I’ve heard that a good way to get quickly to the heart and soul of an American region is to get a haircut. Barbers tend to be the “born and raised” types who can quickly familiarize you with a place, and making conversation is in their job description. Well, if you want to get to know the heart and soul of many places, oversee a large-scale trucking operation. Truckers come from every corner of the Republic (and the world), and the solitude of their work leaves them starved for conversation and volunteering all kinds of information. It’s the good stuff too, that which eludes the polite small talk that usually governs initial encounters.
I do not claim to be an expert on trucking, but I did get a crash course on the industry as I was responsible for coordinating over 50 truck contracts. I saw both the commercial and the personal, and I found myself fascinated by the various characters I encountered. I felt I had a front row seat to the melting pot of America.
A Bottom-Up View of the Trucking Industry
One might think that the trucking industry, which is indispensable to the American economy, would run like a well-oiled machine. One would be wrong. At least for one-off government contracts like the ones I was running, it is pure chaos. “Carriers” or the entities that fulfill contracts, make bids and the lowest bidder gets the rights to the contract. They bid on these contracts with the pipe dream hope that they can satisfy the contract, rather than any guarantee. They take their contract and farm it out to dispatchers, who find truckers to drive the loads.
From my perspective, this process seems to consist of finding drivers in their network who are doing jobs in the general vicinity. This can be drivers within 100 miles, but some truckers “deadhead,” or drive without any load for over 500 miles.
So much can go wrong! Trucks break down, which happened to 5% of my loads. Sometimes truckers have difficulty off-loading what’s on their truck, which can delay them by multiple days if it happens on a weekend and there is no one available to offload. This afflicted another 5% of loads. Sometimes drivers just bail and decide they don’t want to drive anymore (again, 5%). Some carriers simply can’t find anyone willing to drive the load.
Delays are also caused by regulation. One driver showed up and cancelled because he didn’t have the permits to carry a 25 ton load. He claims his dispatcher hoped he would ignore the weight and drive at the risk of a $5,000 personal fine. Another driver left and later returned his load because it was 400 pounds too heavy. Drivers can only drive for ten hours before needing to rest for another ten hours. They have to rest an additional 33 hours after 80 hours of cumulative driving. These constraints appear to be completely ignored by the dispatchers, who simply hope for the best. Different states have different regulations, which the conscientious drivers obey to a tee. Some drivers did not seem to care about the regulations, or perhaps they were unaware of their existence.
These delays and cancellations create a constant panic to satisfy contracts, often culminating in a last-minute phone call from the carrier to the customer (me) saying they can’t help us anymore. Ten hours before my flight home left, I needed two more trucks to show up and there were no prospects. A carrier scrambled and found two drivers, who arrived at 9 pm and spared me from moving my flight.
A Chaotic Symphony of Americana
There’s no theme to tie my experiences together, so I will just walk you through the chaos from my perspective. I have phone numbers and contact information for approximately half of the contracts. The other half of the contracts are either not fulfilled, the carrier is delinquent in providing the contact information, or the carrier does not even know which trucker is coming to pick up the load. I just sit and wait in the desert sun as trucks show up and phone numbers from all across the country call me. I do not know when or if trucks will show. There is no preparation, only reaction.
I get a call from a dispatcher, who asks me for directions. “Yea, I’ve got a driver trying to pick up a load from you. He’s at the Love’s truck stop in Boron. He’s an old guy, doesn’t have a smartphone or GPS. Could you give me directions to your location from there?” I hardly knew where I was. Boron? Boron was only an element on the periodic table to me prior to the call. “Uh, I’m not very familiar with the area and I don’t have any service, can you look on Google Maps?” The dispatcher then talks me through some vague directions and hangs up.
A few minutes later I get a call from the aforementioned “old guy”, who has the same request. “Can you put someone from ‘round here on the phone to give me some directions?” He wanted someone to tell him “take a right after the red barn, a left at the tire marks in the road that kind of look like a teapot, and then head straight for the first half of John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’ Once he hits the refrain, it should be on your left.” I scramble to find someone with service and manage to guide him in. He shows up in a beat up semi with a big grin on his face, expressed through his four remaining teeth. “I found you!” I try to get him loaded up but it’s hard to get away, as he wants to tell me all about the rural Arkansas town he has lived in since he was born.
Another truck shows up, I excuse myself and run over to get him loaded up. He doesn’t speak any english. He’s from Siberia, and opens a group chat in his phone. Between the lines of Cyrillic characters, I see the contract number and manage to back him up on a ramp so we can drive the correct load onto his truck.
The Russian embodies the work ethic of the trucking industry. Perhaps it was because he lacked the English to communicate the details of his undoubtedly interesting life, but he gets straight to work securing his load and in 15 minutes he is back on the road headed to his destination. Time is money. When you’re not driving with a loaded semi, you are wasting time and money. The name of the game is optimizing time spent driving loads. This means minimizing distances between the delivery of one shipment and the pickup of another, the time to load, and the time to unload. A trucker must weigh his need for social interaction against his financial interests.
I jog back to the Arkansan, who does not seem to be particularly concerned with getting back on the road. We get him loaded up, and I ask him if he knows where he’s going. I was puzzled at his lack of smartphone or GPS. He then explains every road covering his 1,000 mile trek to Colorado. He has a photographic memory of the interstate system, and he had been to the destination once. He then recounts the local roads that run between Fort Carson and I-25. He explains all the gates on post, their relative location to each other, and everything that happened the last time he delivered a load to Fort Carson. I lack the descriptive powers to effectively convey this toothless savant’s knowledge, but hopefully the fact that he has been trucking for 20 years without any navigational tools will suffice. I finally pull away to tend to another truck that shows up, and leave him to securing his load. He didn’t leave for another two hours, finding some more people to regale with his stories.
