November 17, 2017 • 39 mins
There's no doubt that truckers are underappreciated. From the mom and pop trucks that haul milk from local dairies to the long-distance married couples who tag team driving cross-country, Will and Mango take a peek under the industry's hood. Plus, we rewind back to a time when truckers were America's folk heroes. Featuring Roger Chappalear.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will What's that? So? I was chatting with
my friend and she works and permissions at this amazing
art center in Texas, and she was telling me that
sometimes her job involves traveling with famous artworks in trucks.
So what does that mean exactly? Well, that was my
question too, But if a New York museum wanted a
loan like a frieda Collo painting, well, part of her
job involves hopping in a truck with the painting and
(00:21):
escorting a cross country just making sure it gets delivered.
Like she doesn't touch the art, but she just helicopter
parents over it. But the truck part of it is
crazy to me because I imagine it just be easier
to send paintings by plane, but apparently trucks are the
preferred way to send expensive art. So it was the
experience fun for her? Or what it was the exact opposite.
It was supposedly this white glove service, but it's still
(00:43):
just a truck. And she was stuck in the back
as these bros apparently blasted bad music, so she just
read and slept as they took turns driving. But the
whole thing made me realize I know nothing about trucking
and the fact that these big vehicles are hauling everything
from greeting cards to masterworks is kind of astounding to me.
So what's life like for these men and women who
spend so much of their life on the road. And
(01:04):
that's what today's episode is all about, say their podcast listeners.
Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
(01:27):
always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh I
Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass
wearing this amazing trucker hat. What does it say on it?
Cheez whiz, just says cheese whiz. Our friend and producer
Tristan McNeil. He's always prepared for these episodes with the
best props. All right, well, today we're looking under the
hood of one of the most important and maybe most
underappreciated jobs in the world, and that's the professional truck driver. Now,
(01:51):
we're all familiar with these massive tractor trailers that crowd
the highways and maybe move a bit more slowly than
we'd like, but you know, most of us don't give
a second thought to the and women behind the steering wheels.
With about three and a half million people in the
us who drive trucks for a living. That's an awful
lot of people to be overlooked, and in fact, their
work is a big part of what keeps the economy humming.
(02:12):
So today we're giving truckers their due and checking out
some of the coolest, maybe most surprising and strangest parts
of life on the open road. Definitely, and we'll be
checking in with our trucker pal Roger. Aside from running
his family farm in southern Maryland, Rogers also the owner
operator of this small fleet of trucks which he partly
uses to collect milk from Amish dairies. So we'll talk
to him about being a local truck driver and find
(02:34):
out what keeps them going through these long days and
nights at the wheel. All Right, So I mentioned upfront
that truckers play a huge role in the success of
our economy, so I really thought we should start by
just getting a better sense of what their impact is exactly. Yeah,
it's kind of tricky because trucking is one of those
industries where so much happens behind the scenes, and obviously
the trucks themselves are highly visible, but where they're going
(02:54):
and what they're actually hauling that goes largely unseen. Yeah,
that's true. So let me pull some stats appear for you. So,
the American Trucking Association reports that roughly seventy of the
country's freight is shipped on trucks. That's about ten and
a half billion tons every single year. That's way way
more than the amount of freight move by plane or
train or any other means. But you know, when you
(03:16):
said that, like the term freight just feels so vague, Like,
can you clarify a little about what those ten point
five billion tons are? Well, pretty much everything. I mean,
you know, they haul construction materials, industrial machinery, lots of
other things that don't involve the average consumer. But they're
also responsible for moving just about everything you'd find on
a store shelf. I know our researcher Gay was trying
to give us some examples, and I think he was
(03:37):
pretty proud of himself because he said, from blueberries to
blue jeans to bluebell ice cream. You see what he
did there with that A lot of clever. But imagine
if all of that stopped, right, Like, if suddenly there
were no more big rigs and no more truck drivers.
It's really no exaggeration to say that the American economy
would collapse, Like, you know, planes and trains and boats
(03:58):
could probably fill in the gaps eventually, but prices would
skyrocket and it would be uttered chaos. Well, and what
most people don't realize is that the prices would likely
stay high in the long term, not just the short term.
And why's that, Well, you've got to remember that all
other transportation methods caused way more than shipping my truck. Yeah,
I guess that's true. And it's a pretty insane how
dependent we are on trucks. So I was curious about
(04:19):
the industry's rise, so I actually looked into the history
of semi trucks in the US. Apparently the man credit
with actually inventing them was this guy from Ohio named
Alexander Winton. He was this car maker who was sick
of how time consuming and expensive it was to deliver
cars to their new owners. And this was in the nineties,
like most roads were unpaved and didn't extend very far
(04:39):
beyond the city's limits. People would order cars from all
over the country, and the only way to get them
there was to individually drive each car, which put this
insane amount of wear and tear on the new cars,
not to mention all these miles. But for Winton, the
worst part was the hit he took in the wallet,
Like delivering the cars was actually a great cost to
him and his company. So his solution was this automobile holler. Basically,
(05:01):
it was a new type of vehicle that could carry
a car on this attached trailer. And so in eight
went and started manufacturing the holler for his own use,
and then he started selling him to other car makers
once the word got out. All right, So so the
first eighteen wheelers were actually made to ship cars. I
would have guessed, you know, that would have been building
materials or groceries or something else, But I didn't think
about cars. Yeah, and I mean eighteen wheelers were still
(05:24):
a long way off in Winton's day, Like his trailers
actually only had two wheels and they could haul just
one car at a time. But as the nation's highway
system began to take shape, other manufacturers took notice and
they expanded on the design and over the next forty
years they kept evolving it until it became what we're
familiar with today. That's pretty interesting. Well, it's weird to
think about a time when Rhodes didn't actually connect. I
(05:44):
remember we did that story at Mental Floss about the
woman who drove cross country. I think it was in
the early nineteen hundreds. Yeah, her name is Alice Ramsey.
I love that piece. Yeah, that's right, So I I
looked up the article again and she crossed the country
in nineteen o nine. It was on this road trip
with three other young women, and it took them fifty
nine days. Why because there was no atlas, and you'd
(06:05):
have to get local maps in each town, and the
roads didn't always have the same name, so you'd navigate
and you have to backtrack then drive again, and it
just sounds so confusing. They changed something like ten or
eleven tires along the way. I mean, it's actually kind
of crazy they even made it. I know, it's insane,
but you know, the thing I really remember from that
piece was that Alice had been set up to do
this for PR to show that women could actually drive,
(06:27):
because people were worried about all these insane things about cars.
You know. They traveled out about fifteen to twenty miles
per hour, and it was this open air vehicle at
the time, which they thought was terrible for women's health.
They thought it could you know, impact their nerves and
their mental health, or even worse, all that fast blowing
wind could leave them with something they called automobile face. Man,
(06:48):
nobody wants to want me to have automobile face. So Tom,
all right, Well all that to say, it's it's kind
of impossible to think about how bad the roads must
have been delivering cars back and wind's time, and you
can see why he was so inspired to create his
truck bed. But speaking which, I'm curious, like, how interchangeable
are these terms? So so far we've said eighteen wheeler
(07:10):
and semi, but you also see things like tractor trailer
and big rigs, So why do we call it a
semi Anyway, Well, I was surprised to learn this, but
apparently all those terms pretty much referred to the same thing.
But talking about the semi, that's actually meant to describe
the trailer and not the truck. So I'm gonna find
the inventor in my notes here. Yeah, it's this guy,
(07:31):
this Detroit blacksmith. His name's Charles August Freihoff, who first
coined the phrase semi trailer this is about and used
it to describe a carriage he'd built for a customer
who wanted to move a boat. And the name comes
from the fact that the trailer had no front wheels
and could only be used when hooked up to a truck.
Got it. So so it's it's only kind of a
trailer because it's mostly useless without a truck to tow it.
(07:53):
Of course, and and people now use the name semi
trucks to refer to the tractor part of a tractor
trailer too, But in this case, like you men Gin,
the truck half functions fine on its own. By the way,
when you were researching, did you come across the site
truck spills dot com? I can't say that I did, so,
so what is that? I mean, I can guess what
that is. I know, and I mean it is a
little disturbing. It's mostly these tumped over trucks with things
(08:15):
they've spilled. It's like pictures of a truck that's crashed,
but then you see all the butternut squash spilled over
the highway, or there was actually a molasses spill. It's
a little weird to be looking at these accidents, but
you do get a sense of how much stuff each
truck carries, Like if just one truck is carrying five
thousand gallons of molasses, it can actually take eight to
(08:36):
nine hours to clean up all that stickiness. Where there
was a truck that crashed and it was carrying eels
and the good that's spilled out onto the other cars
and the highway is so gross is discussing. Here's the
caption from a local paper, so quote more than seven
thousand pounds of hag fish also known as slime eels
codd a section of Highway one oh one with a
gel described as quote spider Man's webbing crossed with fish.
(09:00):
I have so many questions about this, Like I really
want to know where they all in aquariums where they
just like stacked on top of one another. It's like,
how does this work? But either way, it sounds really disgusting. Yeah,
and the pictures are really grosser to check it out. Well,
you know, actually, when you think about these spills and
and those kinds of crashes, think about how hard truck
(09:21):
driving is. It's kind of amazing there aren't more crashes.
