Detour: A View from the Cab: Part 1

After I had gained more experience in trucking and made an adjustment to the trucking lifestyle, I came to realize that, as trucking companies go, there are many out there that are a lot worse than my first company. While I still consider my reasons for leaving to be valid, culture shock played a large role in the decision I made on that day. I had, after all, worked in an entirely different world for the past 20 years.


Trucking is not just a job; it is a lifestyle. For most, the transition to the trucking lifestyle is a difficult one. Once again, this is the reason why the vast majority of CDL school graduates are no longer in the trucking business after 3 months… or shorter. They are not prepared for the challenges that it presents, or for the days and weeks spent away from home and family.

Ultimately, I never regretted my decision to leave my first company because the next company would be an improvement. I would, however, discover that there are some universal truths about the trucking industry that are not always pretty.

One of the first, and most obvious, is that any company engaged in the trucking business is not going to offer the normal amenities that are taken for granted in most other jobs. For instance, sick leave is non-existent in most trucking jobs. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid… period.

When I worked a "normal" job, it never posed much of a problem if I needed to take half a day off for a doctor’s appointment. In trucking, keeping a medical or dental appointment can often be a roll of the dice. You never know if you are going to be home to keep it. I once lost a crown on one of my front teeth, and had to drive around for 2 weeks looking like a prizefighter that should consider alternative career options.

When I worked a "normal" job, no matter how stressful or harrowing the day had been, I always had the comfort of knowing that I would go home at the end of it and sleep in my own bed. In trucking, an OTR solo driver eats alone in his truck or at a truck stop at the end of a long day, and then retires to the "comfort" of a small sleeper berth. Then, he gets up after a few hours rest and does it all over again. I never thought that it would be possible to miss the company of some of my annoying former co-workers, but the loneliness of the road is very real.

One of the biggest issues that sticks in the craw of many, if not most, truckers are the anti-idling laws adopted by many states. These laws put limitations on the amount of time a truck is allowed to idle and offers stiff penalties to violators. For instance, in the city of Denver, a truck can legally idle for 10 minutes per hour. Well, if it is 8º in the Mile-High City, it takes 10 minutes or longer just to warm up a diesel engine. Do the lawmakers expect the driver to get up throughout the night every hour to idle for 10 minutes and then return to a freezing cocoon?

In Illinois, the law states that a driver must be present when idling. I wonder how law enforcement intends to discern this. Should they knock on the cab to wake us up? This seems like an equally brilliant method to assist a driver in developing a healthy sleep pattern.

The laws in other states are proportionately ingenious, but I think that the people who drafted these laws should attempt to rest in a 20º truck in the winter, or a 95º truck in the summer. Then, let’s drive 600 miles the next day and—think safety!

Unfortunately, this indifference to basic humanity does not stop with lawmakers. I have experienced it, firsthand, from a trucking company. The story goes like this:

Shortly after I had arrived in Odessa, Nebraska, my air-conditioning compressor died and it got well above 90º in the truck. I called the breakdown department to tell them that I needed to drop my load at a nearby terminal so that I could have it repaired. The initial reply that I got was, “The Company doesn’t consider air-conditioning to be a valid reason to T-call a load.”

My reply was, “That’s probably because ‘the company’ is not the one who is trying to get some rest in a ninety-five degree truck so that they can drive 600 miles tomorrow. If the roles were reversed I’ll bet the pointer on their ‘validity scale’ would have a dramatic reversal.”

I finally had to tell these morons that I would either drop my load at the terminal and get my A/C fixed, or I would turn in my truck at the terminal. Either way, I was going to take this load no farther than the terminal. Presented with these options, the company relented and gave me permission to get my A/C repaired.