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Rear View<br />
54 TODAY’S TRUCKING<br />
By Peter Carter<br />
You’re heard of Jeff Foxworthy, right? He’s the guy from<br />
Georgia who invented “You might be a redneck if…”<br />
I’m talking about ”you might be a redneck if you think<br />
Taco Bell is the Mexican phone company” or “if you’ve ever cut<br />
the grass and found a car.” Or, “if you own a home that’s mobile<br />
and five cars that aren’t.”<br />
And then there are knockoffs: Some<br />
of the folks from my hometown seem<br />
to think I’d enjoy “you might be from<br />
Northern Ontario if…” amusing.<br />
A few signs of having area-code-705<br />
roots? “When you got a couple of dead<br />
pets buried in your backyard,” or “when<br />
‘vacation’ means going to Sudbury or<br />
North Bay for the weekend.”<br />
Most can’t be printed here and deal<br />
with sleds, spouses, beer and hockey.<br />
There’s another spin-off—“You might<br />
be a trucker’s wife if.” Google it. You’ll<br />
find lots. Like “you might be a trucker’s<br />
wife if you can’t wait for your husband<br />
to get home and then can’t wait for him<br />
to leave.”<br />
But as far as I know, nobody has done<br />
“You might be a trucker if... ”<br />
Until now.<br />
I asked a handful of driver/carrier<br />
friends for contributions. And they were<br />
surprisingly upbeat. At first.<br />
This came from Terry Smith of Miramichi, N.B. A few years<br />
ago, Terry was named a highwaySTAR of the year and is as fine a<br />
trucking ambassador as you’re going to find.<br />
“You know you are a trucker,” he says, “when you are pounding<br />
the pavement, blue tooth on, tunes blaring , CB on your channel,<br />
and a little boy frantically waves for you to blow the air horn, as<br />
his father cuts you off. All you can do is give a blast for the little<br />
man and one for his dad.”<br />
Also from Smith: “You know you are a truck driver when you<br />
are the first to call 911 and jump out of the rig to come to the aid<br />
of others at the scene of an accident.”<br />
Alfy Meyer, a veteran with Erb, brought it a little closer to<br />
You Know You’re A<br />
Trucker When...<br />
Reading the mood of the folks behind your wheels<br />
home: “You know you’re a trucker when, after being away from<br />
home a few weeks, working 70-plus hours a week, your ‘honey-do’<br />
list requires another 70 hours of your weekend off.”<br />
And, “after eating in restaurants out on the road and looking<br />
forward to a good home-cooked meal, your wife wants you to<br />
take her out to a restaurant.”<br />
David Brown of Rosedale offered:<br />
“When you take your kids to the movies<br />
and you try and use your FAST card;<br />
“When you go for your medical and<br />
can’t see your toes;” and “When you call<br />
your truck Linda and your wife’s name<br />
is Jill but Jill couldn’t care less.”<br />
Some were tied to the economy.<br />
Laughed Michael Ludwig of Ludwig<br />
Transport: “You know you’re a trucker<br />
when you don’t fly your daughter<br />
home for the holidays because it’s nonpaying<br />
freight.”<br />
Of course the real beauty of the<br />
Foxworthy gems is that, deep down at<br />
their core, they’re true. Like this one,<br />
from the Northern Ontario file. “When<br />
you dig your Christmas tree out of 10<br />
feet of snow before you cut it down.”<br />
Been there, dug that.<br />
<strong>In</strong> that light, one of my contributors,<br />
who preferred to remain anonymous,<br />
offered: “You know you’re a trucker<br />
when you’ve done everything possible to please/exceed your dispatcher<br />
and the company’s customers’ expectations, only to find<br />
a notice of reprimand from the companies safety department for<br />
failing to meet ‘their’ expectations.”<br />
And finally, as one somewhat peeved pal, with more than 25<br />
years under his accident-free belt put it: “You know you’re a<br />
trucker when they lay you off.”<br />
I have one more to add: “You know you’re a trucker when you<br />
have one eye on the road and the other on the help-wanted ads.”<br />
The moral here? The economy’s picking up. Drivers will be<br />
getting scarce again. Best not add, “you know you’re a trucker<br />
when you own a fleet but have nobody to drive it.” ▲