In It for the Long Haul

Navigating her 18-wheeler through the thirsty summer terrain of Central California, veteran truck driver Alice Chaney becomes an impromptu tour guide: “On the right, we have desert,” she says, waving a hand toward the passenger window. “On the left, even more desert.”

Chaney, a 47-year-old grandmother who lives in North Carolina’s misty Blue Ridge Mountains, can’t wait to get out of the state, but it isn’t just the scenery. To long-haul truckers, California is “communist country,” a state that not only restricts them to the far right lanes of the freeway but limits them to 55 mph, the lowest trucker speed limit in the nation.

The refrigerated trailer Chaney is hauling contains 70,000 pounds of lettuce, onions, celery and broccoli she picked up in Salinas. In four days, it’s due in the Bronx. Though she’s under a tight time constraint, Chaney still plays by the rules. She pokes along on the right, her speedometer hovering just above the legal limit as cars speed by in the fast lane.

From the relatively low perspective of four wheels--where most Americans sit as they commute to work or haul the family off on summer vacation--it’s hard to see what’s going on in the elevated cabs of America’s big rigs. In many ways, Chaney reflects the changing face of the trucking industry--an industry where speeding trucks are increasingly the exception, where insurers and regulators are raising the bar on safety requirements and where more women and minorities are climbing into the driver’s seat.

As evidenced in a week spent on the road headed east with Chaney and west with two other drivers--a mother-daughter team--there is plenty that hasn’t changed. The stress of delivering loads safely and on time is never-ending, as is the cat-and-mouse relationship between trucks and cars. And many truck drivers are not far removed from the stereotypical Southern white male who stuffs his lip with chewing tobacco and rants unintelligibly into a CB radio as he bullies his way through traffic.

But, just as this post-Sept. 11 summer is different for drivers of “four-wheelers,” it is different for the drivers of 18-wheelers. They are wrestling with heightened ethnic tensions on the roadways, worries about the stalled economy, and an underlying fear of new acts of terrorism--the latter of which the government is asking truckers to help fight.

Keeping Her Cool

It’s pushing 90 degrees outside, but Chaney is keeping cool. Her air conditioner is on, and her long, strawberry blond hair is pulled into a high ponytail. A jumbo-size travel mug sits on the floor next to her seat.

Driving with her right elbow propped on the stick shift, Chaney exudes the sort of calm confidence that can only come from experience. In the 22 years she’s been trucking, she’s logged more than 2 million miles. She’s never had an accident. Her last speeding ticket was 15 years ago.

“We have to be really aware of what’s going on,” Chaney says as she wheels up the 101 between fields of onions.

“We can do a hundred times more damage than a car could even think of doing.”

Chaney’s enviable safety record is not one that all drivers of cars or trucks share. Though car drivers complain that truckers are a road hazard--that they speed, tailgate and box them in--truckers say the problem is the four-wheelers--who cut them off without signaling, lurch across lanes and pay more attention to their phone conversations than what’s happening on the road.

Still, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the number of fatalities in truck-related crashes is at an all-time low, having dropped for the fourth consecutive year. And a recent study by the American Automobile Assn. indicates that cars are at fault 75% of the time in accidents between cars and big rigs. One major reason: Car drivers simply don’t know very much about trucks. They don’t know that it takes at least the length of an entire football field for them to stop, or that there are dangerous blind spots on every side of an 18-wheeler. Few, if any, states even mention trucks in driver education. That puts the onus on truckers--not only to avoid making dangerous moves of their own, but also to counter all the ones by unknowing or reckless automobile drivers.

Every move made in a big rig has exaggerated consequences. Chaney is slow and deliberate as she backs her truck into the long and narrow parking space between two other big rigs in a line of several dozen. Her rig, which is 4 1/2 cars long, is completely straight. It has to be. There is only 3 feet of clearance on either side.

Chaney is at Foxy Foods in Salinas, the first of three pickups she’ll make before heading back to the East Coast. She’s able to get her load right away, but some of the other drivers have to wait for hours. As she pulls out of the loading dock at 4 p.m. Monday, two pizza delivery cars zoom into the lot, dropping off orders to the drivers who can’t leave because they’re on call. Her next pickup is at 2 a.m., her third at 8 a.m. In all, she will spend almost an entire day picking up her load--time for which she is not earning money. In trucking, speed is everything. Paid by the mile, Chaney only makes money when she’s moving.

At her final pickup point before heading east, Chaney is pulling out of Dole Fresh Foods in Marina at about 1 p.m. Tuesday when she sees the commotion.

Half a dozen drivers, some wearing turbans, are standing in the middle of the parking lot being questioned by police. The CB radio crackles to life with slurs and speculation: “Aren’t those the guys that blew up the World Trade Center?” one driver witnessing the scene suggests. “I think they were gonna blow up the loading dock,” says another.

The truth of the matter: One of the truckers hit the mirror of another driver’s truck, and the Dole security guard called California Highway Patrol to resolve the dispute.

Truckers bump into each other’s mirrors all the time, Chaney says, but she’s never seen anyone call the police about it. Fear and prejudice have fueled suspicion and disrespect toward truckers and others presumed to be of Arab descent since Sept. 11.