A man in a leather vest from the backwoods of Tennessee shows up. He is also missing several teeth. He is driving with a scantily clad female partner. I understood maybe a third of the words he spoke through his accent. He was anxious to get driving again.
A few minutes later a Sikh man shows up. He has been driving since 1995, and he explains all the ins and outs of driving military equipment. Many of the veteran drivers took immense pride in their work, and enjoyed explaining all of the details. While he was never in the Army, he knew the equipment he was transporting better than the operators who drive it, and insisted that the air suspension be let out among other things. He shows the vehicle operator how to execute the complicated tasks he wants before securing the load. He’s a true professional, and explains the importance of properly securing your equipment. He had been in an accident, and was proud to report that his 30 ton load did not budge because he properly chained it down. He recommended that when I start trucking, I ride along with an experienced driver for 6 months to truly learn the trade.
A former Amish farmer shows up and gives me the same lecture on securing loads. He talks about the perks of trucking. He had considered getting a new job, but he was scared of having a boss and losing the freedom associated with trucking. “That’s one of the great things about this job. I own my own truck, drive when I want, spend time with my family when I want. And the money is pretty good.” After speaking to many drivers, this was the consensus on the appeal of trucking: working on your own terms, seeing the country, and earning a good living. How American!
I get one final class on tie-downs from the veteran driving our heaviest piece of equipment. He’s transporting a 55 ton piece of equipment on a nine axle trailer. The truck and trailer weigh 35 tons empty. He explains how serious the job is. “You have to work your way up and study hard because when you are driving 200,000 pounds across the country, anything you touch is destroyed. I am driving a lethal weapon.”
Some truckers were more happy-go-lucky, like my friend from Arkansas. A man from Southern California recommended I get into trucking. To him, the main obstacle to a successful trucking life was having babies all across the country. “You’re single? Then this is for you.” The phrase he used was “dick control.” “These young guys can’t help themselves. They’re driving all across the country and making babies everywhere they go. That’s gonna f&*k with your bread.” I’m not sure how widespread this issue is among young truckers, but it had clearly colored his experiences.
I helped an Eastern European immigrant secure his load, putting all my lessons to good use. He was bent over on a knee ratcheting down the chain binders and stopped abruptly. He stood up straight and put his hands behind his head. He was sweating profusely and breathing heavily. I thought he was having a heart attack. “Sir, are you feeling ok?” “It’s good, just need to stop smoking. Can I sleep here tonight?” I tell him he’s fine to sleep here and he recedes to his cab and prepares for ten hours of driving. While some make it look easy, this driver reminds me of the physical toll trucking takes on the body. You sit in a chair all day and have little choice but to eat junk food. Periodically you get out, climb all over the truck bed, lug heavy chains, and ratchet gear down to the bed before returning to the sedentary repose of the driver’s seat.
A Mexican driver arrived and told me about his side gig of personally training racing horses. He was upset that Covid had caused the cancellation of races and wasted his investments. He seemed indifferent to what was loaded on his truck. “That’s it?” he commented, disappointed by the 15 ton vehicle I loaded on his truck. “You sure there’s nothing else?”
A man calls at 9:30 pm to share he’s arrived. I walk out to meet his truck and there is nothing in sight. “I don’t think you guys are at the right location.” I send them a Google Maps pin and he says he is 30 minutes away. 2.5 hours later, he shows up. It’s now midnight and I have to wake people up to load up the truck.
It’s a driving pair, which was a first. There is an old Jamaican man in his 60s and a young Nigerian man, probably 25. The Nigerian man was on his first trip trying to learn the trade. They go to secure the load, but they only have one chain binder (the piece of equipment used to tighten chains). The older Jamaican man says “I thought you said you had 6!” “I had 6 chains” “What good do chains do without a way to tighten them!” The old man shakes the one chain binder they did have and appears to brandish it as a weapon. The old man is frustrated and I’m agitated too. It’s the middle of the night, and these guys turn to me to provide them with the equipment they need to secure their load. Why do all the truckers presume that I can be useful? They drop the trailer from the truck and drive off another 50 miles to the nearest store to buy chain binders. 8 hours later they are finally on the road. The chains were loose as they drove off and I shrugged it off; they made it to the destination without issue.
The next day a driver from Dallas calls to ask for directions. “I don’t have my usual phone, so I’m having trouble getting there.” I give him some directions and he shows up. He was picking up his first ever load and asked me to explain how it works. “Where were the other drivers distributing the weight? Where were their axles?” I do my best to oblige him. He gives another complaint about the company phone he was using. “Is your usual phone broken?” I ask. “I’m trying to make some money to get my usual phone turned on. Bet you don’t have to worry about that. I was homeless a few days ago.”
The last load was picked up by a 25 year old Slavic driver from Chicago at 9 pm. The loading took place during a sandstorm. We had to load four containers onto his truck as the sand whipped in our faces and filled every exposed orifice. We were unsure if all the equipment was going to fit on his bed, as he already had one load in his truck, so he used his feet as a measuring stick and accurately predicted the amount of space we would have left within a few inches. He eventually took over operating the forklift because the operator was very slow and inexperienced. “I worked five years in a warehouse, I know the tricks.”
And it was over. All equipment had been loaded and shipped. My career as a trucking coordinator was over. I write this essay in appreciation of these truckers and in awe of the industry. Truckers are hard workers, engaged in physically taxing work to provide for themselves and their families. They’re silent heroes, dedicated to moving the things we need to survive. They’re smart, capable of navigating using my poor directions, resourceful in the face of adversity, financially savvy and they take pride in what they do. And they have plenty of good stories.