell phone calls can help break up the monotony.
09.15.05 Jayplay