Why on earth would a fifty-something, well brought-up mother suddenly decide to go trucking?
It was an excellent question and, like the majority of good questions it had answers both simple and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s a traditional immigrant job’ via ‘well, I can earn more money in a truck than I’m able to using 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 even plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated all of it.
And these were merely the rationalisations for a much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been observing on the highway since emigrating from the UK to Canada. Clearly there was no rationalisation obviously for the other vague pull, a lifelong addiction to doing things merely because they are a bit weird.
Adding to my list of justifications that it appeared to be a great angle for a book on trucking assisted a bit when explaining to individuals with no imagination, but not much.
In all honesty, I hadn’t predicted panic when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I merely wished to know what it took to be a trucking lady. I wanted to observe the USA, how hard can it be?
Obviously there is a slight difference between understanding how to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming about getting paid to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours a day smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers filled with mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s vast prairies and across The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to get back home via Texas. That Lake Effect Winter Storm was just one of our countless weather-related narrow squeaks. North American trucking can be quite the drama.
Ihave been almost arrested in Baltimore, sick as a dog in Tennessee, terrified in Chicago, Dallas and Detroit and dug out of the snow twice in a single night in Alberta. I’ve made buddies in Virginia and enemies in Ontario. And, given half a chance, I would probably forget about how impossibly exhausting it is and set off again to take 18 wheels over the horizon.