Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

This is kind of the opposite of the previous post of Old Timers. My grandfather farmed a little and boarded horses for extra income, but never had to depend on farming to feed his family. I have the utmost respect for real farmers and older drivers. But I do realize that the world will never be the same as it was yesterday and it won’t be the same tomorrow. Seems like some of these old guys don’t realize that. That was my only point in my last post.

Long ago when I first started driving, I walked into this little truck stop café in Lawton, OK. Not even a truck stop. Just a diner with a big dirt parking lot. The parking lot was filled with independent owner-operator trucks and old pickups. I walked in and sat at the counter.

We feed the world

It was more than a little awkward, I felt really out of place. Here were all these truck drivers and farmers from the area eating breakfast in this little diner which was packed. It was like the old days in a small town where all the farmers got together in the morning and gossiped and complained about the world in general. It was odd in the way that, here were the men that fed the country and the world despite the good intentions of our government.

Beside the farmers were the independent drivers that carried their grain and cattle from their farms to the co-op or the feed lots. And despite more regulations from our government these men drove their trucks and farmed their land like generations before them, even against all odds of making a living out of providing for the rest of the world.

Too many brokers

Government regulations are in their lives more than any other industry. Each man was his own business and could go under tomorrow because of the slightest fluctuation in grain, cattle or fuel prices, and the world wouldn’t notice. The people that make the money are the middlemen, so called brokers. Men and large corporations that buy from the farmers at the cheapest price they can get away with, and paying the truckers that move it the cheapest that they can and trying to sell the commodity around the country or around the world for the biggest buck. They don’t make or grow anything; they take the commodities from others and sell them for more.

An Addiction by any other name…

So many regulations and so many people against all of us, but we still do it. They still farm, we still truck because it’s what we love to do. It’s something that needs to be done. I’ve talked with a lot of drivers that have taken a break and tried to do some other “normal” job. Home every night, home cooked meals daily, able to go fishing every weekend. They always come back to the road. It’s something that gets in our blood. It fits every description of an addiction of any other kind. I’m sure farmers get the same addiction. Most of it is the independence – no one looking over your shoulder, no time clock to punch. If I want to work at night, I work at night. If I don’t want to work, I don’t.

Most other jobs you can’t really see the importance of the job itself. Farming and trucking, you know you are part of the economy. We see it everyday. People in the big cities think they are better than small town folk. Small towns support big cities in so many ways they don’t realize all the “back woods” folk that allow big cities to have traffic jams. When was the last time you saw a restaurants that grew their own food? I could go on and on.

Don’t you think trucking is the best job you’re ever going to hate? It’s not for everyone, but once you get hooked, you’re in it for good. You might stop driving, but like an alcoholic that stops drinking, you wish you could have just one more.