But while we're on the subject, we should probably point
out that the term truck drivers is a much broader
term than you might think. Basically, we group large commercial
truck drivers into two main categories. So there's local and
long haul. Local drivers or short haul truckers as they're
also called. They're the ones that mostly stick to their
(09:41):
area around the city and that they might also venture
into more distant parts of the same state. Right, So
these are the delivery drivers for companies like EPs and FedEx,
as well as the tanker drivers who refuel gas stations.
And there are a host of other kinds of drivers
like this who service their local communities. So then you
look at the other to the spectrum and you have
long haul truckers also known as over the road drivers,
(10:04):
and these are the folks who transport goods across state
lines from coast to coast and probably what most people
tend to think of when they picture truckers. Okay, so
the difference mostly boils down to distance covered. But are
there other distinctions too? Well? Distance is definitely the main difference.
But you know, for example, the average semi travels about
forty five thousand miles in a year, but the trucking
(10:25):
industry and the Federal Highway Administration estimate that trucks used
for long distance halls, they average more than twice that amount,
at about I think it's like a hundred and twenty
five thousand miles per year, and that's roughly five hundred
miles per work day. That's crazy. So obviously that leads
to this difference in lifestyle as well, no question about that.
And it's no surprise that long haul truckers spend more
(10:46):
time on the road than their local counterparts, which also
means they might make at home once every few weeks
or sometimes not even for a month, or maybe even
longer than that. It's really hard. So I also read
that long haul truckers make much more money than local drivers,
and I guess you can see why if they have
to be away from their families for such long times. Yeah,
I was actually curious and looked into this. If you
look at the Bureau of Labor statistics, the average income
(11:08):
of a truck driver was about forty three thousand, almost
forty four thousand and two thousand sixteen, but local drivers
often make ten to fifteen thousand less than that in
exchange for being able to return home every night. Yeah,
that's one thing you always hear about truck driving, that
the money is actually pretty good, and they can deliver
this middle class level paycheck without a college diploma. But
if that's mostly true for only long haul truckers, you
(11:31):
have to wonder if the trade offs are worth it.
You know, we're definitely not the only ones wondering that.
According to a two thousand and sixteen report, the turnover
rate for the biggest truckload fleets in the country was
a staggering eighty one percent last year. That's insane. I mean,
more than three quarters of the truck and workforce bailed
in a single year. Yeah, and here's the craziest part.
That from last year was actually the lowest turnover rate
(11:52):
the industry had seen in the past five years. So
in reality, the majority of long haul truckers quit before
they even make it to the one year mark. So
you've got to thank that accounts for a big part
of that turnover. Like I read that sometimes truckers will
only see other people for an hour or so each day,
and that's when they stop for gas or stop to
use the restroom. But the rest of the time they're
(12:12):
alone in their truck cat and whether that's driving on
the highway or sleeping at a rest stop, even if
the money is good, that kind of isolation has to
be hard. Yeah, it is, and you know, to make
things even worse, the system itself actually kind of encourages
this seclusion. So why is that. Well, truckers are paid
by the mile, not by the hour, but federal regulations
(12:33):
only allow them to drive for eleven hours within every
fourteen hour work window, so they have to rest for
ten hours before they can legally drive again. And so
what that means is that the pressure is on to
cover as many miles as possible in those eleven hours
that they're able to drive, and that obviously means stopping
for breaks or to interact with people isn't really an
option exactly, So they need to spend as much time
(12:55):
behind the wheel as possible or else they're losing income.
And because there are fewer people on the oat after dark,
it also means plenty of truckers choose to drive through
the night so they can avoid traffic and cover as
much distance as possible. What's weird is that so much
of the appeal of truck driving, at least for me,
is that you get to travel and see parts of
the country you wouldn't see otherwise. But I guess if
you're trying to squeeze as many miles into a day,
(13:16):
you don't really have that much time for sight seeing.
That's true, but you know, obviously it does work for
some people, and every trucker's experience is different. There are
plenty of reports and interviews, you know, about the stress
and the drudgery, but you know, that's hardly the whole story.
There's lots of long haul drivers that take the job
because they appreciate that independence and maybe that sense of
freedom that comes with cruising along the American highways. Anyway,
(13:40):
we've talked a lot about the pros and cons of
long haul trucking, But what do you say we get
Roger on the line and see what life behind the
wheel is like for local drivers. Yeah, let's do it.
So Mango, We've got a special guest on the line today.
We've been talking about truck drivers in this episode, and
we have someone who has a very interesting job driving. Now,
(14:02):
he's a farmer by day, farming grains, corn, wheat, soybeans,
and so forth, but he has a driving job many
nights the week. I'm not sure when he sleeps, but
we'll ask him a little bit about that. But Roger Chapelier,
welcome to part time Genius. Thank you. Now, Roger, where
are you joining us from today? I'm in southern Maryland,
(14:22):
about twenty miles south of Washington, d C. Okay, well,
I understand that. UM, in addition to farming, a couple
of decades ago, you started a very interesting job as
a as a driver. Can you tell us a little
bit about what you do? Yeah, I I haul the
milk from uh. It's actually fifteen Amish farms currently, but
(14:44):
I go I go to fifteen farms every other night,
UH and pick up the milk that they have produced,
and then I take it to a processing plant and UM,
and I do that every other every other night. I
love that. Actually, I know that gave to the story
with you for Mental Flass magazine a while back, and
one of the descriptions he had in there that I
(15:06):
loved so much was just being able to take a
cup of cold, fresh milk and just how creamy and
delicious that tasted. And I always stuck with me. But
I didn't have a question. So obviously, these are two
different worlds that you're bridging, this driving a truck and
this community that doesn't really use electricity, So I was curious,
(15:27):
do you have any good stories from when those worlds interact?
Um is certainly the The actual communication process in itself
can be very difficult. Occasionally there are changes to the schedule,
i e. When when the milk is going to be
delivered or needs to be delivered, and stuff like that.
(15:47):
In that case, they have a pay phone or or
an outside phone. It's not not a likely corn operated payphone,
but they have a phone, and they'll call me and
if I'm available, course all answer. If not, they leave
me a message, but there is no way to contact
them to respond short of traveling down there. And actually,
(16:09):
you know, physically talking to someone. Wow, and especially when
we're talking fifteen different farms. I'm sure that's a challenge, right,
that's right. And and you know, with milk being kind
of a perishable commodity, you have to you have to
have good, good communications so that you can make things
happen when they need to how they need to. Yeah,
(16:29):
and I have to ask Roger, I mean, what what
kind of hours do you keep because I know farming
alone is a full time job, so how do you
do that and manage driving every other night of the week. Uh,
it's it's gotten harder as I've had more birthdays. I
typically start about midnight, and if everything goes well, I
(16:51):
get done by six thirty or seven o'clock in the morning.
When you know, on on the nights that I pick
up the milk. But then you're right back on the
farm that next day. Are you able to sleep during
that next day? No, I don't sleep during the day.
I typically if I got done at seven o'clock, I
might Uh, I might take a little snooze until nine
or so before I got back to it. Wow, that
(17:12):
sounds a lot like our jobs, except not at all.
So that's that's pretty amazing. That's remarkable, so excerious. How
did you start this trucking business? To begin with? The
Amish community down here, UH was was shipping milks and
then their local plant closed. UH weren't out of business,
(17:33):
and so they were without a destination for their milk,
and they actually stopped milking for several years and um
and and they missed that. I think. I think it's
it's part of the fabric of of many Amish communities
that dairy dairy operation. It's how they it's how they
bring their children up, you know, to be uh, to
be in the workforce and stuff like that. But but anyway,
(17:56):
I had a Thomas gentlemen that I saw from hay Too,
and he said, we need a a what they call
us English they're Amish and they refer to us as English.
But he said, we need an English farm to start
dairying so that we can get a milk truck in
the area. And um, and I just casually off the
(18:19):
cuffs said that, you know, there'd be something that was
interested in. I ended up not actually starting a dairy farm,
but I did did end up, I guess, deciding to
hault milk for them. Wow. Well, because of that job,
it now qualifies you to take today's big quiz and Mango,
What what quiz are we playing with? Roger? It's called
keep on Trucking? All right? So that's it. We'll we'll
(18:41):
give you a clue, Roger, and you just have to
tell us what type of truck we're talking about. Are
you ready? I'll try all right? Question number one. This
Minnesota toy Company's best selling toy is the bright yellow
Mighty Dump Truck, which at first released in nineteen Can
you name the company I'm gonna go with Tonko. Yeah,
(19:04):
that's right, and it's actually named for Lake Minnetonka. All right,
I did not know that. Okay. Question number two, the
drums on these trucks typically turn in one direction to
keep the contents mixing, and the other direction when they
need to pour the contents out of Shoot, what type
of truck are we talking about? That's the concrete mixture. Yeah,
(19:25):
that's right, cement truck. That's right. Already's two for two.
Question number three, what type of truck crushes about three
thousand cars in a lifetime? Truck brush the three thousand cars.
