The Grim Reefer... from the minds of truckers: thoughts, short stories...poems

i have met a lot of nice people in the last ten years. all of them drivers. mostly on the radio. imagining what they look like, whether they still have their wife and kids. what kinds of illnesses they have developed. how financially screwed they are. how much the last dealership took from them. how many free miles they have driven. how many countless hours they've spent waiting.. for free. I've seen full grown, strong men, weeping on their steering wheels in the middle of the night... at their wits end after three days of no sleep. I've seen countless wrecks, too many to count, all pushing to make it home, or somewhere... God knows where. i hardly pay attention to them now. unless their really bad... then i think about that driver that didn't make it home, or somewhere... God knows where. but it's not so bad because... i know if he's been driving long enough that there is no one to miss him back where he used to park his truck. I've been treated like a bad little child throughout it all... chastised daily by shippers, receivers, police, DOTs, boarder security, security guards, parking lot attendants, dispatchers, four wheelers... even janitors. it's amazing how low your expectations, and self worth can sink. what becomes "acceptable" to you. ten years ago i would have let no one speak to me and disrespect me like that. ten years ago i had affection for the world and the people in it. now i understand how things really work. what people really think of each other. what they really care about. it is truly the one common bond between all humanity. unfortunately it's greed and not love... that makes me sad!
when i first started trucking, i noticed this right away. i thought my fellow driver was stupid... because they didn't react to it. they seemed to be fine with it. i realize now that a "driver" is really an optimist. choosing to believe that tomorrow, things will be better... choosing to believe in humanity.. that they will find that perfect company... that perfect haul... but it never happens and your life turns into one gigantic series of "catch and release". like that girlfriend you had back in high school. i have no more faith in humanity. no more love for my fellow man. no more compassion for them left in me. i feel like a rat trying to scurry off a sinking ship. i wish i had never gotten into trucking. i wish that i had never known how things really were. i wish i had remained willfully blind like the multitudes in their four wheelers.

 

i was attempting to engage others in abstract thought. rather than what kind of tires do you use? secondly... i would probably write words about puppy dogs and lollypops if i lived where you do. i can only write about what I've seen. here in north America the turn around for drivers is about 150% annually. give or take depending on the area. less than 20% of new drivers make it past 2 years. less than 20% of them to five years. less than 1% are still around in 10 years. it's not the scenery... it's the mentality. i don't know about down under... but our money is the same or worse than it was in the 1980s... and going down. i guess I'm a special case... I'm not a truck lover... I'm a truck driver. i have never had a personal attachment to an object... such as a truck. it's a tool. it either makes me money or it doesn't. i realize that a lot of guys on this forum are not long haulers. perhaps i should quantify my statements. I'm speaking as a regular 53ft dry van over the road driver/owner. putting on at least 200,000km a year. there is seldom anyone at the end of my haul saying... "gooday mate... how was your trip" i spend half my day getting through heavy traffic and the rest of it going as fast as i can to make up for the time i lost in the first half. 1,000km a day... minimum. sometimes 1300 or 1400. sometimes the day doesn't end. we don't stop just because a few feet of snow has fallen, or it's -40c. or because there are a couple dozen trucks in the ditch. we don't even slow down. if you slow down in a blizzard... the guys passing you at 100kmh wash you out and send you into the ditch anyways... so you might as well go fast and take your chances. it is the never ending stream of trucks that actually keep the road open. the tow trucks and plows try to keep up for the first few hours of the carnage but eventually give up and leave you to the beast. most of the carnage happens in the flat stuff. when your going full out. in 80kmh winds mixed with snow or rain. a meter of snow is not uncommon in one fall... and it always comes with gale force winds.. still we don't stop. the last time a shut down occurred it poured rain for a few hours then the temperature dropped almost 30 deg while almost 70cm of snow fell in a 12 hour period... then came the 90kmh winds. the only reason the highway was closed was because it was physically impossible to put the trucks on the raod without them blowing into the ditch... moving or not...lol that's just same old same old. believe it or not... this is the fun part of trucking as far as I'm concerned. whoever makes it to the other side wins... we get to keep our jobs for another day. they will find a way to get rid of you if you refuse to drive like this. if you do hit the ditch... insurance dictates that they must get rid of you. forcing you to take a jobs with worse and worse companies with worse and worse equipment. bad equipment means more violations. which means eventually your in a never ending loop of living check to check. there are drivers that manage to do alright... but for the overwhelming majority... it is one of the reasons so many walk away from trucking in the first year or two. drivers with clean records hear are extremely rare. usually the puddle jumpers(guys that work local on regular routs... by the hour). the average annual net pay for a long hauler is 36k a year. after working about 320 days out of the year... away from home. I'm pretty sure day cabs were invented to keep us long hauling... god offal things. city work means horrible equipment... no ac/heat/mirrors... moving violations.
Am i pessimistic? I'm a conservative pessimist.