How did a 50-something,nicely brought up mother from London, England end up driving an 18 wheeler across North America? It turned out to be considerably more complicated than one would expect. However, adventures are adventures and hiccups are where the stories lay…

Posted by admin on April 30, 2011 under Kids and Teens | Comments are off for this article

Why would a fifty-something, nicely brought-up mother all of a sudden make a decision to become a trucker?

It’s a first-rate question and, like most good questions it had answers both basic and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s a traditional immigrant job’ via ‘well, I can earn more cash in a truck than I’m able to by using a Master’s degree’ with a detour along ‘I’ve driven ambulances and stretch limos, if I want to get 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 just a much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been enjoying watching on the highway since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There was clearly no rationalisation needless to say for the other vague pull, a lifelong obsession with doing things merely because they’re a tad odd.

Adding to my list of justifications that it seemed like a great angle for a book on trucking assisted slightly when explaining to individuals with no imagination, although not much.

Truth be told, I hadn’t predicted terror when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I merely needed to find out what it took to be a lady trucker. I wanted to observe North America, how hard can it be?

Obviously there is a bit of a distinction between learning to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming of getting money to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours a 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 return via Texas. That Lake Effect Winter Storm was just an example 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 from the snow twice within a night in Alberta. I’ve made friends in Virginia and enemies here at home. And, given half a chance, I’d probably forget about how impossibly exhausting it is and head out again to take 18 wheels over the horizon.