I don't know of a truck that does that, but
there is a trailer, there is a car fructure. There's
an actual trailer that does that, or or maybe you're
(19:46):
talking about big slot or one of those uh, one
of those things. Yeah, that's right. It's a monster truck. Yep,
you got it. You came back around to it and
they actually cost about what six thousand to build? Yeah,
that's crazy. Alright. So Roger is three three. We thought
he was going to miss that, but then he he
had it, and he dug deep and found the answer. Right,
you got two questions left, pulled it out at the end.
(20:08):
That's right, that's right. Question number four. After trying to
use blocks, ropes, and six men to pull a car
out of a creek, Ernest Holmes came up with a
design for this type of truck in nineteen sixteen. Yeah,
that's right, to tow truck to truck. Alright, Roger is
four for four. Sleep deprivation doesn't do anything to this
guy already. The last question, question number five, here we go.
(20:32):
Harry Burt of Youngstown, Ohio is the inventor of this
type of truck, using it to sell and deliver chocolate
covered suckers two kids. That's right. Bert was actually the
inventor of the Good Humor brand. Wow. So how did
Roger do today? Mango? He went astounding five for five
(20:52):
and that entitles him to our grand prize, which is
an official Part Time Genius Certificate of Genius along with
an official T shirt. Congratulations Roger, and thanks so much
for joining us on Part Time Genius. You guys are
very welcome. You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're
(21:20):
talking about the highs and lows of being a professional
truck driver. Okay, so will you mentioned the sense of
freedom that any truck drivers site is one of the
best parts of the job. But since every hall has
a set destination and this very tight deadline, I'm curious
what kind of freedom we're talking about. Well, you know,
there's the freedom of being your own boss. I mean,
long haul truckers ultimately answered to a dispatcher, but most
(21:41):
of the time they're on their own and it's up
to them to decide which route they take or where
and when to stop along the way. That makes sense.
And speaking of stops, ever since our palace, Stacy Conrad
told us about this massive truck stop she visited, I've
been fascinated by truck stops, just how there's these roadside
mecca's where truckers from all over gather and rest stop
and I'm just so curious what the culture is like
(22:02):
in there and how it all works. Yeah, and I
remember visiting some of those travel plazas, you know, on
car trips as a kid and being so confused about
some of the services that were offered there, like gas
and snacks made sense, but there are things like barber
shops and movie theaters, and I couldn't understand why anyone
would drive to the middle of nowhere just for a haircut.
You know, I really wasn't thinking about it or understanding it. Yeah,
(22:23):
So I looked at the history a little, and apparently
truck stops started popping up back in the nineteen fifties
when President Eisenhower introduced his Highway System bill, and and
so they were really just a means for drivers to
refuel without having to go too far out of the way.
And you've got to remember there was no GPS at
the time, so it was daunting to venture off the
highway and wandered into some small town and and then
(22:45):
try to look for a gas station. And then as
the trucking industry grew and more long distance truck drivers
began to use the highway routes, the truck stop started
offering more services. And these are the things that catered
directly to the truck or crowd. The first of these
added amenities included places to park, sleep, and and then
restaurants to eat at and and finally showers to use
as well. Well. They've definitely come a long way since then.
(23:06):
And I decided to dig around for the most luxurious
truck stops I could find, and I'm happy to report.
I was not disappointed by this. For instance, one of
the most famous is in Iowa. It's the Iowa eighty
truck Stop in Walcut, Iowa, and it's been around since
nineteen sixty four, and it's pretty famous in the truck
or circles. It builds itself as the world's largest truck stop,
(23:26):
and that probably is true. I was looking at the
size of it. It's over a hundred thousand square feet
and it sees about five thousand visitors every single day.
I get that it's big, but where does the luxury
part come in? Well, for starters, it has eight different restaurants,
twenty four private showers, and it's got things you might want,
like you know, a workout room. But it's also got
a chiropractor and on site dentist. And it was a
(23:48):
trucking museum in case you're looking to get some culture
in while you're there. And if that isn't enough, the
truck stops legendary fifty foot salad bars should do the trick.
I don't even know, Like what you put it in
a fifty ft salad bar, that's a lot of salad
your luxury I don't know. I gotta check this out
at some point. But you know the best part maybe
that they've got all the major mats covered as well.
(24:09):
What's I mean? You know, you've got the laundromat and
the truck o Matt truck wash, and a dog a mat,
which I guess is a pet wash, oh Matt. Yeah,
and we should also note that the name is dogo mat,
but it's actually just a pet wash. So in theory,
they'll take your hamster, your turtle, and maybe your parent
and you mean they name other animals that I think
they don't discriminate at the dogo mat. So one thing
(24:32):
I find interesting about modern truck stops is that they're
sort of torn between catering to the actual truckers and
then plain old motorists. Yeah, I was. I was reading
this article in Pacific Standard magazine and the author, his
name is Will Stevenson. He spent twenty four hours hanging
out at a truck stop. He interviewed truckers who passed through,
and he was trying to get a sense of what
it's like to spend a good chunk of time at
(24:53):
just one of these places. And that mix of clientele
leads to this uneasy culture. So just listen to how
Stevenson describes the contrast between truckers and you know, the
other truck stop patrons. He says, when I get back,
I discovered that the Pilot truck stop has unexpectedly transformed
into a popular community dessert spot, and the soft serve
(25:13):
ice cream station is finally getting the attention it deserves.
High school kids and they're well dressed parents fill styrofoam
bowls of the stuff, covered in sprinkles and chocolate chips
and caramel syrup. Their exuberance contrast sharply with the zombie
gates of the truckers straggling in from the back lot,
clearly unsettled by the makeup and blazers and just general
good cheer. They steal glances at the family while shuffling
(25:36):
down the aisles, grabbing gallons of water and chips and
DVDs to watch while falling asleep. That really makes you
feel for the truckers who are just wiped out. And
obviously they're there because they have to work, but now
they've got to deal with these annoying vacationers as well.
But I have to say, even though I'm not a
part of it, I really do love that there's this
truck or subculture out there that sets them apart from
(25:59):
other people on the road. Like have you heard that
truckers only referred to other truckers as drivers? Everyone else
like you and me are called four wheelers. I'm guessing
it's kind of lingo. You'd hear, you know, when you
do you hear about them using CB radio and such. Definitely,
And and you know, I was looking to CB radios
for this episode. Did you know that the short wave
communication method was actually developed by the same guy who
invented walkie talkies? No, that's pretty cool. So actually I'm
(26:21):
curious why did he name it CB? Yeah, it stands
for Citizens Band And it took off among truck drivers
in the sixties and seventies both as a way of
alleviating boredom and is a way of like finding the
cheapest gas prices and also avoiding speed traps. Well, and
it was revolutionary and it today And this was long
before cell phones and smart devices made it easy for
(26:41):
all of us to keep in touch on the road,
and a basically it still has a place in the
truck or world. And part of that is because cell
phone used to is strictly monitored by the trucking companies.
You know, I think we mentioned that Betty Ford had
to CB handle like she went by the name First Mama,
and she used her CB to chat and campaign for
Gerald Ford, which which I love. It's funny how even
before there were chat rooms and Twitter handles and whatever,
(27:04):
you know, CBE handles were this fun way to identify yourself.
You see names like mud duck or bullfrog or whatever.
But I mean, the thing I didn't realize is that
part of the reason people use those names in the
first place was to avoid licensing fees. So when CBE
radios first hit the scene, you had to pay twenty
dollars for a license to use it. So most of
the users, especially truckers, came up with these handles as
(27:25):
a way of staying anonymous and ducking the fees. I mean,
I guess that taints the name bull frog a little bit,
but it's still pretty cool. And that reminds me that
we should talk a little bit more about the current
state of truck driving. You know, why some people choose
to be truck mats and what's going to happen when
trucks becomes self driving. Absolutely but before we do, how
about we pause for a little break. Okay. So we
(27:56):
were talking about the CB radio and how it coincided
with the rise of long haul truckers in the mid
twentieth century. It was really kind of the golden age
of American trucking, and this was when the U. S.
Economy started to lean more heavily on truckers for all
of its shipping needs, and so their ranks swelled with
enthusiastic drivers. But the nineteen seventies quickly brought trouble for
truckers in the form of this national gas crisis. There
(28:19):
was skyrocketing fuel prices and a government impost speed limit
of fifty five and so the trucking industry looked like
it was honestly heading for a cliff, right, And that's
when SMI radios actually took on this new importance for
drivers as a means of fighting back against government regulations.
I read about this one trucker in particular, JW. Edwards,
a k river rat, and he organized a national strike
(28:41):
that brought hundreds of drivers from around the country to
the I. A. D Highway in Pennsylvania, and the truckers
formed a blockade on the highway that lasted ten days.
