“There’s nothing semi about Finn Murphy’s trucking tales of The Long Haul.”—Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair More than thirty years ago, Finn Murphy dropped out of college to become a long-haul trucker. Since then he’s covered more than a million miles as a mover, packing, loading, hauling people’s belongings all over America. In The Long Haul, Murphy recounts with wit, candor, and charm the America he has seen change over the decades and the poignant, funny, and often haunting stories of the people he encounters on the job.
Wit, wisdom, adventure, and revelations from sixty years on the road. They say that only truck drivers experience the true grandeur and landscape of America: the winding mountainsides at sunrise, the first frosts of winter descending on apple orchards, the call of the rising roosters. In A Trucker's Tale, Ed Miller gives an inside look at the allure of the work and the colorful characters who haul our goods on the open road. He shares what it was like to grow up in a boisterous trucking family, his experience as an equipment officer in Vietnam, the wide range of vehicles he's mounted, and the daily trials, tribulations, risks, and exploits that define life as a trucker. Ed's vibrant, no-holds-barred tales are hilarious and heartwarming, sometimes cringeworthy or unbelievable—recollections of heroic feels as well as the “fishing stories” that have stretched and shifted from CB radio to CB radio. Many are the results of what he calls, “just plain stupidity.” Others bring to light the small acts of kindness and grand gestures that these Knights of the Highway perform each day, as well as the safety risks and continual danger that these essential workers endure. Together they paint a compelling portrait of one of the most important, but least-known industries, and reveal why Ed, and so many like him, just kept on truckin’.
When it comes to trucking Ted Campbell has "been there - done that" He's driven almost every truck, engine and transmission combination and carried every load imaginable. At age eighteen when no one would hire him as a driver because he had no experience he talked his Mother into co-signing a loan, traded his almost new Chevy Bel Air for a "Big Job" Ford and went trucking. Since then he's hauled lumber, gravel, logs, delivered new trucks from the factory even had two rigs on the Rogers Pass on opening day. In 1963 he was driving molten metal truck for Alcan at Kitimat when they asked him to go to UBC to attend a "teach the teachers" course. When he returned he taught an equipment operators course for five years while operating a log-hauling outfit in his spare time. Several years later he started with Mainland Mack in Langley selling new and used trucks. He loves second hand trucks; "you can't custom build a used truck" Ted and his wife Ann have owned several truck lines, Cascadia Motor Express and Pure Water Transport were the latest; they carried spring water in stainless steel tankers, liquid sugar to honey-bee producers in the western provinces and North West Territories, ran a general freight outfit with 53' heated, insulated tridem vans carrying food commodities throughout western Canada, coin-grade silver to New Jersey, sent film-grade silver in containers to Japan, pretzels out of Pennsylvania, chemicals from Wyoming, Christmas trees from Oregon, California produce, Colorado beer, even diapers and soap out of Salt Lake City. Ted say's he's made a fortune spent a couple.
Trucking Country is a social history of long-haul trucking that explores the contentious politics of free-market capitalism in post-World War II America. Shane Hamilton paints an eye-opening portrait of the rural highways of the American heartland, and in doing so explains why working-class populist voters are drawn to conservative politicians who seemingly don't represent their financial interests. Hamilton challenges the popular notion of "red state" conservatism as a devil's bargain between culturally conservative rural workers and economically conservative demagogues in the Republican Party. The roots of rural conservatism, Hamilton demonstrates, took hold long before the culture wars and free-market fanaticism of the 1990s. As Hamilton shows, truckers helped build an economic order that brought low-priced consumer goods to a greater number of Americans. They piloted the big rigs that linked America's factory farms and agribusiness food processors to suburban supermarkets across the country. Trucking Country is the gripping account of truckers whose support of post-New Deal free enterprise was so virulent that it sparked violent highway blockades in the 1970s. It's the story of "bandit" drivers who inspired country songwriters and Hollywood filmmakers to celebrate the "last American cowboy," and of ordinary blue-collar workers who helped make possible the deregulatory policies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and set the stage for Wal-Mart to become America's most powerful corporation in today's low-price, low-wage economy. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.
Roll On celebrates the freedom of the open road. The reader rides shotgun in an aging yet durable Peterbilt diesel rig on an interstate odyssey with longtime independent truck driver, Ubi Sunt. Traversing the Painted Desert, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and through the nation's breadbasket into the gritty northeast, you will meet misfits, wayfarers and dreamers . In the literary tradition of escape and return, and journey to enlightenment, Ubi faces tough choices. The highway is home but the road is changing. And his only daughter offers an ultimatum: Settle down or else.
This book is intended to reduce your learning curve if you are new to trucking. It will also help you survive the popular "lease purchase" that so many trucking companies are using to attract drivers. This book will help you save money and reduced stress in your daily life. Even if you don't drive a truck, this book is full of insight into the life of truckers for those who are curious.
A collection of firsthand accounts from truckers who have driven all over the United States and have encountered strange and unusual phenomenons which can only be described as paranormal.
Climb aboard Big Blue and ride along with veteran trucker, Long-Haul Larry as he tells tales of his journeys across America's heartland. Share in the humor and struggle of driving a truck for the first time and teaching others to do the same. Experience nail-biting tension while trucking through ice and wind. Learn how to train a cat and how not to train your wife. Find out what to wear when the shooting starts and discover the fastest way to get a Thanksgiving turkey. Know how NOT to meet your maker and what it's like to walk a stranger to the hereafter. Larry's stories will move, entertain, and impress you in ways you never imagined as you experience life as an American trucker. Publisher Note: Truckerology is a clean and wholesome read appropriate for readers of all ages. This book is a series of short-stories sure to warm the heart and tickle the funny-bone. About The Author Veteran trucker, Long-Haul Larry hails from the eastern lowlands of Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee, but can be found anywhere along America's vast highways piloting Big Blue along with Chicken Johnny. Larry firmly believes, "If you're gonna drive 'em, you better be able to fix 'em." Using his natural mechanical aptitude and experience as a truck mechanic, he keeps Big Blue "running the miles" and their deliveries on time. Join Larry and Chicken Johnny in their daily adventures on the Long-Haul Larry YouTube Channel at https://bit.ly/LongHaulLarry. What's up with the chicken, you ask? You'll have to look for Chicken Johnny on Larry's YouTube channel to find out. Special thanks to John Vollrath with JBG Travels for the Introduction.
Long-haul trucks have been described as sweatshops on wheels. The typical long-haul trucker works the equivalent of two full-time jobs, often for little more than minimum wage. But it wasn’t always this way. Trucking used to be one of the best working-class jobs in the United States. The Big Rig explains how this massive degradation in the quality of work has occurred, and how companies achieve a compliant and dedicated workforce despite it. Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews and years of extensive observation, including six months training and working as a long-haul trucker, Viscelli explains in detail how labor is recruited, trained, and used in the industry. He then shows how inexperienced workers are convinced to lease a truck and to work as independent contractors. He explains how deregulation and collective action by employers transformed trucking’s labor markets--once dominated by the largest and most powerful union in US history--into an important example of the costs of contemporary labor markets for workers and the general public.
