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ThisConfessions of a Truck Driver
By C. HOWIE
It's hot, dry and dusty on a spring day at the Port of Los Angeles, but driver
Hugo Salcedo is getting his feet wet as he hoses down the hood of his 80,000 lb
truck.
It's routine maintenance and just one of the tasks Salcedo, 37, has done every
week of the seven years he's been driving. Being a truck driver may seem an
unforgiving career to some, but to Salcedo it gives him the freedom of the road
and a lifetime of travel.
Best time is baseball season, he says. Though today he sports a USC Trojans hat,
the profession that takes him across 48 states allows him to catch the Red Sox
in Boston, the Marlins in Miami and his hometown Dodgers in Los Angeles.
Over the course of several months his job will take him from “Long Beach to
Kentucky, Kentucky to New York, New York to Florida, Florida all the way across
the country to Hayward, California.” Jealous yet? I was when he told me the
other reason he finds trucking a rewarding profession: Money. He gets $1.55 for
every mile he drives, even after the fuel surcharge. “You do the math,” he says.
That adds up pretty lucratively when you consider he can drive 4-5,000 miles in
an average week, though he says a trucker's returns can be slim once they've
paid between $60,000 and $120,000 for a new truck.
I wonder if he suffers from loneliness on the road, but he says no. He has
Internet and TV in his cab to keep him company. The most serious issue he faces
on a daily basis is safety.
“No. 1 you have to be safe, period,”he says. “For you and everyone around you.
With an 80,000 lb truck, you gonna hit somebody you're gonna kill somebody.
“It's something you're supposed to do whether you drive a car or big rig, to be
safe on the road, to have the knowledge of the road, the highways and how to
control a truck in an emergency situation.”
As a profession, truckers are perhaps most at mercy of weather conditions and
occasionally it is a tough, but vital, choice as to whether to bed down for the
night, or carefully navigate a serious storm.
“You gotta make changes, slow down, or don't drive at all. It's a choice you
make, during the wintertime, you either gotta stop and put chains or keep going,
or say, do I stop and wait til it's over?”
Sometimes, the choices Salcedo makes can put him in danger. One time, late at
night, he found himself “head-on” with a car coming the opposite director,
Salcedo chose to take evasive action and ended up in a ditch. He rolled, his
truck traveled “150 feet” on its side. Fortunately he escaped injury but his
freight – he usually carries paper in bulk for Kimberly Clarke or Wal-Mart – was
ruined after it scattered along the highway.
A harrowing tale indeed, but Salcedo laughs as he tells it. He shakes his head
at the thought and, as he pushes up the hood of his truck, says he's got to hit
the road. Before he goes, he leaves me with a lesson trucking has taught him
that perhaps applies across the career spectrum. Every time he's finds himself
in a tight or challenging spot, he says, he goes with “Experience. You're not
taught that. If you were taught that, everything (would) be a lot easier.”
And one more lesson for working life? “Hold on to your seatbelts,” he says.
Last edited by Bigmon; 10-09-2008 at 07:46 PM.
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