I mean, the only reason it ended was that the
governor of Pennsylvania called in the National Guard to break
it all up, you know. And after the strike, drivers
became these kind of like working folk hero was in
the eyes of the American public, and movies like Smoking
(29:03):
in the Bandit and Convoy portrayed truckers. Is these wily
cowboys of American highways speaking in code and fighting back
against the man. Actually, there's a movie, what was that
Sylvester Stallone movie where he was the arm wrestler over
the Top? I thought about that movie in years. Why
didn't we watch that for this because I have traumatic
memories of it. My older cousin made me watch it
(29:24):
and then he forced me to arm wrestle for like
an hour afterwards. It just keet beating me. I don't
think any of our listeners would be surprised to know
we're not champion arm wrestlers. But should we say what
happened after this? Folk? Here a bit? Because like, how
did the public go from glorifying truckers to flat out
ignoring them in just a few decades. Well, once the
fuel crisis was resolved, truckers got less national attention, and
(29:46):
just like with westerns or pirate films, people eventually got
tired of seeing movies about truckers in the public perception
of truck drivers also started to shift a little when
there were some reports of shady behavior truck stops, but
really mostly the public just kind of moved on from it.
So obviously the industries had these ups and downs over
the years, but we should talk about where it's at today. Yeah,
(30:06):
I thought we could highlight a few of the surprising
things we found out about today's truckers and what they
might mean for the future of trucking in America. Sure, So,
here's the fact that surprised me. Women now account for
nearly six percent of all long haul truckers, and while
that might not seem like much, it's actually a two
percent increase from just ten years ago. And although the
other of truckers might be unwilling to admit it, there's
(30:28):
actually evidence that female truckers do a much better job. So,
according to Werner Enterprises, female drivers outperformed mail drivers when
it comes to accidents, inspections, and compliance with safety regulations.
So I'm curious, did you come across any of these
truck driving couples that are out there while you were
doing your research. You know, I didn't know anything about
them before this episode. Well, apparently it's actually pretty common
(30:50):
and that the practice is called team truck driving, and
it's it's a really great solution for drivers who can't
stand the thought of being away from their loved ones
for that long. So how does it work Exactly? There's
only one person of the driving or they both employees. Well,
usually both people get their own commercial driver's license and
and then they swap between driving and sleeping. So, just
like with regular drivers, teams are paid per mile, while
(31:11):
they may split the pay. They're also able to cover
ground in less time than solo drivers, which you know,
it means they can finish one job and beyond to
the next much quicker. Yeah, that sounds like the way
to go, especially since it means you always have company
with you. Yeah, and you know, another benefit is not
having to find a place to stop every single night.
So there's a serious parking shortage along US highways and
(31:31):
it's causing a ton of frustration for today's truckers. So
just listen to these numbers. The Federal Highway Administration conducted
a survey among truck drivers and found that over seventy
five percent of respondents routinely have trouble finding a safe
place to park overnight when they need arrest, which is
no surprise when you consider they're only about three hundred
thousand parking spaces for the more than three million trucks
(31:53):
on the road. There's a major problem. That's insane. I
didn't realize there was not much of a shortage. But
if we're tackling the subject of problems faced by modern truckers,
we should also address this elephant in the room, and
that's that self driving trucks are on the way. I mean,
the short version is that self driving trucks are coming,
and it's really a matter of when. But how soon
we'll see them is still up for debate. On the
one hand, it's much easier to design these autonomous vehicles
(32:16):
for highway use than it is for city streets and
suburban neighborhoods. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, highways have long,
straight stretches of road, no traffic lights, and much fewer
moving obstacles like pedestrians or bike riders, and it's a
lot less for a robot to keep track of exactly,
and a lot of these self driving cars can already
handle much of what's needed for highway driving, like they
know how to stay in their lanes and maintain steady
(32:37):
speeds and keep a safe distance from the cars around them.
It actually kind of makes me wonder, like, why aren't
truckers already out of a job? Yeah, so I was
wondering that too, And there's still some important aspects of
driving that autonomous vehicles haven't mastered yet, even for highway driving.
So like, once these self driving semis do hit the road,
there'll still be a place for human drivers, at least
(32:58):
at first. I mean, the truck would do most of
the highway driving, but it would see control to the
human when there's particularly sharp curve coming up, or when
it's time to exit off the highway, or when the
trailer needs to be nimbly backed into a warehouse to
be unloaded. All right, So initially there would be this
I don't know, kind of like a partnership between human
operators and these self driving trucks. But I'm guessing that
(33:18):
would just be a temporary truce during this process. That's
most likely case. I mean, the tech is out there
and companies like Google and Tesla and Amazon. They're just
so eager to put it to use as soon as possible.
And once it's rolled out in earnest truck and companies
are going to have a hard time competing. You know,
these trucks are never gonna speed or cause accidents, and
they don't need to stop for rest or food. Of course,
(33:40):
it could be a decade or more before semis are
fully autonomous, and they're still legal hurdles to be cleared
along the way. Yeah, just last month, I was reading
this piece of legislation that the Senate release that that
would allow the government to establish rules about self driving,
about the design and the usage of self driving vehicles.
But interestingly, there was actually no mention of autonomous commercial
(34:01):
vehicles at all in this legislation. So this was a
blow to companies who would benefit from a clear set
of national rules for how they can build and sell
these self driving big rigs. But naturally, teamsters have been
fighting against self driving trucks, so so this bill that
pushes the prospect further down the road, it's something of
a win for them. And the truth is, truckers feel
like such an important and overlooked community. There's actually one
(34:24):
more quote that I wanted to share from that Pacific
Standard article I mentioned earlier. Actually think it kind of
sums up what we've been talking about in this this
relationship and the difficulties of the truck or lifestyle, and
and the disconnect they sometimes feel between themselves and the public. Yeah,
so I'd love to hear it. All right, So Stevenson writes, quote,
there's a sense among long distance drivers of a universal
(34:44):
lack of sympathy for the utterly essential service they provide.
It's an old fashioned profession, but it remains more central
to the fabric of our lives than many would suspect.
These are the people who sleep in parking lots, showering
gas stations, and together sustain the tire American economy. It's funny.
I don't really think of it as old fashioned, but
(35:04):
I guess it is. And the fact that they keep
the entire economy afloat is pretty amazing. But speaking of amazing,
it's time for the part time genius backed off. Yeah,
that's right, all right, here we go. I'll start us off. So,
(35:26):
the average tractor trailer gets about six and a half
miles per gallon, which is not that great, right, But
there are hybrid models in the works that will get
a little over twelve miles per gallon. I mean, that's
a crazy improvement. And I guess those numbers sound small
compared to your car at home, But it isn't that
weird when you consider that attractor trailer wearries about eighty
thou pounds, which, according to the Truck and Museum is
(35:47):
about twenty eight cars or second graders. Well, considering we
both have second graders, that really hits home for us.
We can wrap our heads around it all right. Well,
when FDR repealed Prohibition, Yengling was so appreciative of it
that they sent a truckload of its freshly brewed winter
beer to the White House. So one of Steven Spielberg's
first movies was a thriller about a truck. It's called Duel,
(36:10):
And apparently it's this tense movie about a businessman on
the road who keeps getting stocked by a truck driver
he overtakes. Apparently Spielberg actually watches the movie twice a
year just to remember what he did. Have you ever
seen this movie? I can't say I've even heard of it.
It's called duel somehow missed it. All right, Well, I
know you were a big Esquire fan, and I know
you talked about the blinking electronic covers that the magazine made.
(36:31):
I think this was back in two thousand eight or so.
But something I had not read about before. Did you
know they actually had to hire a special fleet of
refrigerated trucks to get those magazines to the news. Apparently
all those magazines had to be shipped cold in order
to preserve that battery life. That's crazy, you know. In
China and Mr Softy ice cream trucks go by the
name Mr Softheart. Apparently soft he isn't a word in China.
(36:54):
Is it a word here? I mean, I know people
use it. But all right, So, as you heard about
this truck driver from Asissippi's name is Robert Gray. So
apparently he won the Democratic nomination for governor in two
thousand fifteen entirely by accident. After putting his name on
the ballot, he forgot about the campaign and he went
back to driving. He claims to have only spent about
(37:15):
fifty or sixty bucks on his campaign. He didn't even
vote for himself, but somehow he carried seventy eight counties
and earned the nomination. How is that possible? Job Mississippi.
So Samsung who's working on providing giant screens for the
back of their trucks, and the things which kind of
looked like flat screen TVs are meant for the drivers
behind the trucks. So you know how when you're like
(37:36):
trying to pass a truck, you have to edge into
the next lane to see if you can pass. Like
this prevents that and creates this giant window so you
can see the traffic the truck might be obscuring. That's interesting. Actually,
that'd be a really cool and helpful invention. But you
know what I think is cooler than that, Mango. I'm
not sure if you remember on Night Rider how the
car used to drive up onto the truck because they
were both moving down the highway. How could I not
(37:58):
remember that? It's like the coolest thing about the It
is kind of the coolest thing about the show. Well,
I remember hearing and reading that it was actually impossible
due to the physics of it all, like, you know,
you'd accelerate too fast and crash into the inside of
the truck. But actually it's totally possible. Thanks to our
friends over at MythBusters. They did this episode where they
did it at thirty miles an hour and then again
at fifty five miles an hour, and apparently the cars
(38:20):
inertia keeps it going at the same speed relative to
the ground and that lets it safely drive onto the
tractor trailer. That's that's amazing. Like I've actually got to
watch the episode because I always believe that the you'd
crash into the truck, but I think the fact that
you brought a night rider fact into the episode on
trucks seals the deal. So you get the trophy. I
thought that was gonna do it. Thank you very much. Well,
that's it for today's show, and if we missed any
(38:42):
truck facts you think we should have included, be sure
to drop us a line at part Time Genius and
how Stuff Works dot com or call and leave a
message on our seven fact hotline. That's one eight four
four pt Genius. It's been so much fun seeing the
facts that are coming in from listeners after the episodes.
H thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a
(39:13):
production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without
several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't
even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI
mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the
Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams
and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
(39:35):
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like what
you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us.
Did we did we forget Jason? Jason who
Guess what will What's that? So? I was chatting with
my friend and she works and permissions at this amazing
art center in Texas, and she was telling me that
sometimes her job involves traveling with famous artworks in trucks.
So what does that mean exactly? Well, that was my
question too, But if a New York museum wanted a
loan like a frieda Collo painting, well, part of her
job involves hopping in a truck with the painting and
(00:21):
escorting a cross country just making sure it gets delivered.
Like she doesn't touch the art, but she just helicopter
parents over it. But the truck part of it is
crazy to me because I imagine it just be easier
to send paintings by plane, but apparently trucks are the
preferred way to send expensive art. So it was the
experience fun for her? Or what it was the exact opposite.
It was supposedly this white glove service, but it's still
(00:43):
just a truck. And she was stuck in the back
as these bros apparently blasted bad music, so she just
read and slept as they took turns driving. But the
whole thing made me realize I know nothing about trucking
and the fact that these big vehicles are hauling everything
from greeting cards to masterworks is kind of astounding to me.
So what's life like for these men and women who
spend so much of their life on the road. And
(01:04):
that's what today's episode is all about, say their podcast listeners.
Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
(01:27):
always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh I
Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass
wearing this amazing trucker hat. What does it say on it?
Cheez whiz, just says cheese whiz. Our friend and producer
Tristan McNeil. He's always prepared for these episodes with the
best props. All right, well, today we're looking under the
hood of one of the most important and maybe most
underappreciated jobs in the world, and that's the professional truck driver. Now,
(01:51):
we're all familiar with these massive tractor trailers that crowd
the highways and maybe move a bit more slowly than
we'd like, but you know, most of us don't give
a second thought to the and women behind the steering wheels.
With about three and a half million people in the
us who drive trucks for a living. That's an awful
lot of people to be overlooked, and in fact, their
work is a big part of what keeps the economy humming.
(02:12):
So today we're giving truckers their due and checking out
some of the coolest, maybe most surprising and strangest parts
of life on the open road. Definitely, and we'll be
checking in with our trucker pal Roger. Aside from running
his family farm in southern Maryland, Rogers also the owner
operator of this small fleet of trucks which he partly
uses to collect milk from Amish dairies. So we'll talk
to him about being a local truck driver and find
(02:34):
out what keeps them going through these long days and
nights at the wheel. All Right, So I mentioned upfront
that truckers play a huge role in the success of
our economy, so I really thought we should start by
just getting a better sense of what their impact is exactly. Yeah,
it's kind of tricky because trucking is one of those
industries where so much happens behind the scenes, and obviously
the trucks themselves are highly visible, but where they're going
(02:54):
and what they're actually hauling that goes largely unseen. Yeah,
that's true. So let me pull some stats appear for you. So,
the American Trucking Association reports that roughly seventy of the
country's freight is shipped on trucks. That's about ten and
a half billion tons every single year. That's way way
more than the amount of freight move by plane or
train or any other means. But you know, when you
(03:16):
said that, like the term freight just feels so vague, Like,
can you clarify a little about what those ten point
five billion tons are? Well, pretty much everything. I mean,
you know, they haul construction materials, industrial machinery, lots of
other things that don't involve the average consumer. But they're
also responsible for moving just about everything you'd find on
a store shelf. I know our researcher Gay was trying
to give us some examples, and I think he was
(03:37):
pretty proud of himself because he said, from blueberries to
blue jeans to bluebell ice cream. You see what he
did there with that A lot of clever. But imagine
if all of that stopped, right, Like, if suddenly there
were no more big rigs and no more truck drivers.
It's really no exaggeration to say that the American economy
would collapse, Like, you know, planes and trains and boats
(03:58):
could probably fill in the gaps eventually, but prices would
skyrocket and it would be uttered chaos. Well, and what
most people don't realize is that the prices would likely
stay high in the long term, not just the short term.
And why's that, Well, you've got to remember that all
other transportation methods caused way more than shipping my truck. Yeah,
I guess that's true. And it's a pretty insane how
dependent we are on trucks. So I was curious about
(04:19):
the industry's rise, so I actually looked into the history
of semi trucks in the US. Apparently the man credit
with actually inventing them was this guy from Ohio named
Alexander Winton. He was this car maker who was sick
of how time consuming and expensive it was to deliver
cars to their new owners. And this was in the nineties,
like most roads were unpaved and didn't extend very far
(04:39):
beyond the city's limits. People would order cars from all
over the country, and the only way to get them
there was to individually drive each car, which put this
insane amount of wear and tear on the new cars,
not to mention all these miles. But for Winton, the
worst part was the hit he took in the wallet,
Like delivering the cars was actually a great cost to
him and his company. So his solution was this automobile holler. Basically,
(05:01):
it was a new type of vehicle that could carry
a car on this attached trailer. And so in eight
went and started manufacturing the holler for his own use,
and then he started selling him to other car makers
once the word got out. All right, So so the
first eighteen wheelers were actually made to ship cars. I
would have guessed, you know, that would have been building
materials or groceries or something else, But I didn't think
about cars. Yeah, and I mean eighteen wheelers were still
(05:24):
a long way off in Winton's day, Like his trailers
actually only had two wheels and they could haul just
one car at a time. But as the nation's highway
system began to take shape, other manufacturers took notice and
they expanded on the design and over the next forty
years they kept evolving it until it became what we're
familiar with today. That's pretty interesting. Well, it's weird to
think about a time when Rhodes didn't actually connect. I
(05:44):
remember we did that story at Mental Floss about the
woman who drove cross country. I think it was in
the early nineteen hundreds. Yeah, her name is Alice Ramsey.
I love that piece. Yeah, that's right, So I I
looked up the article again and she crossed the country
in nineteen o nine. It was on this road trip
with three other young women, and it took them fifty
nine days. Why because there was no atlas, and you'd
(06:05):
have to get local maps in each town, and the
roads didn't always have the same name, so you'd navigate
and you have to backtrack then drive again, and it
just sounds so confusing. They changed something like ten or
eleven tires along the way. I mean, it's actually kind
of crazy they even made it. I know, it's insane,
but you know, the thing I really remember from that
piece was that Alice had been set up to do
this for PR to show that women could actually drive,
(06:27):
because people were worried about all these insane things about cars.
You know. They traveled out about fifteen to twenty miles
per hour, and it was this open air vehicle at
the time, which they thought was terrible for women's health.
They thought it could you know, impact their nerves and
their mental health, or even worse, all that fast blowing
wind could leave them with something they called automobile face. Man,
(06:48):
nobody wants to want me to have automobile face. So Tom,
all right, Well all that to say, it's it's kind
of impossible to think about how bad the roads must
have been delivering cars back and wind's time, and you
can see why he was so inspired to create his
truck bed. But speaking which, I'm curious, like, how interchangeable
are these terms? So so far we've said eighteen wheeler
(07:10):
and semi, but you also see things like tractor trailer
and big rigs, So why do we call it a
semi Anyway, Well, I was surprised to learn this, but
apparently all those terms pretty much referred to the same thing.
But talking about the semi, that's actually meant to describe
the trailer and not the truck. So I'm gonna find
the inventor in my notes here. Yeah, it's this guy,
(07:31):
this Detroit blacksmith. His name's Charles August Freihoff, who first
coined the phrase semi trailer this is about and used
it to describe a carriage he'd built for a customer
who wanted to move a boat. And the name comes
from the fact that the trailer had no front wheels
and could only be used when hooked up to a truck.
Got it. So so it's it's only kind of a
trailer because it's mostly useless without a truck to tow it.
(07:53):
Of course, and and people now use the name semi
trucks to refer to the tractor part of a tractor
trailer too, But in this case, like you men Gin,
the truck half functions fine on its own. By the way,
when you were researching, did you come across the site
truck spills dot com? I can't say that I did, so,
so what is that? I mean, I can guess what
that is. I know, and I mean it is a
little disturbing. It's mostly these tumped over trucks with things
(08:15):
they've spilled. It's like pictures of a truck that's crashed,
but then you see all the butternut squash spilled over
the highway, or there was actually a molasses spill. It's
a little weird to be looking at these accidents, but
you do get a sense of how much stuff each
truck carries, Like if just one truck is carrying five
thousand gallons of molasses, it can actually take eight to
(08:36):
nine hours to clean up all that stickiness. Where there
was a truck that crashed and it was carrying eels
and the good that's spilled out onto the other cars
and the highway is so gross is discussing. Here's the
caption from a local paper, so quote more than seven
thousand pounds of hag fish also known as slime eels
codd a section of Highway one oh one with a
gel described as quote spider Man's webbing crossed with fish.
