Appreciating the American trucker
By
Rory Ryan-hcpress@cinci.rr.com
For whatever reasons, I’ve always admired and appreciated the American trucker.
In fact, I’m not ashamed to admit that I like truckin’ songs. From C.W. McCall’s “Wolf Creek Pass,” to Del Reeves’ “The Girl on the
Billboard” to Dave Dudley’s classic “Six Days on the Road,” the music of the American truck driver is as much its own lyrical genre as the vernacular of the diesel mechanic is its own language.
When the History Channel produced “Ice Road Truckers,” a TV show about over-the-road drivers (I like Lisa) on the Dalton and Dempster Highways in Alaska, they could count on me as a fan.
I’m not exactly sure how to explain why I respect truckers, but I do.
Maybe it’s because if I’m eating something, drinking something, wearing something, sitting on something or using something, odds are that “something” arrived at the local store from where it was purchased by way of the American trucker.
In two previous jobs, part of my duties included loading and unloading semi trailers on a forklift truck. If you’ve never driven a forklift – in reverse – the length of a 48-foot semi trailer on a dark, icy winter morning with 2,000 pounds on the forks and a slight incline back to the dock, you might not appreciate this. But the truck drivers out there will.
Believe me. They appreciate timely and efficient dock service.
Last week, our favorite R&L Carriers driver showed up right on time with a delivery of PDI plastic bags for the newspapers. For the record, The Highland County Press, being located in the former Boltz-Haggerty Shoe Store, does not have a dock. Instead, we have an alley.
The R&L Carriers driver knows this and he’s made an adjustment or two since he first started delivering to us. We do our best to help unload each shipment and get him back on the road. Back to his next stop. Back to his terminal. Back to his home.
There’s a scene about truck drivers in one of my favorite movies (and books), John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”
The Oklahoma Dust Bowl, Depression-era Joad family pulls into a New Mexico filling station (that’s what we used to call a gas station) in their overheated truck. In the truckstop diner, a waitress is joking around with two truck drivers at the lunch counter.
Pa Joad enters the restaurant with the two young children in tow and asks to buy a loaf of bread for a dime.
The waitress says: “This ain’t a grocery store. We got bread to make sandwiches. You can’t buy no loaf of bread for a dime. We only got 15-cent loafs.”
The diner’s cook overhears this conversation, understands the family’s poverty and plight, and sells a day-old loaf of bread for a dime.
Pa Joad says “It may sound funny bein’ so tight, but we got a thousand miles to go and we don’t know if we’ll make it.” With the two youngsters standing beside him and eyeing the candy case, the poor old man asks the waitress, “Is them penny candies, ma’am?”
The previously condescending waitress replies, “Oh, them, well, uh, no. Them’s two for a penny.”
“Give us two, then,” the old man says and hands over one of his few, precious pennies as if it were a rare, gold coin. And to the Joad family, it probably was.
After the Joads leave, a truck driver tells the waitress, “Them ain’t two-for-a-cent candy. Them’s a nickel apiece candy.”
“What’s it to you?” the waitress responds.
The truckers leave a huge tip and walk out as the waitress yells, “Wait a minute, you got change comin.’”
“What’s it to you?” a trucker asks.
The waitress got the scene’s final words (as women tend to do): “Truck drivers.”
Truck drivers, indeed.
By and large, they are a wonderful, hard-
working, carefree class of citizens. But don’t cross them.
Truckers have to put up with an awful lot. From dangerous road conditions to rush-hour traffic to often unreasonable and inconsistent state and federal regulations, they still somehow manage to deliver the goods.
It’s often amazed me that every winter the media publish words of appreciation to the snow plow drivers who work “around the clock” to keep the highways open and, at the same time, fail to mention that if an OTR driver worked like that, he or she would lose his or her CDL.
One of the best friends the American trucker has is the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA). OOIDA represents all professional truckers, from company drivers and owner-operators to retired truckers and spouse members.
Last week in California, OOIDA teamed up with The Calguns Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the Folsom Shooting Club and two individual truckers to challenge the state’s soon-to-be implemented ban on the interstate shipment of handgun ammunition to California.
According to OOIDA, “last year, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 962 into law, which goes into effect February 2011. The law will criminalize the delivery and transfer of handgun ammunition not done in face-to-face transactions. It also requires shipping companies to implement procedures to determine whether the recipient of a package containing handgun ammunition is covered by one of the exceptions in the law before delivering handgun ammunition in California. This places a big burden on the shippers, and will make shipping ammunition to California much more difficult and likely more expensive.
“The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento’s Eastern District Federal Court, alleges that these provisions of the law violate the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, which prohibits states and local municipalities from interfering with carriers’ rates, routes or services.
“This isn’t about firearms or ammunition. Congress made an important decision to keep motor carriers free from a patchwork of burdensome regulation as we move America’s goods to market,” said Jim Johnston, OOIDA president. “We cannot allow California to subject our members to criminal liability where the state has no right to meddle.”
Good luck on this one. But let’s remember, California is, after all, the same state that sent the Truculent Trifecta of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi to Congress.
Thirty years ago, I was driving on I-65 from Louisville to Bowling Green, Ky., and I watched a group of upset semi drivers effectively shut down the interstate. I can’t recall whether they were angry over the 1980 recession, high fuel prices or just ticked off in general. But I do remember thinking: If we tick off the American trucker – en masse – Lord help us.
So, let’s offer our support to truck drivers, whether it’s a matter of legislation in Washington or in the state capitals, or whether it’s simply extending a little highway courtesy.
Most of us travel the roads and enjoy the scenery without realizing we are in the official workplace of the nation’s truck drivers.
Think about it.
