A Digression on 18 Wheels

The road from Kansas City to Dallas/Ft. Worth was one filled with fun, adventure, romance, high winds and blinding rain. OK, just high winds and blinding rain.  In order to reach DFW, I cruised straight down I-35, despite my i-phone's best efforts to direct me an hour out of my way on I-70 through Topeka. (And i-phones are great because ...?) When I left KC, the sun was shining in a clear sky. The drive was downright bucolic until a little over one hundred miles later, in Emporia, Kansas, I ducked under the hard cloud line of a front moving up. Hurricane Hermione was moving north as I moved south. The two of us intersected somewhere around Oklahoma City. I let her win and pulled in under a filling station awning. Not even my new dual-hemi-overhead-cam-turbo-powered graphite windshield wipers could keep up with her.

Here comes the digression. I never thought in my lifetime I would speak positively about semi-trucks. Long haul truckers and their rigs were the stuff of country songs, some of them actually good ("Six Days on the Road") most of them bad ("Teddy Bear"). On my travels throughout the western side of the country, eighteen wheelers were thick and fast on the roads and not appreciated by me most of the time. I dislike the draft created when pass them. I dislike how close they follow when they're trying to pass me. The back splash they create in rainy conditions frightens me. And transporting goods by truck, although just about the only way to do it, is grossly inefficient and uses a lot of fossil fuel and we all know what that does.

But a conversation with a tow truck driver in Tucson (more about that in future a future post) got me thinking. The gentleman, I will call him Mike because he seemed like a Mike, was telling me how much he liked what he does for a living. He lived in California, around Chino, I believe, until 1996 where he was a roofer. His wife's family lives in Tucson, so they moved there, and since the thought of enduring 100+ degrees installing a tile roof did not appeal to him, he became a driver. He told me that he's been driving since he moved in 1996.

I could imagine liking getting to play with a tow truck, I guess. There are all sorts of hydraulics and moving parts and truck beds going up and down. I might even be able to understand that he likes "working with the public," as he said. It takes a special breed to be patient with someone whose car has just taken a dump. Then I brought up how dangerous driving a tow truck must be.

"Yeah," he said, "between here and Phoenix, we've lost three drivers already this year."

"Lost as in quit, or lost as in ... no longer with us?" I asked.

"Killed," he replied.

So I got to thinking and poking around. And here's what I have learned: In 1992-95, the trucking industry experienced a 12% fatality rate - higher than any other occupation. Since then, that percentage has come down to about 7% according to a DOT statistic posted in September 2009. As recently as 2005, long haul carriers estimated a shortage of 20,000 drivers which was projected to become around 100,000 by 2014. In 2005, it was also estimated that there was a 136% turnover rate among long haul drivers. Since then, there's been a recession (in case no one's noticed) and many of those vacancies have been filled by construction workers. However, if the federal government comes through with a real investment in infrastructure, there goes the surplus.

But the thing that impressed me the most was how these drivers stop for nothing. From where I was settled in my snug car under the awning, I saw trucks plowing down the Interstate. I can't imagine grossing about $1,000 a week, (which was pay that I saw posted on a chat site, which I can hardly believe) and working those kind of hours. I'm sure this is different depending upon the company and if you're an owner/operator, etc. But after driving nearly 7,000 miles in the past six weeks, I have nothing but respect for truckers.

Next, DFW and cowgirls.