(09:00):
I have so many questions about this, Like I really
want to know where they all in aquariums where they
just like stacked on top of one another. It's like,
how does this work? But either way, it sounds really disgusting. Yeah,
and the pictures are really grosser to check it out. Well,
you know, actually, when you think about these spills and
and those kinds of crashes, think about how hard truck
(09:21):
driving is. It's kind of amazing there aren't more crashes.
But while we're on the subject, we should probably point
out that the term truck drivers is a much broader
term than you might think. Basically, we group large commercial
truck drivers into two main categories. So there's local and
long haul. Local drivers or short haul truckers as they're
also called. They're the ones that mostly stick to their
(09:41):
area around the city and that they might also venture
into more distant parts of the same state. Right, So
these are the delivery drivers for companies like EPs and FedEx,
as well as the tanker drivers who refuel gas stations.
And there are a host of other kinds of drivers
like this who service their local communities. So then you
look at the other to the spectrum and you have
long haul truckers also known as over the road drivers,
(10:04):
and these are the folks who transport goods across state
lines from coast to coast and probably what most people
tend to think of when they picture truckers. Okay, so
the difference mostly boils down to distance covered. But are
there other distinctions too? Well? Distance is definitely the main difference.
But you know, for example, the average semi travels about
forty five thousand miles in a year, but the trucking
(10:25):
industry and the Federal Highway Administration estimate that trucks used
for long distance halls, they average more than twice that amount,
at about I think it's like a hundred and twenty
five thousand miles per year, and that's roughly five hundred
miles per work day. That's crazy. So obviously that leads
to this difference in lifestyle as well, no question about that.
And it's no surprise that long haul truckers spend more
(10:46):
time on the road than their local counterparts, which also
means they might make at home once every few weeks
or sometimes not even for a month, or maybe even
longer than that. It's really hard. So I also read
that long haul truckers make much more money than local drivers,
and I guess you can see why if they have
to be away from their families for such long times. Yeah,
I was actually curious and looked into this. If you
look at the Bureau of Labor statistics, the average income
(11:08):
of a truck driver was about forty three thousand, almost
forty four thousand and two thousand sixteen, but local drivers
often make ten to fifteen thousand less than that in
exchange for being able to return home every night. Yeah,
that's one thing you always hear about truck driving, that
the money is actually pretty good, and they can deliver
this middle class level paycheck without a college diploma. But
if that's mostly true for only long haul truckers, you
(11:31):
have to wonder if the trade offs are worth it.
You know, we're definitely not the only ones wondering that.
According to a two thousand and sixteen report, the turnover
rate for the biggest truckload fleets in the country was
a staggering eighty one percent last year. That's insane. I mean,
more than three quarters of the truck and workforce bailed
in a single year. Yeah, and here's the craziest part.
That from last year was actually the lowest turnover rate
(11:52):
the industry had seen in the past five years. So
in reality, the majority of long haul truckers quit before
they even make it to the one year mark. So
you've got to thank that accounts for a big part
of that turnover. Like I read that sometimes truckers will
only see other people for an hour or so each day,
and that's when they stop for gas or stop to
use the restroom. But the rest of the time they're
(12:12):
alone in their truck cat and whether that's driving on
the highway or sleeping at a rest stop, even if
the money is good, that kind of isolation has to
be hard. Yeah, it is, and you know, to make
things even worse, the system itself actually kind of encourages
this seclusion. So why is that. Well, truckers are paid
by the mile, not by the hour, but federal regulations
(12:33):
only allow them to drive for eleven hours within every
fourteen hour work window, so they have to rest for
ten hours before they can legally drive again. And so
what that means is that the pressure is on to
cover as many miles as possible in those eleven hours
that they're able to drive, and that obviously means stopping
for breaks or to interact with people isn't really an
option exactly, So they need to spend as much time
(12:55):
behind the wheel as possible or else they're losing income.
And because there are fewer people on the oat after dark,
it also means plenty of truckers choose to drive through
the night so they can avoid traffic and cover as
much distance as possible. What's weird is that so much
of the appeal of truck driving, at least for me,
is that you get to travel and see parts of
the country you wouldn't see otherwise. But I guess if
you're trying to squeeze as many miles into a day,
(13:16):
you don't really have that much time for sight seeing.
That's true, but you know, obviously it does work for
some people, and every trucker's experience is different. There are
plenty of reports and interviews, you know, about the stress
and the drudgery, but you know, that's hardly the whole story.
There's lots of long haul drivers that take the job
because they appreciate that independence and maybe that sense of
freedom that comes with cruising along the American highways. Anyway,
(13:40):
we've talked a lot about the pros and cons of
long haul trucking, But what do you say we get
Roger on the line and see what life behind the
wheel is like for local drivers. Yeah, let's do it.
So Mango, We've got a special guest on the line today.
We've been talking about truck drivers in this episode, and
we have someone who has a very interesting job driving. Now,
(14:02):
he's a farmer by day, farming grains, corn, wheat, soybeans,
and so forth, but he has a driving job many
nights the week. I'm not sure when he sleeps, but
we'll ask him a little bit about that. But Roger Chapelier,
welcome to part time Genius. Thank you. Now, Roger, where
are you joining us from today? I'm in southern Maryland,
(14:22):
about twenty miles south of Washington, d C. Okay, well,
I understand that. UM, in addition to farming, a couple
of decades ago, you started a very interesting job as
a as a driver. Can you tell us a little
bit about what you do? Yeah, I I haul the
milk from uh. It's actually fifteen Amish farms currently, but
(14:44):
I go I go to fifteen farms every other night,
UH and pick up the milk that they have produced,
and then I take it to a processing plant and UM,
and I do that every other every other night. I
love that. Actually, I know that gave to the story
with you for Mental Flass magazine a while back, and
one of the descriptions he had in there that I
(15:06):
loved so much was just being able to take a
cup of cold, fresh milk and just how creamy and
delicious that tasted. And I always stuck with me. But
I didn't have a question. So obviously, these are two
different worlds that you're bridging, this driving a truck and
this community that doesn't really use electricity, So I was curious,
(15:27):
do you have any good stories from when those worlds interact?
Um is certainly the The actual communication process in itself
can be very difficult. Occasionally there are changes to the schedule,
i e. When when the milk is going to be
delivered or needs to be delivered, and stuff like that.
(15:47):
In that case, they have a pay phone or or
an outside phone. It's not not a likely corn operated payphone,
but they have a phone, and they'll call me and
if I'm available, course all answer. If not, they leave
me a message, but there is no way to contact
them to respond short of traveling down there. And actually,
(16:09):
you know, physically talking to someone. Wow, and especially when
we're talking fifteen different farms. I'm sure that's a challenge, right,
that's right. And and you know, with milk being kind
of a perishable commodity, you have to you have to
have good, good communications so that you can make things
happen when they need to how they need to. Yeah,
(16:29):
and I have to ask Roger, I mean, what what
kind of hours do you keep because I know farming
alone is a full time job, so how do you
do that and manage driving every other night of the week. Uh,
it's it's gotten harder as I've had more birthdays. I
typically start about midnight, and if everything goes well, I
(16:51):
get done by six thirty or seven o'clock in the morning.
When you know, on on the nights that I pick
up the milk. But then you're right back on the
farm that next day. Are you able to sleep during
that next day? No, I don't sleep during the day.
I typically if I got done at seven o'clock, I
might Uh, I might take a little snooze until nine
or so before I got back to it. Wow, that
(17:12):
sounds a lot like our jobs, except not at all.
So that's that's pretty amazing. That's remarkable, so excerious. How
did you start this trucking business? To begin with? The
Amish community down here, UH was was shipping milks and
then their local plant closed. UH weren't out of business,
(17:33):
and so they were without a destination for their milk,
and they actually stopped milking for several years and um
and and they missed that. I think. I think it's
it's part of the fabric of of many Amish communities
that dairy dairy operation. It's how they it's how they
bring their children up, you know, to be uh, to
be in the workforce and stuff like that. But but anyway,
(17:56):
I had a Thomas gentlemen that I saw from hay Too,
and he said, we need a a what they call
us English they're Amish and they refer to us as English.
But he said, we need an English farm to start
dairying so that we can get a milk truck in
the area. And um, and I just casually off the
(18:19):
cuffs said that, you know, there'd be something that was
interested in. I ended up not actually starting a dairy farm,
but I did did end up, I guess, deciding to
hault milk for them. Wow. Well, because of that job,
it now qualifies you to take today's big quiz and Mango,
What what quiz are we playing with? Roger? It's called
keep on Trucking? All right? So that's it. We'll we'll
(18:41):
give you a clue, Roger, and you just have to
tell us what type of truck we're talking about. Are
you ready? I'll try all right? Question number one. This
Minnesota toy Company's best selling toy is the bright yellow
Mighty Dump Truck, which at first released in nineteen Can
you name the company I'm gonna go with Tonko. Yeah,
(19:04):
that's right, and it's actually named for Lake Minnetonka. All right,
I did not know that. Okay. Question number two, the
drums on these trucks typically turn in one direction to
keep the contents mixing, and the other direction when they
need to pour the contents out of Shoot, what type
of truck are we talking about? That's the concrete mixture. Yeah,
(19:25):
that's right, cement truck. That's right. Already's two for two.
