Long Haul Trucker Quotes

Books are completely disappearing. Remember in Fahrenheit 451 where the fireman's wife was addicted to interactive television and they sent fireman crews out to burn books? That mission has been largely accomplished in middle-class America and they didn't need the firemen. The interactive electronics took care of it without the violence,

My terrifying struggle to stay alive became somehow routine. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast, tend my crops, fix broken stuff, eat lunch, answer e-mail, watch TV, eat dinner, go to bed. The life of a modern farmer. Then I was a trucker, doing a long haul across the world. And finally, a construction worker, rebuilding a ship in ways no one ever considered before this.

Waffle House at four in the morning is a liminal space occupied by long-haul truckers, bleary-eyed shift workers, and teenagers so high they can smell God’s breath.

This is one of the sweet spots where, as anyone who has done repetitive manual labor understands, the single minded focus, concentration, and hard physical work combine to form a sort of temporary nirvana.

It just feels nice to be an astronaut again. That’s all it is. Not a reluctant farmer, not an electrical engineer, not a long-haul trucker. An astronaut.

Just because someone doesn’t have a grasp of English doesn’t mean they don’t have a grasp on disparagement.

Dehumanizing service workers looks to me to be mostly about insecurity

It’s too late now. The game’s been won by companies who don’t two shits about community character or decent jobs. Congratufuckinglations, America! We did the deal. Now we’ve got an unlimited supply of cheap commodities and unhealthy food and crumbling downtowns, no sense of place, and a permanent under class. Yay. The underclass isn’t relegated to urban ghettos either. It’s coast to coast and especially in between. Take US 50 west from Kansas City to Sacramento or US 6 from Chicago to California and you’ll see a couple thousand miles of corn, soybeans, and terminally ill towns. It looks like a scene from The Walking Dead. If there’s such a thing as the American Heartland, it has a stake through it.

I still can’t quite believe that this is really it. I’m really leaving. This frigid desert has been my home for a year and a half. I figured out how to survive, at least for a while, and I got used to how things worked. My terrifying struggle to stay alive became somehow routine. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast, tend my crops, fix broken stuff, eat lunch, answer e-mail, watch TV, eat dinner, go to bed. The life of a modern farmer. Then I was a trucker, doing a long haul across the world. And finally, a construction worker, rebuilding a ship in ways no one ever considered before this. I’ve done a little of everything here, because I’m the only one around to do it.

Just when a jaundiced view of humanity was about to infect my soul with cynicism and resentment, fate dealt me the opposite hand to mess yet again with my worldview. The contrasts I regularly deal with would be so much more fun if I could just learn to roll with them

Whispering Pines, Palmetto Groves, Majestic Manor, Golden Gables, Century Village, Martin Downs, Sunburn Acres, Twin Beavers, or Sunset Farts. Who gives a shit? It’s the same old Florida crap. However these places get named, rest assured, the more lyrical the moniker, the more of a sunblasted, cookie-cutter nightmare the place will be.

Dan went on to describe his WoW-playing experiences. He was so addicted to WoW that he’d play straight through the night and wouldn’t eat, sleep or go to the bathroom; when nature called, he’d simply pee in a mason jar next to his computer. I would eventually find out that peeing in jars isn’t uncommon for World of Warcraft enthusiasts; the addictive gravitational pull of the game is so powerful that they’ve been known to wear diapers, like deep-space astronauts or long-haul truckers, so as to not miss a moment’s playing time.

It’s too late now. The game’s been won by companies who don’t give two shits about community character or decent jobs. Congratufuckinglations, America! We did the deal. Now we’ve got an unlimited supply of cheap commodities and unhealthy food and crumbling downtowns, no sense of place, and a permanent under class. Yay. The underclass isn’t relegated to urban ghettos either. It’s coast to coast and especially in between. Take US 50 west from Kansas City to Sacramento or US 6 from Chicago to California and you’ll see a couple thousand miles of corn, soybeans, and terminally ill towns. It looks like a scene from The Walking Dead. If there’s such a thing as the American Heartland, it has a stake through it.

large shower room with six spigots, like in high school, and there was a coin slot next to each spigot. You put in a quarter and that bought you five minutes’ worth of hot water. If you wanted more, you put in more money. Where was I supposed to put my quarters? I ended up thumbing them into my bar of soap.

One of the dirty secrets of the moving business is that a shipper has no idea what kind of human offal a driver might pick up for day labor.

These folks were from a far different cultural mileu than any Irish peasant and going it alone out in the Wild West. Reminds me of some of the Chinese. You can go into the furthest reaches of, say, Montana or northwest Ontario and find some little dusty town with a hitching post and a church, and there will be the Chinese restaurant.

