How did a 50-something,carefully brought up mother from London, England land up driving an 18 wheeler across the USA? It turned out to be a great deal more complicated than one would think. However, adventures are adventures and hiccups are where the stories lay…
Why would a fifty-something, carefully brought-up mother suddenly decide to drive a truck?
It was a first-rate question and, like most good questions it had answers both easy and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s an authentic immigrant job’ via ‘well, I can earn more dollars 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 want to get bigger it’s either a truck or 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 enjoying watching while driving ever since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There seemed to be no rationalisation obviously for the other vague pull, a lifelong addiction to doing things merely because they’re somewhat strange.
Adding to my list of reasons that it seemed like a great angle for a book on trucking aided somewhat when explaining to individuals with no imagination, although not much.
Truth be told, I hadn’t anticipated panic when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I just wanted to find out what it took to be a lady trucker. I wanted to see North America, how hard can it be?
Naturally there is a small distinction between understanding how to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming aboutgetting paid to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours per day smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers full of mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s vast prairies and over The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to get back home 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 adventure.
I’ve 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 enemies here at home. And, given half a chance, I would probably forget about how impossibly exhausting it is and go out again to take 18 wheels over the horizon.