Question number three, what type of truck crushes about three
thousand cars in a lifetime? Truck brush the three thousand cars.
I don't know of a truck that does that, but
there is a trailer, there is a car fructure. There's
an actual trailer that does that, or or maybe you're
(19:46):
talking about big slot or one of those uh, one
of those things. Yeah, that's right. It's a monster truck. Yep,
you got it. You came back around to it and
they actually cost about what six thousand to build? Yeah,
that's crazy. Alright. So Roger is three three. We thought
he was going to miss that, but then he he
had it, and he dug deep and found the answer. Right,
you got two questions left, pulled it out at the end.
(20:08):
That's right, that's right. Question number four. After trying to
use blocks, ropes, and six men to pull a car
out of a creek, Ernest Holmes came up with a
design for this type of truck in nineteen sixteen. Yeah,
that's right, to tow truck to truck. Alright, Roger is
four for four. Sleep deprivation doesn't do anything to this
guy already. The last question, question number five, here we go.
(20:32):
Harry Burt of Youngstown, Ohio is the inventor of this
type of truck, using it to sell and deliver chocolate
covered suckers two kids. That's right. Bert was actually the
inventor of the Good Humor brand. Wow. So how did
Roger do today? Mango? He went astounding five for five
(20:52):
and that entitles him to our grand prize, which is
an official Part Time Genius Certificate of Genius along with
an official T shirt. Congratulations Roger, and thanks so much
for joining us on Part Time Genius. You guys are
very welcome. You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're
(21:20):
talking about the highs and lows of being a professional
truck driver. Okay, so will you mentioned the sense of
freedom that any truck drivers site is one of the
best parts of the job. But since every hall has
a set destination and this very tight deadline, I'm curious
what kind of freedom we're talking about. Well, you know,
there's the freedom of being your own boss. I mean,
long haul truckers ultimately answered to a dispatcher, but most
(21:41):
of the time they're on their own and it's up
to them to decide which route they take or where
and when to stop along the way. That makes sense.
And speaking of stops, ever since our palace, Stacy Conrad
told us about this massive truck stop she visited, I've
been fascinated by truck stops, just how there's these roadside
mecca's where truckers from all over gather and rest stop
and I'm just so curious what the culture is like
(22:02):
in there and how it all works. Yeah, and I
remember visiting some of those travel plazas, you know, on
car trips as a kid and being so confused about
some of the services that were offered there, like gas
and snacks made sense, but there are things like barber
shops and movie theaters, and I couldn't understand why anyone
would drive to the middle of nowhere just for a haircut.
You know, I really wasn't thinking about it or understanding it. Yeah,
(22:23):
So I looked at the history a little, and apparently
truck stops started popping up back in the nineteen fifties
when President Eisenhower introduced his Highway System bill, and and
so they were really just a means for drivers to
refuel without having to go too far out of the way.
And you've got to remember there was no GPS at
the time, so it was daunting to venture off the
highway and wandered into some small town and and then
(22:45):
try to look for a gas station. And then as
the trucking industry grew and more long distance truck drivers
began to use the highway routes, the truck stop started
offering more services. And these are the things that catered
directly to the truck or crowd. The first of these
added amenities included places to park, sleep, and and then
restaurants to eat at and and finally showers to use
as well. Well. They've definitely come a long way since then.
(23:06):
And I decided to dig around for the most luxurious
truck stops I could find, and I'm happy to report.
I was not disappointed by this. For instance, one of
the most famous is in Iowa. It's the Iowa eighty
truck Stop in Walcut, Iowa, and it's been around since
nineteen sixty four, and it's pretty famous in the truck
or circles. It builds itself as the world's largest truck stop,
(23:26):
and that probably is true. I was looking at the
size of it. It's over a hundred thousand square feet
and it sees about five thousand visitors every single day.
I get that it's big, but where does the luxury
part come in? Well, for starters, it has eight different restaurants,
twenty four private showers, and it's got things you might want,
like you know, a workout room. But it's also got
a chiropractor and on site dentist. And it was a
(23:48):
trucking museum in case you're looking to get some culture
in while you're there. And if that isn't enough, the
truck stops legendary fifty foot salad bars should do the trick.
I don't even know, Like what you put it in
a fifty ft salad bar, that's a lot of salad
your luxury I don't know. I gotta check this out
at some point. But you know the best part maybe
that they've got all the major mats covered as well.
(24:09):
What's I mean? You know, you've got the laundromat and
the truck o Matt truck wash, and a dog a mat,
which I guess is a pet wash, oh Matt. Yeah,
and we should also note that the name is dogo mat,
but it's actually just a pet wash. So in theory,
they'll take your hamster, your turtle, and maybe your parent
and you mean they name other animals that I think
they don't discriminate at the dogo mat. So one thing
(24:32):
I find interesting about modern truck stops is that they're
sort of torn between catering to the actual truckers and
then plain old motorists. Yeah, I was. I was reading
this article in Pacific Standard magazine and the author, his
name is Will Stevenson. He spent twenty four hours hanging
out at a truck stop. He interviewed truckers who passed through,
and he was trying to get a sense of what
it's like to spend a good chunk of time at
(24:53):
just one of these places. And that mix of clientele
leads to this uneasy culture. So just listen to how
Stevenson describes the contrast between truckers and you know, the
other truck stop patrons. He says, when I get back,
I discovered that the Pilot truck stop has unexpectedly transformed
into a popular community dessert spot, and the soft serve
(25:13):
ice cream station is finally getting the attention it deserves.
High school kids and they're well dressed parents fill styrofoam
bowls of the stuff, covered in sprinkles and chocolate chips
and caramel syrup. Their exuberance contrast sharply with the zombie
gates of the truckers straggling in from the back lot,
clearly unsettled by the makeup and blazers and just general
good cheer. They steal glances at the family while shuffling
(25:36):
down the aisles, grabbing gallons of water and chips and
DVDs to watch while falling asleep. That really makes you
feel for the truckers who are just wiped out. And
obviously they're there because they have to work, but now
they've got to deal with these annoying vacationers as well.
But I have to say, even though I'm not a
part of it, I really do love that there's this
truck or subculture out there that sets them apart from
(25:59):
other people on the road. Like have you heard that
truckers only referred to other truckers as drivers? Everyone else
like you and me are called four wheelers. I'm guessing
it's kind of lingo. You'd hear, you know, when you
do you hear about them using CB radio and such. Definitely,
And and you know, I was looking to CB radios
for this episode. Did you know that the short wave
communication method was actually developed by the same guy who
invented walkie talkies? No, that's pretty cool. So actually I'm
(26:21):
curious why did he name it CB? Yeah, it stands
for Citizens Band And it took off among truck drivers
in the sixties and seventies both as a way of
alleviating boredom and is a way of like finding the
cheapest gas prices and also avoiding speed traps. Well, and
it was revolutionary and it today And this was long
before cell phones and smart devices made it easy for
(26:41):
all of us to keep in touch on the road,
and a basically it still has a place in the
truck or world. And part of that is because cell
phone used to is strictly monitored by the trucking companies.
You know, I think we mentioned that Betty Ford had
to CB handle like she went by the name First Mama,
and she used her CB to chat and campaign for
Gerald Ford, which which I love. It's funny how even
before there were chat rooms and Twitter handles and whatever,
(27:04):
you know, CBE handles were this fun way to identify yourself.
You see names like mud duck or bullfrog or whatever.
But I mean, the thing I didn't realize is that
part of the reason people use those names in the
first place was to avoid licensing fees. So when CBE
radios first hit the scene, you had to pay twenty
dollars for a license to use it. So most of
the users, especially truckers, came up with these handles as
(27:25):
a way of staying anonymous and ducking the fees. I mean,
I guess that taints the name bull frog a little bit,
but it's still pretty cool. And that reminds me that
we should talk a little bit more about the current
state of truck driving. You know, why some people choose
to be truck mats and what's going to happen when
trucks becomes self driving. Absolutely but before we do, how
about we pause for a little break. Okay. So we
(27:56):
were talking about the CB radio and how it coincided
with the rise of long haul truckers in the mid
twentieth century. It was really kind of the golden age
of American trucking, and this was when the U. S.
Economy started to lean more heavily on truckers for all
of its shipping needs, and so their ranks swelled with
enthusiastic drivers. But the nineteen seventies quickly brought trouble for
truckers in the form of this national gas crisis. There
(28:19):
was skyrocketing fuel prices and a government impost speed limit
of fifty five and so the trucking industry looked like
it was honestly heading for a cliff, right, And that's
when SMI radios actually took on this new importance for
drivers as a means of fighting back against government regulations.
I read about this one trucker in particular, JW. Edwards,
a k river rat, and he organized a national strike
(28:41):
that brought hundreds of drivers from around the country to
the I. A. D Highway in Pennsylvania, and the truckers
formed a blockade on the highway that lasted ten days.
