Why on earth would a fifty-something, well brought-up mother all of a sudden make a decision to drive a truck?
It was an excellent question and, like the majority of good questions it had answers both basic and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s a conventional immigrant job’ via ‘well, I’m able to earn more cash in a truck than I can by using a Master’s degree’ with a detour along ‘I’ve driven ambulances and stretch limos, if I would like to get bigger it’s either a truck or perhaps a plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated everything.
And these were merely the rationalisations for a much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been looking at on the highway ever since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There was clearly no rationalisation obviously for the other vague pull, a lifelong obsession with doing things merely because they’re just a little unusual.
Adding to my list of justifications that it seemed like a terrific angle for a book on trucking assisted somewhat when trying to explain to individuals with no imagination, although not much.
In reality, I hadn’t predicted fear when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I just needed to determine what it took to be a lady trucker. I wanted to observe North America, how hard could it be?
Of course there is a slight difference between understanding how to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming of receiving payment to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours per day smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers filled with mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s endless prairies and across The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to return 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 storyline.
Ihave been almost arrested in Baltimore, sick as a dog in Tennessee, terrified in Chicago, Dallas and Detroit and dug from the snow twice in a night in Alberta. I’ve made friends in Virginia and foes in Ontario. And, given half a chance, I would probably forget all about how impossibly strenuous it is and go out again to take 18 wheels over the horizon.