This did not go unnoticed by a large group of black men who flocked to the industry in the 1960s as long-haul drivers. North American Van Lines was proudly nicknamed North African Van Lines because it had so many

A pawnshop is a ruthless indicator of flawed financial planning. When

People go crazy when something happens to their stuff. The reaction, it appears to me, is generally overblown and not commensurate with the perceived offense.

moving industry is less like a leviathan and more like the Lebanese parliament. Each faction is vainly striving to achieve hegemony over its neighbors in an endless sequence of shifting alliances, treachery, and occasional benevolence.

the typical economic support system for an American military town. That means pawn shops, secondhand car dealers, pawn shops, secondhand furniture dealers, secondhand clothing stores, pawn shops, gun stores, all-you-can-eat cafeterias, and, oh God, how could I forget, mobile homes and prefab home sales. Then you

pawnshop is a ruthless indicator of flawed financial planning.

I’m a careful mover. I respect people’s stuff, but shit happens. You know why? Because you’re moving it. Leave the piano in the living room for three generations. It will be fine. You want to put it somewhere else, guess what? You’re taking a risk. Did you ever move your leg the wrong way and spend two weeks in a brace? Ever drop a cell phone in a toilet? Ever move a sofa to vacuum underneath and put a scratch on the floor? Most of us have done at least one of those things. I’ve done all those things. What I don’t understand is why, when a mover scratches a floor or dents a lampshade, it’s a justification for a ferocious freak-out at the entire industry.

Veteran movers never wear jeans. Jeans are too heavy and the heavy sweating that comes with the job causes chafing. Also, jeans have rivets on the seams and require a belt. Either one can scratch furniture or walls

My crews always have name tags attached to their shirts. (People with names get treated better.)

laborer, wallowing in the refuse-laden cesspit that constitutes the dregs of the American Dream is more dependable, works harder, and is more trustworthy than many native-born

There was something unspeakably sexy about a woman who ate like a long-haul trucker. “Then I have serious respect for you.

Regardless of psychological gymnastics, we know what we see, and many of us learn from it. It’s a rare mover who becomes a collector of anything. Even rarer is a mover who gets hung up on the “sentimental value” of objects. After more than three thousand moves I know that everyone has almost the exact same stuff and I certainly know where it’s all going to end up. It’s going to end up in a yard sale or in a dumpster. It might take a generation, though usually not, but Aunt Tillie’s sewing machine is getting tossed. So is your high school yearbook and grandma’s needlepoint doily of the Eiffel Tower. Most people save the kids kindergarten drawings and the IKEA bookcases. After the basement and attic are full it’s off to a mini-storage to put aside more useless stuff. A decade or three down the road when the estate is settled and nobody wants to pay the storage fees anymore, off it all will go into the ether. This is not anecdotal. I know because I’m the guy who puts it all into the dumpster.

you can’t find a white guy who can amass the rudimentary requirements needed to be hired as a local mover.

back in the day when I was the one pissed off at the universe.

Carl, my erstwhile buddy, casually tossed me under the bus, saying to Mike, “U-Turn here says he can’t lift it.

The game had only two rules. The first was that every statement had to have at least two words in which the first letters were switched. “You’re not my little sister,” Shawn said. “You’re my sittle lister.” He pronounced the words lazily, blunting the t’s to d’s so that it sounded like “siddle lister.” The second rule was that every word that sounded like a number, or like it had a number in it, had to be changed so that the number was one higher. The word “to” for example, because it sounds like the number “two,” would become “three.” “Siddle Lister,” Shawn might say, “we should pay a-eleven-tion. There’s a checkpoint ahead and I can’t a-five-d a ticket. Time three put on your seatbelt.” When we tired of this, we’d turn on the CB and listen to the lonely banter of truckers stretched out across the interstate. “Look out for a green four-wheeler,” a gruff voice said, when we were somewhere between Sacramento and Portland. “Been picnicking in my blind spot for a half hour.” A four-wheeler, Shawn explained, is what big rigs call cars and pickups. Another voice came over the CB to complain about a red Ferrari that was weaving through traffic at 120 miles per hour. “Bastard damned near hit a little blue Chevy,” the deep voice bellowed through the static. “Shit, there’s kids in that Chevy. Anybody up ahead wanna cool this hothead down?” The voice gave its location. Shawn checked the mile marker. We were ahead. “I’m a white Pete pulling a fridge,” he said. There was silence while everybody checked their mirrors for a Peterbilt with a reefer. Then a third voice, gruffer than the first, answered: “I’m the blue KW hauling a dry box.” “I see you,” Shawn said, and for my benefit pointed to a navy-colored Kenworth a few cars ahead. When the Ferrari appeared, multiplied in our many mirrors, Shawn shifted into high gear, revving the engine and pulling beside the Kenworth so that the two fifty-foot trailers were running side by side, blocking both lanes. The Ferrari honked, weaved back and forth, braked, honked again. “How long should we keep him back there?” the husky voice said, with a deep laugh. “Until he calms down,” Shawn answered. Five miles later, they let him pass. The trip lasted about a week, then we told Tony to find us a load to Idaho. “Well, Siddle Lister,” Shawn said when we pulled into the junkyard, “back three work.” — THE WORM CREEK OPERA HOUSE announced a new play: Carousel. Shawn drove me to the audition, then surprised me by auditioning himself. Charles was also there, talking to a girl named