Am I A Real Trucker?

Coming out of LA the other day I saw this on the back of a trailer: Real truck drivers don't wear flip flops.

 

When the going gets tough the truckers throw chain.

This saying is general, applies to all who run trucks. You do what you need to do, you are still a driver like the rest. I never think about it.

I had been issued box trucks cab over model once when 95 was still concrete plates near Baltimore and it was a bunny hop mobile all the way. Bounce bounce bounce. I was happy to get the hell out of that truck. I don't know how you all do it.

Ive been down as little as a ford f150 with a tool box attached to a trailer with a 4 ton equiptment on it. I had to be gentle with it because chances are we are overweight in several ways with it. But it did well considering.

In the end I don't even worry about is this a trucker or not. You are engaged in either interstate, intrastate or local commerce and are paid for it.

Now, there are times someone in a big truck does something that is generally accepted to be stupid. The kind of respect or abuse rather depends on how well or how badly you do with a truck, whatever it might be. The worst of it is when you are new to 18 wheels or similar. The first year, or three is really going to make you question your own sanity sometimes.

If dispatch displayed symptoms of are you going to make it? I usually enjoyed telling them I guess we will see come the morning if we did or not.

That keeps them awake in bed at night, it's only fair if we are heading out to fight three feet on Sideling hill tonight. (Not that i recommend it. Some trucks you have to park because it does not do three inches of snow.)

 

Like I said, it's all in how you handle yourself and your rig

 

Ours can do 3” of snow.

 

Best way to explain is this.

top guys are the OS/OW guys somewhere in the middle is the dry vans, flat bedders, tankers and reefers down the pole is the rest I guess.

 

Cool.

The reason I brought that up is recent news coverage in the last several winters had big rigs spinning out on flat interstates in clear skies after a storm has passed. It has to do with the engineering inside of them, all the over designed crap that gets themselves stuck in that little bit of snow and then be all over the news.

Good luck to you.

 

When you've ran oversized 50000 lb steel down us 13 outside of Aliquippa pa...Then you're a real trucker.

 

I'm pretty sure the United States Department of Transportation considers all commercial trucks straight or combination vehicle real trucks and I'm pretty sure last I checked the pre trips are almost exactly the same and the logging regulations are pretty much exactly the same and the drug testing is exactly the same and fuel tax and weight distance tax and USDOT number pretty sure it's the same for both. As far as the governments concerned and lets face it there the one's who set and enforce policy, pretty sure there's is the only opinion that counts at the end of the day.

 

This is a fake truck, and these people are not real truckers or drivers, but how would you like to spend 16 hours in this thing during a snow storm. Look at those big knobby tires.