Rory Ryan is publisher and editor of The Highland County Press.[[In-content Ad]]
In fact, I’m not ashamed to admit that I like truckin’ songs. From C.W. McCall’s “Wolf Creek Pass,” to Del Reeves’ “The Girl on the
Billboard” to Dave Dudley’s classic “Six Days on the Road,” the music of the American truck driver is as much its own lyrical genre as the vernacular of the diesel mechanic is its own language.
When the History Channel produced “Ice Road Truckers,” a TV show about over-the-road drivers (I like Lisa) on the Dalton and Dempster Highways in Alaska, they could count on me as a fan.
I’m not exactly sure how to explain why I respect truckers, but I do.
Maybe it’s because if I’m eating something, drinking something, wearing something, sitting on something or using something, odds are that “something” arrived at the local store from where it was purchased by way of the American trucker.
In two previous jobs, part of my duties included loading and unloading semi trailers on a forklift truck. If you’ve never driven a forklift – in reverse – the length of a 48-foot semi trailer on a dark, icy winter morning with 2,000 pounds on the forks and a slight incline back to the dock, you might not appreciate this. But the truck drivers out there will.
Believe me. They appreciate timely and efficient dock service.
Last week, our favorite R&L Carriers driver showed up right on time with a delivery of PDI plastic bags for the newspapers. For the record, The Highland County Press, being located in the former Boltz-Haggerty Shoe Store, does not have a dock. Instead, we have an alley.
The R&L Carriers driver knows this and he’s made an adjustment or two since he first started delivering to us. We do our best to help unload each shipment and get him back on the road. Back to his next stop. Back to his terminal. Back to his home.
There’s a scene about truck drivers in one of my favorite movies (and books), John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”
The Oklahoma Dust Bowl, Depression-era Joad family pulls into a New Mexico filling station (that’s what we used to call a gas station) in their overheated truck. In the truckstop diner, a waitress is joking around with two truck drivers at the lunch counter.
Pa Joad enters the restaurant with the two young children in tow and asks to buy a loaf of bread for a dime.
The waitress says: “This ain’t a grocery store. We got bread to make sandwiches. You can’t buy no loaf of bread for a dime. We only got 15-cent loafs.”
The diner’s cook overhears this conversation, understands the family’s poverty and plight, and sells a day-old loaf of bread for a dime.
Pa Joad says “It may sound funny bein’ so tight, but we got a thousand miles to go and we don’t know if we’ll make it.” With the two youngsters standing beside him and eyeing the candy case, the poor old man asks the waitress, “Is them penny candies, ma’am?”
The previously condescending waitress replies, “Oh, them, well, uh, no. Them’s two for a penny.”
“Give us two, then,” the old man says and hands over one of his few, precious pennies as if it were a rare, gold coin. And to the Joad family, it probably was.
After the Joads leave, a truck driver tells the waitress, “Them ain’t two-for-a-cent candy. Them’s a nickel apiece candy.”
“What’s it to you?” the waitress responds.
The truckers leave a huge tip and walk out as the waitress yells, “Wait a minute, you got change comin.’”
“What’s it to you?” a trucker asks.
The waitress got the scene’s final words (as women tend to do): “Truck drivers.”
Truck drivers, indeed.
By and large, they are a wonderful, hard-
working, carefree class of citizens. But don’t cross them.
Truckers have to put up with an awful lot. From dangerous road conditions to rush-hour traffic to often unreasonable and inconsistent state and federal regulations, they still somehow manage to deliver the goods.
It’s often amazed me that every winter the media publish words of appreciation to the snow plow drivers who work “around the clock” to keep the highways open and, at the same time, fail to mention that if an OTR driver worked like that, he or she would lose his or her CDL.
One of the best friends the American trucker has is the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA). OOIDA represents all professional truckers, from company drivers and owner-operators to retired truckers and spouse members.
Last week in California, OOIDA teamed up with The Calguns Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the Folsom Shooting Club and two individual truckers to challenge the state’s soon-to-be implemented ban on the interstate shipment of handgun ammunition to California.
According to OOIDA, “last year, Gov. Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 962 into law, which goes into effect February 2011. The law will criminalize the delivery and transfer of handgun ammunition not done in face-to-face transactions. It also requires shipping companies to implement procedures to determine whether the recipient of a package containing handgun ammunition is covered by one of the exceptions in the law before delivering handgun ammunition in California. This places a big burden on the shippers, and will make shipping ammunition to California much more difficult and likely more expensive.
“The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento’s Eastern District Federal Court, alleges that these provisions of the law violate the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, which prohibits states and local municipalities from interfering with carriers’ rates, routes or services.
“This isn’t about firearms or ammunition. Congress made an important decision to keep motor carriers free from a patchwork of burdensome regulation as we move America’s goods to market,” said Jim Johnston, OOIDA president. “We cannot allow California to subject our members to criminal liability where the state has no right to meddle.”
Good luck on this one. But let’s remember, California is, after all, the same state that sent the Truculent Trifecta of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi to Congress.
Thirty years ago, I was driving on I-65 from Louisville to Bowling Green, Ky., and I watched a group of upset semi drivers effectively shut down the interstate. I can’t recall whether they were angry over the 1980 recession, high fuel prices or just ticked off in general. But I do remember thinking: If we tick off the American trucker – en masse – Lord help us.
So, let’s offer our support to truck drivers, whether it’s a matter of legislation in Washington or in the state capitals, or whether it’s simply extending a little highway courtesy.
Most of us travel the roads and enjoy the scenery without realizing we are in the official workplace of the nation’s truck drivers.
Think about it.
Rory Ryan is publisher and editor of The Highland County Press.[[In-content Ad]]