one of my co-workers has had a quite varied career history, he was a Navy man back in the Vietnam/Korea era, a long-haul and local trucker, a limo driver, and now, salesman at a small, New Hampshire based Mac reseller…
He’s had some really interesting stories about his time behind the wheel of the big-rigs, lots of facts about different cargo loads (especially the liquid tankers with non-baffled trailers, i’ll never look at a milk hauler the same way again, long story short, give rigs hauling liquid loads more leeway than you would a standard cargo trailer…)
any interest in hearing his stories, anyone have questions about driving the big-rigs?
if there’s interest, i’ll try to get him to join up as a guest, perhaps a charter member…
Yeah, why the fuck do they pull out to pass another truck and only do so at a velocity of 2mph faster than the truck they are passing? If you pull out to pass, do it with some conviction and pull back over to the right and out of the way.
Also, in inclement weather, why do they speed up? I’m no sissy and view speed limits as suggestions in the worst conditions, but these guys seem to revel in harrassing poor motorists who freeze up at the first sign of a drizzle.
They fucking know they have the stopping distance of a freight train. Why do they tailgate the smallest cars on the road? Why?
Oh, and tell him thanks for the more considerate habits of letting me in and flashing a thanks when I do the same for them.
How do truckers feel about modern technology? --GPS, computer monitoring their speeds and locations, cell phones so the boss is always on your back, etc.
I knew several truckers about 20 years ago who loved their jobs , because of the independence. They felt that they lived in the spirit of the original cowboys-- the freedom of the open road, no boss looking over their shoulder, no time clock to punch etc.They chatted on their cb radios, and had a great sense of comraderie.
(compared to the drudgery of factory assembly line jobs which they had held before, they were in heaven)
But with today’s technology, all that is gone. Every stop for a bathroom break gets
recorded. How do the drivers, young and old, feel about it?
Granted, though it’s not in the forum you might expect to find it, I humbly submit that there appears to be quite a bit of interest … (Language and general tone* suprisingly * tame for the Pit.)
You can tell 'em I said to “Come on in, the roads are dry and dusty.”