That pressure coincides with increasing numbers of immigrants and minorities entering the trucking profession in recent years. Though numbers are not broken out by specific ethnicity, in 1991, 22.8% of truck drivers were nonwhite; today, 26.9% of them are.

The number of women drivers has also been growing in recent years, though more slowly. In 1991, 4.1% of truck drivers were female, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, 5.3% are, and their numbers continue to increase as they leave lower-paying jobs, retrain from jobs that are evaporating in a down economy or join their husbands to drive as a team, as Chaney did when she first started, though her husband no longer drives.

This new gender and ethnic mix doesn’t sit well with many of the old-guard truckers; in CB chatter, sexist and racist remarks that would not be tolerated in many other workplaces seem to fly freely. And at truck stops and loading docks, where truckers come face to face with one another, there is little friendly chitchat between the differing groups.

Enlisted to Spot Terrorists

The U.S. government wants to enlist the help of the nation’s 3.1 million commercial truckers in spotting terrorist activity. They are among the “millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice which, this month, is rolling out its Terrorist Information and Prevention System, or TIPS--”a national system for reporting suspicious and potentially terrorist-related activity.”

A similar, though smaller, program was already underway via the American Trucking Assns. Highway Watch program, which has been recruiting drivers into “America’s Trucking Army” since April.

Highway Watch was founded by individual states and their local law enforcement in the late ‘90s to teach truckers about safety. A security component was added after Sept. 11 to educate them in how to combat terrorism. They are encouraged to look for trucks that are parked in unusual places, such as highway overpasses and underpasses, and to be aware of anyone who appears to be “casing.” About 17 states already participate in the program, with about two new states coming on board every month.

Driving through the mesas of New Mexico, Chaney says she’s heard of TIPS but doesn’t know what to look for. In the thousand or so miles of scorched landscapes in California and Arizona, she has passed thousands of trucks, but it’s almost impossible to figure out what is inside of them--few are labeled with anything other than the name of the trucking company.

“If the FBI experts with their spy satellites and pro espionage gear failed to stop terrorism, why would truck drivers be able to do it?” Chaney asks.

Counterterrorism experts know how difficult it is to spot a terrorist, which is why both the TIPS and ATA programs offer training, but there is little money to get the word out. In its war against terrorism, the federal government has allocated $1.5 billion to aviation, but only $500,000 to trucking.

Even so, many experts believe the next terrorist attack could happen with a truck bomb. After all, the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil before Sept. 11 was in 1995, when Timothy McVeigh exploded a Ryder rental truck filled with ammonium nitrate and racing fuel outside the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Two years earlier, a Ryder rental van filled with 1,500 pounds of fertilizer-based explosive and compressed hydrogen gas was exploded in the parking garage of the World Trade Center.

Identifying terrorists is only part of the danger, however. Trucks, especially those carrying hazardous materials, run the risk of being hijacked. Many companies, like the one Chaney works for, install satellite dishes on their trucks so they can keep careful track of where they are.

Making the Switch

The sun went down long ago, but the temperature is still over 100 in Texas when Chaney pulls into a truck stop in Amarillo at 2 a.m. She is switching trailers with another team of drivers, who will continue hauling her produce to the East Coast. Chaney will turn around and head back to Los Angeles with their load of dry-cleaning chemicals.

After 10 hours at the wheel, Chaney not only craves but is legally required to sleep. The federal government dictates that Chaney, who drives solo, must rest eight hours for every 10 she is on the road. She is allowed to drive a maximum of 70 hours in eight days.

Becky Thunder, 61, and Misty Rosewall, 33, the mother-daughter driving team taking Chaney’s trailer east, are subject to the same rules, but, unlike Chaney, one can sleep while the other drives.

Rosewall had been driving, but her mother is about to take over. They take a 20-minute break and head into the truck stop. Fried chicken, fried potatoes and hot dogs are warming under heat lamps next to the cashier. Thunder passes them up in favor of a cup of coffee. Rosewall heads to the bathroom, where the floor is sticky with oil and dirt and paper towels overflow from the trash bin. They meet back at the truck, where Thunder will drive until dawn while Rosewall takes a bunk.

It’s 8:45 am. Wednesday when Thunder pulls off Interstate 40 into a truck stop near Oklahoma City. Her miniature poodle is sitting on the passenger seat. A cigarette lighter and a tube of lipstick are propped in the ashtray for easy access. “Misty,” Thunder calls, ripping open the Velcro on the heavy curtain behind the driver’s seat, then reaching for her makeup. “Breakfast.”

A second dog scampers out, followed by Rosewall, whose short red hair is stuck to one side of her head, her eyes bloodshot from a fitful and bumpy night’s sleep. Rosewall mists her hair with a water bottle, and they walk inside--passing the washers and dryers where truckers can do laundry and the line where drivers are waiting their turn to take a shower. Thunder and Rosewall haven’t showered for a couple days, and they won’t until they get back to North Carolina. The produce they’re carrying is perishable and must be delivered on time.

