At Home on the Road

The curtains are drawn, the doors are locked, and Carlos Jimeno has just curled up for a nap on the couch inside his 40-ton big rig. Today he is parked on Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles, just outside Onik Truck Service, where he is waiting to pick up a load of frozen vegetables and haul it to the East Coast. It is 4 o’clock on a sunny afternoon, but Jimeno catches winks whenever he can.

“It is always midnight for me,” says the 47-year-old from Rio Rico, Ariz., who drives 18 hours each day. “I am always tired.”

For drivers like Jimeno, who spend two-thirds of the year or more living in their big rigs, the truck’s cab is a home away from home--a place to catch a few hours’ sleep, make a sandwich or read a book between cargo runs.

Jimeno’s digs are more cozy than most. A few months ago, he sprang for a fully loaded 1999 $120,000 cab and trailer. Tucked away behind the driver and passenger seats is a small-scale apartment that has enough space to walk around and stand. In a space that is roughly 10 square feet, there is a refrigerator, stereo, couch, bunk bed, closet, desk, sunroof, vanity mirror, storage drawers and medicine cabinet. The windows on either side even have curtains.

“This is a penthouse,” Jimeno says, with a smile and a wave of his hand. “It’s very comfortable.”

Yes, this cab is more luxurious than most, but where’s the shower and bathroom?

That’s what truck stops are for. Jimeno is a member of several truck stop chains that provide such facilities, in addition to laundry rooms and, of course, coffee and chicken-fried steak.

Shane Chung, a 28-year-old trucker from the Washington, D.C., area who has logged more than a million miles behind the wheel during his nine years as a driver, says he tries to stop at truck stops for refueling and nothing else.

“They’re nasty,” he says, but necessary.

While on the road, he showers there every day, but, he says, “I always wear my shower shoes. There’s no telling what you might catch.”

Dressed in Guess jeans and an earth-tone sweat shirt, Chung is more conscientious about his appearance than most drivers.

“Some of them I wouldn’t walk three feet behind,” he says.

Unlike Jimeno, Chung does not consider his cab home, which could be for the lack of amenities. Four of Chung’s relatives also drive for a living, and the truck he drives is his cousin’s. Behind his driver’s seat, there is room enough for only a bed. He doesn’t have a refrigerator or closet space. Just a CD player-radio in the dashboard of his cab.

“There’s no kitchen in there. No water in there. No toilet in there. It’s not my home. I have a home,” he says, laughing. Chung rents an apartment on the East Coast but is only there between five and 10 days each month. “I’m just out here doing a job.”

Chung, who is parked outside National Cold Storage Transport on Center Street in downtown Los Angeles, has been here one day already and has another day to spend in the city before he loads his truck with frozen seafood and takes it back East. At 6 p.m. Chung gets back in his truck for a quick trip to Ontario, where the showers are clean.