What would make a fifty-something, well brought-up mother suddenly make a decision to become a trucker?
It’s a really good question and, like the majority of good questions it had answers both basic and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s a traditional immigrant job’ via ‘well, earn more cash in a truck than I could with 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 maybe a plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated everything.
And these were merely the rationalisations for just a much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been enjoying watching on the roads ever since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There was no rationalisation obviously for the other vague pull, a lifelong obsession with doing things merely because they are slightly peculiar.
Adding to my list of reasons that it seemed like an excellent angle for a book on trucking helped a tad when explaining to individuals with no imagination, but not much.
In reality, I hadn’t anticipated panic when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I just had to find out what it took to become a trucking lady. I wanted to observe the United States, how hard would it be?
Of course there is a tiny distinction between finding out how to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming about receiving payment to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours every day smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers full of mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s unending prairies and through The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to get home via Texas. That Lake Effect Winter Storm was just an example of our countless weather-related narrow squeaks. North American trucking can be quite the drama.
I’ve 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 adversaries here at home. And, given half a chance, I would probably forget about how impossibly tiring it is and go out again to take 18 wheels over the horizon.