Truck Drivers Deliver Insight About Life Behind the Wheel
GREENCASTLE, Pa. — If tempted to stereotype truckers, visit a truck stop and you’ll quickly appreciate that drivers are individuals with plenty of insight on a wide range of topics: food, car drivers, law enforcement and much more.
Their uniqueness was clearly apparent in conversations at a TravelCenters of America here during a recent visit by Transport Topics.
They were part of a steady stream of customers, en route to places such as Boston and Laredo, Texas, (some 2,272 miles apart, if you follow driver Richard Krabill’s route, using Interstate 684 and avoiding New York).
Listen to Mike Barwick, on a longhaul U.S. mail run at the stop along I-81, as he delivers a lesson on judging fresh asparagus.
“There’s a cracking sound when you break the stem,” he said, tying that fact to his own career. When lower-priced competitors started hauling wilted produce that he knew customers wouldn’t like, Barwick quit, moved to the Boston area, began shuttling mail around Massachusetts and got to sleep in his own bed nightly.
And meet Bill George, an independent who’s been driving for 44 years, and has “run 5 million miles without scratching a bumper.” He targeted judgmental law enforcement.
“Stupid cops are pulling people over when they are not in a good spot,” said the upstate New York resident. He offered firsthand examples, such as a police traffic stop on a blind grade and another on a blind curve.
“Get the hell off the road,” was George’s advice, spiced with this comment, “They are endangering the public. When they do that, they should be the ones subject to charges.”
Krabill agreed. “When they pull someone over,” said the 14-year veteran who interrupted his thought to add that he wasn’t criticizing all cops, “they need to use their heads.”
The Virginia resident, who drives for Texas-based BCB Transport, then offered advice on directions and delays. He avoids I-95 “the parking lot of the East Coast” and the congested New York area.
Flatbed driver Steven Young, with Taylor Truck Line in Northfield, Minnesota, said he skirted Northeast congestion by driving in off-hours, though he lamented having to pay $410 in tolls to run to the Northeast.
Directions also mattered to Danny Knowles, faced with the choice of avoiding I-95 or braving it on his way to make four drop-offs in the Boston area for Texas carrier Copper Express.
“Congestion is not going stop,” he said, making it clear where he’d go.
Then the conversation turned to other everyday challenges, such as car drivers who aggravated every trucker. “The biggest problem on the road is that telephone,” the 31-year driving veteran said. “People are texting and talking so much. It’s dangerous, like a drunk leaving from a bar at 2 o’clock in the morning.”
“When you put on your signal light, that is a cue for the cars to mash on their gas pedals,” said a Knight Transportation driver who called himself Robbie O. “I have a 65 miles-per-hour [speed-governed] truck,” the 19-year driving veteran said. “Whatever happened to [car drivers’] signaling?”
Krabill observed that drivers who don’t signal put everyone at risk because they don’t realize how difficult it can be to safely avoid them.
Joshua Edison, a 23-year old Werner Enterprises team driver, agreed with his elder colleagues.
“The biggest challenge we face is the everyday people on the road,” he said while dining with a co-driver who identified himself as Mike. “The rest of the job is pretty simple.”
Josh summed up how to cope with car drivers’ foibles. “We are professionals. We just have to go with it.”
Truckers also care about some issues that occupy Washington types, such as a lack of truck parking. That’s a subject the U.S. Department of Transportation is trying to address with a newly formed coalition.
The Knight driver, a San Francisco resident, was among those worried nightly about finding a parking space. At Greencastle, store manager Kathy Frady said spaces are gone by 4 or 5 p.m. unless drivers make a reservation.
Electronic logs were a divisive issue — just like in Washington.
George, the independent driver, used an obscenity to describe ELDs, saying that they are “forcing people to do what they aren’t meant to do. The ELD doesn’t take the body clock into account.”
Knowles had a similar view, adding he didn’t like speed limiters, either.
“When you put a driver on the clock, they have to watch where they go every minute,” Knowles said. “They can’t take a break when they want to. The more electronic gadgets you have, the more it takes the mind of the driver off the road.”
Werner drivers Edison and Mike, headed for Laredo, supported the ELD that has been on all of their employer’s trucks since 1998.
Knowles also offered a new spin on the ELD debate, pointing to the contradiction of regulating drivers by hours worked and paying them on a different basis — by the mile.
“Paying drivers by the hour would do away with a lot of problems,” he said, because drivers wouldn’t be tempted to run the extra miles they need, regardless of hours, in order to make a living.
Some other Washington issues, such as hair testing and new entrant rules, never came up.
Understandably, drivers were more concerned with personal matters.
Herman Thompson, who drives for Arizona’s Secured Land Transport, said missing his family was the toughest part of his job. So did Young and others.
Despite those hardships, drivers at Greencastle get some satisfaction from doing something that admittedly is hard work that many people don’t want to do.
“I love my job,” Young said. “Taylor is a good company.”
He went through four fleets in a year, looking for one with a lease-purchase program that he liked. One short-term employer gave him a truck with a “dead” axle, whose absence of power made it tough to access job sites, he said.
Thompson also illustrated drivers’ career flexibility. When construction jobs dried up in Arizona during the recession, he left his first career as a mason and started driving a truck.
Edison turned to Werner for the financial opportunity he couldn’t find in low-wage jobs at home.
George had a one-word answer when asked what kept him in trucking: “freedom.”
