How did a 50-something,carefully brought up mother from London, England end up driving an 18 wheeler across The United States? It became a whole lot more complicated than one would imagine. 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 drive a truck?
It’s a good question and, like most good questions it had answers both basic and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s an authentic immigrant job’ via ‘well, I could earn more income in a truck than I can having 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 even plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated all of it.
And these were merely the rationalisations for that much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been observing while driving ever since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There was clearly no rationalisation of course for that other vague pull, a lifelong obsession with doing things merely because they’re a little bit odd.
Adding to my list of excuses that it appeared to be a good angle for a book on trucking assisted a tad when explaining to individuals with no imagination, however, not much.
In reality, I hadn’t anticipated panic when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I merely wished to determine what it took to become a lady trucker. I wanted to observe the USA, how hard would it be?
Of course there is a small difference between finding out how to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming aboutgetting money to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours each day smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers packed with mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s unending prairies and over The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to come home via Texas. That Lake Effect Winter Storm was just one of our countless weather-related narrow squeaks. North American trucking can be quite the escapade.
Ihave been almost arrested in Baltimore, sick as a dog in Tennessee, terrified in Chicago, Dallas and Detroit and dug out of the snow twice within a night in Alberta. I’ve made buddies in Virginia and enemies here at home. And, given half a chance, I might probably forget about how impossibly tiring it is and go out again to steer 18 wheels over the horizon.
