Why would a fifty-something, carefully brought-up mother all of a sudden make a decision to drive a truck?
It was a very good question and, like most good questions it had answers both simple and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s an authentic immigrant job’ via ‘well, I can earn more dollars in a truck than I can having a Master’s degree’ with a detour along ‘I’ve driven ambulances and stretch limos, if I would like to get bigger it’s either a truck or a plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated all of it.
And these were merely the rationalisations for the much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been looking at while driving ever since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There was clearly no rationalisation obviously for that other vague pull, a lifelong dependence on doing things merely because they’re a little bit weird.
Adding to my list of justifications that it seemed like a great angle for a book on trucking aided a bit when explaining to people who have no imagination, although not much.
In reality, I hadn’t anticipated fright when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I just needed to find out what it took to become a trucking lady. I wanted to observe America, how hard would it be?
Of course there is a minor difference between studying to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming of getting paid to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours per day smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers full of mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s unending prairies and over The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to come home via Texas. That Lake Effect Winter Storm was just an example of our countless weather-related narrow squeaks. North American trucking can be quite the drama.
Ihave been almost arrested in Baltimore, sick as a dog in Tennessee, terrified in Chicago, Dallas and Detroit and dug out from the snow twice within a night in Alberta. I’ve made buddies in Virginia and foes in Ontario. And, given half a chance, I’d probably forget about how impossibly exhausting it is and head out again to take 18 wheels over the horizon.