This work is undervalued even though it's absolutely crucial to the economy.Īs 27-year driver Greg Simmons says in a recent New York Times profile of long-haul truckers, “We’re throwaway people.
We navigate city streets and highways that are perpetually “under construction,” deal with distracted drivers who spend more time looking at their phones than at the road, maneuver impossibly narrow spaces to make deliveries, and back trailers up to dock doors, sometimes across traffic, with no room for error-and that's just what we do from the driver’s seat, not counting time for inspections, dropping and hooking, loading and unloading. We do a lot more than just hold a steering wheel. Business writers excitedly write about how this “cost-saving” technology lies just around the corner, only briefly pausing to consider the social crisis that would be created by laying off so many workers.Īs a truck driver myself, I know that so much of what we do is far too complicated to be replaced by technology any time soon. These days most talk about truckers centers on self-driving vehicles and the prospect that more than three million professional drivers will be replaced by robots.
It’s also no longer synonymous with “Teamster” or even seen as a desirable job. Truck drivers seem to have re-entered the public consciousness in 2017-but today our understanding of the occupation is far from the freewheeling “cowboy of the highway” image of the 1970s.
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