Damned truck Drivers

Today's Thoughts 5/26/11 Damned Truck Drivers

How many times have I heard that before over the years? "Damned truck driver". I cannot count the number of faces I've seen over the road that showed just that expression. You know it. Are maybe you’re the one that had it. Well today I'm going to speak to the ones that have it or are liable to get it sometime real soon. Somewhere I read that on today's highways there are about three million truck drivers out there. Not all in a big truck like mine I don't think, but in trucks of all shapes and sizes doing all kinds of different jobs all over America. I'm going to take a guess at this but I'm fairly sure that if you get out on the road and do any driving at all, you're going to come across one of those trucks. I bet I'm the smartest person in the world because I thought that one up all by myself.

The thing about all those trucks is lots of people like to do all kinds of funny things with them. The media as I'm sure you have seen in the past just love to make big news out of a truck wreck. Long before they have a clue as to what happened, they are spouting that some truck has run over some car and the public gets all up in an uproar over the incident. I like these stories most of all because if you follow them for a day or so, you learn that the truck involved was a pickup truck. Not all the time mind you, but they never seem to put that information out there with the same enthusiasm as they did when they had everyone thinking it as a big truck of some kind.

Politicians like to jump up on their stump and get their licks in too. I remember one sheriff back long ago that was trying to get reelected in his county around Atlanta. He was on the biggest radio station in town claiming he was going to bust every big truck going over the speed limit so he could save the world from all us dastardly truck drivers. And he was doing it to. All us truck drivers were spreading the word about this guy over the CB radio and we was running as close to the speed limit as we could. That really did not matter much because they were pulling us over anyway. Funny thing about that was all the cars were scooting past us about twenty miles an hour over the speed limit and no one was touching them. But all the locals elected him anyway if I remember right. Guess they felt safe and secure knowing the sheriff had their back and those damned truck drivers were getting what they deserved anyway.

So what do we get out of stories like this? Nothing good I think. What it does is promote lack of understanding and respect for trucks and the people that drive them. They become in peoples mind the lowest form of life and nobody respects them out on the highway. Now if you're trying to sell news papers or get yourself elected, this is a wonderful thing. But if you're a truck driver trying to miss all the people that no longer have any respect for you because of the way others keep using your image as a stepping stone, it not so much a good thing at all. Some drivers show that lack of respect in the way they drive around the trucks. People will cut them off or in one way or another leaving the truck with nowhere to go if something were to happen while they are so close to them.

Now I can personally tell you as a truck driver, that there are some folks out here that have absolutely no business behind the wheel of a truck. But I'll save that for another day. The point I want to make today is a simple one. Just a normal eighteen wheeler on an average day can weigh up to eighty thousand pounds. Throw in some permits and extra axles, and weights can exceed one hundred thousand pounds plus. That’s a lot of weight and all that weight with the safest professional driver out there just will not stop as fast as someone with no respect for damned truck drivers thinks it will. So, if you cannot find respect for that truck driver, it might just be a thing to find respect for the size and weight of that truck. It doesn't take much more then grammar school physics to figure that one out.

Well that’s it for today. It's time for me to go find my way around downtown Portland, OR. Big cities are always so much fun in a big truck. Be Safe folks.

Jeff Head.
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