How did a 50-something,well brought up mother from London, England finish up driving an 18 wheeler across America? It ended up being a whole lot more complicated than you’d expect. However, adventures are adventures and hiccups are where the stories lay…
What would make a fifty-something, well brought-up mother suddenly make a decision to go trucking?
It’s a really good question and, like most good questions it had answers both simple and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s a traditional immigrant job’ via ‘well, I can earn more cash in a truck than I’m able to with a Master’s degree’ with a detour along ‘I’ve driven ambulances and stretch limos, if I want to be bigger it’s either a truck or maybe a plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated all of it.
And these were merely the rationalisations for just a much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been enjoying watching on the highway since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There seemed to be no rationalisation needless to say for the other vague pull, a lifelong obsession with doing things merely because they’re somewhat strange.
Adding to my list of justifications that it seemed like an excellent angle for a book on trucking aided just a little when trying to explain to those with no imagination, although not much.
I should confess, I hadn’t expected fright when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I merely needed to find out what it took to become a lady trucker. I wanted to observe the United States, how hard can it be?
Needless to say there is a slight difference between learning how to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming of getting paid 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 escapade.
I’ve been almost arrested in Baltimore, sick as a dog in Tennessee, terrified in Chicago, Dallas and Detroit and dug out from the snow twice within a night in Alberta. I’ve made buddies in Virginia and adversaries at home. And, given half a chance, I’d probably forget all about how impossibly strenuous it is and go out again to steer 18 wheels over the horizon.
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