Romance of the Open Road, revividus

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, over-the-road driving, trucking

Phillip Wilson doesn't drive bigtrucks because he has to, to make a living. He does so because he wants to. His author's blurb states, that he "served in the U.S. Navy, and has worked in management positions in the construction, utility, and nuclear industries."

Apparently an early retiree, Wilson decided to see the country and get someone else to pay for it. So he took driving school for 18-wheelers, then entered the necessary internship, a five-to-six week stint driving with a trainer.

His new book—and my wildcard choice this time—Driver: Six Weeks in an Eighteen-Wheeler chronicles that training period. During training the new driver is on salary, but the trainer is still being paid by the mile, so the experience gets the newbie used to the contant push, push to roll down the road, to run right up against the legal limit for miles-per-week a professional driver experiences.

Trainers are a special breed. The author confesses freely he'd never do it. They have to endure a lot of boneheadedness from the trainee, to help overcome the fragile rigidity of book learning in favor of rubber-on-the-road experience. But they aren't motivated by altruism. A trainer gets credit for all miles the rig travels, and by driving as a team, the pair can drive about twice as far per day as a lone driver.

Lingo time: We call 'em "truckers," but to one another, they are "drivers." A limited-access highway is a "bigroad," and what we call a "semi" they call a "bigtruck." Who are we? We are four-wheelers. An irritation often enough, usually blissfully unaware of the almost unlimited damage that 80,000 pounds of 65-mph bigtruck will do if you get in its way.

Driving among autos is a frequent worry to a driver who knows he, or she, has much less control of where he is going and how quickly the rig can be stopped if needed, than a four-wheeler. Basically, if you can see a bigtruck behind you, at most any visible distance, chances are if you stop suddenly, just jam on the brakes, someone is likely to die.

Wilson ruminates frequently on such things. He is a conscientious fellow. He is amazed at the appalling obliviousness of many people on the road, and writes, "...I find it difficult to believe that some car drivers drive as much as they do and get no better at it than they are. It seems to me they would get at least fairly good just by virtue of association after a decade or two. But they don't." (p. 151)

The book is written in a picaresque style: Part narration, part stream-of-consciousness, and part soliloquy. The author enjoys changes of season, changes of scenery, and meeting various folks along the way. He ruminates about the dry Southwest, "Like most beautiful things, the desert is dangerous. Beauty is almost always Nature's warning to stay away." (p. 97) A statement at once profound and bitter.

Wilson spent most of the 6-week period in the cab, either driving, riding, or sleeping in the "condo" (double bunk behind the seats). It is a more intimate association than most marriages. He and Trainer are a near-ideal combination of sameness and polar opposite, that makes for a solid working relationship. He came through the experience with a great deal of admiration and fondness for Trainer, but when they parted afterwards, there was no further contact, nor news. A clean break.

Near the end of the training period, Wilson spoke with a retiring driver, about to take his last run. He realized this guy was a library, and asked him, did he have any advice. When the man replied he'd never rolled a rig, never had an accident, never even dinged a fender, Wilson was (silently) amazed. Drive two or three million miles...with such perfection? How? he asked. A pause, "You just have to care," to which Wilson responds, aside to us, it is "the key to a lot of things." (p. 294)

Finally, in the school of "don't do anything you can't undo," he recalls for us the wisdom of one of his instructors: "...a driver can go down a hill too slow many times, but too fast only once." (p. 333) Put that together with "You just have to care," and you can pretty well manage your life.