Confessions of a Truck Driver

I found myself in a precarious situation. One in which I moved to a beautiful small town where I assumed that finding work would be no problem. Unfortunately after I moved to my little utopia on the sunrise side of Michigan, my windows overlooking Lake Huron, I quickly realized that finding the work to sustain my family was going to be near impossible. I did the only thing I thought I could do at the time. I became a Truck Driver.

You see us rumbling down the highways and passing through your towns. Backing into stores and warehouses. Sitting next to you like a great purring behemoth at intersections. The mighty Tractor/Trailer has become such a staple in todays world that people pay them little notice. More often than not, the big rigs are nothing more than a nuisance. Getting in your way when you want to drive faster, get there sooner, move farther, and change lanes. We are pests.

Pests that haul every single item you own, and every single item you own has passed through the domain of the truck driver. I call it such because it's an entirely different world out there. It's not a job, and It's not a career. Some call it a lifestyle. I call it another world. A world that I left because it was destroying the very fiber of my being. I was slowly dying inside, just to make sure your gods arrived on time. Your rolls of paper, your food, your clothing, your car parts, your furniture, your medical supplies, your beer. Building supplies, school supplies, fashion goods, party supplies. Your entertainment, your media. Your games and toys. I hated you for it. For what I had to live through so you could go on with your daily life. Oblivious to what I had to live in, ungrateful for what you have and how it got there. Let me enlighten you.

A quick summary: 5 axles, 9+ gears, only 10 hours to rest, 11 hours of driving, 18 wheels, up to 31 pages of logs a month where I record every move I make, hundreds of dollars a month in expenses, thousands of pounds of freight, hundreds of thousands of little 4 wheelers (you) zipping around me... and I was encased in a box no bigger than most peoples bathroom. Doesn't seem like much by itself, but there's more. So much more to my nightmare.