Still, a person has to eat, and they head to the Iron Skillet for breakfast, where they pass on the eggs, greasy hash browns and biscuits with gravy in favor of the salad bar. They are trying to lose weight, or at least not gain anymore, since each has put on 20 pounds in the years they’ve been trucking.

After breakfast, Thunder returns a stack of audio books she rented at a different truck stop and picks up a couple more. The tapes can be rented at almost every chain truck stop in the country and dropped off somewhere different. For Thunder, who prefers to drive at night while Rosewall is sleeping, they are perfect company.

So is her dog. Animals are increasingly commonplace in truckers’ cabs. At almost every truck stop, there are drivers walking poodles, chows and Rottweilers. Thunder and Rosewall say they’ve also seen drivers with ferrets, boa constrictors and parrots.

Tiring Work, Decent Pay

Driving a truck may be lonely and exhausting work, but it pays relatively well. A typical driver makes about $40,000 a year; experienced drivers can make $70,000.

Rosewall and Thunder split 36 cents a mile. They travel between 5,500 and 6,200 miles a week, and each earn about $35,000 a year.Both live in Mount Airy, N.C., where Rosewall was able to buy her own house about two years ago. Thunder rents and sometimes wonders if it’s worth the $325 she pays for her three-bedroom house, since she’s only there three or four days a month.

“If I’m home two or three weeks, I get antsy for the smell of diesel,” says Thunder. She started driving trucks nine years ago, when her typesetting job was phased out, and her daughter, who had already been driving for four years, encouraged her to give it a try.

It is Friday when Rosewall and Thunder arrive at the headquarters of WLA, the North Carolina-based trucking company that employs them. While another driver takes the produce they’ve carried up to New York, they will leave Mount Airy on Saturday morning, picking up a load of automobile air and oil filters from Charlotte, S.C., and taking it to California. They are due Monday morning in Fontana.

It’s a 2,400-mile trip, but Rosewall and Thunder are accustomed to driving across the country in two days. They’ve crisscrossed the nation so many times they know exactly how many miles it is across any given state on any freeway.

There is exceptionally high turnover in long-haul trucking--90% or more a year--as truckers hop from one company to the next, leave long-haul for short-haul or leave the industry altogether. Experienced drivers are a hot commodity in the business that delivers 67% of all freight in the country. In three-quarters of all U.S. communities, trucks are the only means of delivering goods.

Many insurance companies are requiring experienced drivers as a condition of coverage--one of many measures they’re taking to reduce their risk. Another is “governed” accelerators. To get better insurance rates, many freight companies modify their trucks so they can’t go above a designated speed no matter how hard the driver presses the accelerator. WLA governs their trucks at 74 mph.

Yakking on the CB Radio

When traffic is jammed, it’s not speed that’s an issue. It’s Saturday, about 2:30 p.m., somewhere east of Atlanta, and the traffic is backed up for miles. Thunder is driving. She turns up the volume on her CB radio to find out more--where does the delay begin, how many miles does it last, how much time will it take, is there an alternate route. The CB radio is buzzing with truckers looking for the same information--and complaints about the behavior of motorcyclists and car drivers.

When the driver of a black Toyota tries to bypass the jam by driving slowly up the shoulder, a trucker pulls over to block its path. His colleagues get on the horn to congratulate themselves.

Bashing car drivers on the CB is a favorite pastime. So is trash talk to and about women. Strippers at roadside clubs and “lot lizards,” or truck stop prostitutes, frequently jump on the radio to lure men off the road, which is why many drivers, especially female drivers like Thunder and Rosewall, prefer to keep the radio turned off. They only turn it on when they need to learn about traffic conditions, or to give “bear reports,” telling other truckers they’ve spotted “a full-grown bear” or “plain wrapper”--a marked or unmarked police car.

Rosewall prefers to listen to satellite radio. On Sunday, an entire day spent driving across the never-ending dry flatlands of Texas, she surfs between news, new age and country stations, only popping on the CB when she sees a sign telling her Interstate 10 is closed heading into New Mexico.

It’s hard to tell why the 10 is closed. On the CB, some truckers are saying it’s a dust storm. Others say it’s rain. Still others say it’s a car accident--a 37-car pileup. Accurate information is hard to come by, but one thing’s for sure: No one will be traveling westbound on the 10 into New Mexico tonight.

Rosewall parks the truck. It is 9:30 p.m. The load she’s carrying is due in Fontana at 7 a.m., and there are still three states to cross. They won’t make it in time, but Rosewall and Thunder aren’t panicked--their load is not perishable, and road closures and traffic jams come with the territory. They simply rest for a few hours until the road reopens.

It’s about 8 a.m. when they cross the border back into “communist country,” dropping their speed from the 75 mph limit in Arizona to the 55 mph mandatory maximum in California. Just as there was one week earlier, on the right there’s desert; on the left, even more desert.

In Fontana--about seven hours after they had hoped to arrive--Thunder and Rosewall drop their load of air and oil filters and head to Riverside for the first of five pickups--of grapefruit, oranges, carrots and lettuce. The load is destined for Jessup, Md.

It will be there in three days.