Why would a fifty-something, nicely brought-up mother all of a sudden make a decision to go trucking?
It was a good question and, like most good questions it had answers both simple and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s a traditional immigrant job’ via ‘well, I can earn more dollars in a truck than I can by using a Master’s degree’ with a detour along ‘I’ve driven ambulances and stretch limos, if I need to get bigger it’s either a truck or even a plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated everything.
And these were merely the rationalisations for a much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been watching while driving ever since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There was no rationalisation obviously for the other vague pull, a lifelong addiction to doing things merely because they are a bit odd.
Adding to my list of reasons that it seemed like a terrific angle for a book on trucking assisted slightly when explaining to people who have no imagination, although not much.
To tell the truth, I hadn’t anticipated fright when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I just desired to know what it took to be a trucking lady. I wanted to discover the United States, how hard could it be?
Needless to say there is a tiny distinction between learning to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming about getting paid to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours a day smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers packed with mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s vast prairies and across The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to return via Texas. That Lake Effect Winter Storm was just one of our countless weather-related narrow squeaks. North American trucking can be quite the escapade.
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 pals in Virginia and enemies in Ontario. And, given half a chance, I might probably forget about how impossibly tiring it is and set off again to steer 18 wheels over the horizon.