I mean, the only reason it ended was that the
governor of Pennsylvania called in the National Guard to break
it all up, you know. And after the strike, drivers
became these kind of like working folk hero was in
the eyes of the American public, and movies like Smoking
(29:03):
in the Bandit and Convoy portrayed truckers. Is these wily
cowboys of American highways speaking in code and fighting back
against the man. Actually, there's a movie, what was that
Sylvester Stallone movie where he was the arm wrestler over
the Top? I thought about that movie in years. Why
didn't we watch that for this because I have traumatic
memories of it. My older cousin made me watch it
(29:24):
and then he forced me to arm wrestle for like
an hour afterwards. It just keet beating me. I don't
think any of our listeners would be surprised to know
we're not champion arm wrestlers. But should we say what
happened after this? Folk? Here a bit? Because like, how
did the public go from glorifying truckers to flat out
ignoring them in just a few decades. Well, once the
fuel crisis was resolved, truckers got less national attention, and
(29:46):
just like with westerns or pirate films, people eventually got
tired of seeing movies about truckers in the public perception
of truck drivers also started to shift a little when
there were some reports of shady behavior truck stops, but
really mostly the public just kind of moved on from it.
So obviously the industries had these ups and downs over
the years, but we should talk about where it's at today. Yeah,
(30:06):
I thought we could highlight a few of the surprising
things we found out about today's truckers and what they
might mean for the future of trucking in America. Sure, So,
here's the fact that surprised me. Women now account for
nearly six percent of all long haul truckers, and while
that might not seem like much, it's actually a two
percent increase from just ten years ago. And although the
other of truckers might be unwilling to admit it, there's
(30:28):
actually evidence that female truckers do a much better job. So,
according to Werner Enterprises, female drivers outperformed mail drivers when
it comes to accidents, inspections, and compliance with safety regulations.
So I'm curious, did you come across any of these
truck driving couples that are out there while you were
doing your research. You know, I didn't know anything about
them before this episode. Well, apparently it's actually pretty common
(30:50):
and that the practice is called team truck driving, and
it's it's a really great solution for drivers who can't
stand the thought of being away from their loved ones
for that long. So how does it work Exactly? There's
only one person of the driving or they both employees. Well,
usually both people get their own commercial driver's license and
and then they swap between driving and sleeping. So, just
like with regular drivers, teams are paid per mile, while
(31:11):
they may split the pay. They're also able to cover
ground in less time than solo drivers, which you know,
it means they can finish one job and beyond to
the next much quicker. Yeah, that sounds like the way
to go, especially since it means you always have company
with you. Yeah, and you know, another benefit is not
having to find a place to stop every single night.
So there's a serious parking shortage along US highways and
(31:31):
it's causing a ton of frustration for today's truckers. So
just listen to these numbers. The Federal Highway Administration conducted
a survey among truck drivers and found that over seventy
five percent of respondents routinely have trouble finding a safe
place to park overnight when they need arrest, which is
no surprise when you consider they're only about three hundred
thousand parking spaces for the more than three million trucks
(31:53):
on the road. There's a major problem. That's insane. I
didn't realize there was not much of a shortage. But
if we're tackling the subject of problems faced by modern truckers,
we should also address this elephant in the room, and
that's that self driving trucks are on the way. I mean,
the short version is that self driving trucks are coming,
and it's really a matter of when. But how soon
we'll see them is still up for debate. On the
one hand, it's much easier to design these autonomous vehicles
(32:16):
for highway use than it is for city streets and
suburban neighborhoods. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, highways have long,
straight stretches of road, no traffic lights, and much fewer
moving obstacles like pedestrians or bike riders, and it's a
lot less for a robot to keep track of exactly,
and a lot of these self driving cars can already
handle much of what's needed for highway driving, like they
know how to stay in their lanes and maintain steady
(32:37):
speeds and keep a safe distance from the cars around them.
It actually kind of makes me wonder, like, why aren't
truckers already out of a job? Yeah, so I was
wondering that too, And there's still some important aspects of
driving that autonomous vehicles haven't mastered yet, even for highway driving.
So like, once these self driving semis do hit the road,
there'll still be a place for human drivers, at least
(32:58):
at first. I mean, the truck would do most of
the highway driving, but it would see control to the
human when there's particularly sharp curve coming up, or when
it's time to exit off the highway, or when the
trailer needs to be nimbly backed into a warehouse to
be unloaded. All right, So initially there would be this
I don't know, kind of like a partnership between human
operators and these self driving trucks. But I'm guessing that
(33:18):
would just be a temporary truce during this process. That's
most likely case. I mean, the tech is out there
and companies like Google and Tesla and Amazon. They're just
so eager to put it to use as soon as possible.
And once it's rolled out in earnest truck and companies
are going to have a hard time competing. You know,
these trucks are never gonna speed or cause accidents, and
they don't need to stop for rest or food. Of course,
(33:40):
it could be a decade or more before semis are
fully autonomous, and they're still legal hurdles to be cleared
along the way. Yeah, just last month, I was reading
this piece of legislation that the Senate release that that
would allow the government to establish rules about self driving,
about the design and the usage of self driving vehicles.
But interestingly, there was actually no mention of autonomous commercial
(34:01):
vehicles at all in this legislation. So this was a
blow to companies who would benefit from a clear set
of national rules for how they can build and sell
these self driving big rigs. But naturally, teamsters have been
fighting against self driving trucks, so so this bill that
pushes the prospect further down the road, it's something of
a win for them. And the truth is, truckers feel
like such an important and overlooked community. There's actually one
(34:24):
more quote that I wanted to share from that Pacific
Standard article I mentioned earlier. Actually think it kind of
sums up what we've been talking about in this this
relationship and the difficulties of the truck or lifestyle, and
and the disconnect they sometimes feel between themselves and the public. Yeah,
so I'd love to hear it. All right, So Stevenson writes, quote,
there's a sense among long distance drivers of a universal
(34:44):
lack of sympathy for the utterly essential service they provide.
It's an old fashioned profession, but it remains more central
to the fabric of our lives than many would suspect.
These are the people who sleep in parking lots, showering
gas stations, and together sustain the tire American economy. It's funny.
I don't really think of it as old fashioned, but
(35:04):
I guess it is. And the fact that they keep
the entire economy afloat is pretty amazing. But speaking of amazing,
it's time for the part time genius backed off. Yeah,
that's right, all right, here we go. I'll start us off. So,
(35:26):
the average tractor trailer gets about six and a half
miles per gallon, which is not that great, right, But
there are hybrid models in the works that will get
a little over twelve miles per gallon. I mean, that's
a crazy improvement. And I guess those numbers sound small
compared to your car at home, But it isn't that
weird when you consider that attractor trailer wearries about eighty
thou pounds, which, according to the Truck and Museum is
(35:47):
about twenty eight cars or second graders. Well, considering we
both have second graders, that really hits home for us.
We can wrap our heads around it all right. Well,
when FDR repealed Prohibition, Yengling was so appreciative of it
that they sent a truckload of its freshly brewed winter
beer to the White House. So one of Steven Spielberg's
first movies was a thriller about a truck. It's called Duel,
(36:10):
And apparently it's this tense movie about a businessman on
the road who keeps getting stocked by a truck driver
he overtakes. Apparently Spielberg actually watches the movie twice a
year just to remember what he did. Have you ever
seen this movie? I can't say I've even heard of it.
It's called duel somehow missed it. All right, Well, I
know you were a big Esquire fan, and I know
you talked about the blinking electronic covers that the magazine made.
(36:31):
I think this was back in two thousand eight or so.
But something I had not read about before. Did you
know they actually had to hire a special fleet of
refrigerated trucks to get those magazines to the news. Apparently
all those magazines had to be shipped cold in order
to preserve that battery life. That's crazy, you know. In
China and Mr Softy ice cream trucks go by the
name Mr Softheart. Apparently soft he isn't a word in China.
(36:54):
Is it a word here? I mean, I know people
use it. But all right, So, as you heard about
this truck driver from Asissippi's name is Robert Gray. So
apparently he won the Democratic nomination for governor in two
thousand fifteen entirely by accident. After putting his name on
the ballot, he forgot about the campaign and he went
back to driving. He claims to have only spent about
(37:15):
fifty or sixty bucks on his campaign. He didn't even
vote for himself, but somehow he carried seventy eight counties
and earned the nomination. How is that possible? Job Mississippi.
So Samsung who's working on providing giant screens for the
back of their trucks, and the things which kind of
looked like flat screen TVs are meant for the drivers
behind the trucks. So you know how when you're like
(37:36):
trying to pass a truck, you have to edge into
the next lane to see if you can pass. Like
this prevents that and creates this giant window so you
can see the traffic the truck might be obscuring. That's interesting. Actually,
that'd be a really cool and helpful invention. But you
know what I think is cooler than that, Mango. I'm
not sure if you remember on Night Rider how the
car used to drive up onto the truck because they
were both moving down the highway. How could I not
(37:58):
remember that? It's like the coolest thing about the It
is kind of the coolest thing about the show. Well,
I remember hearing and reading that it was actually impossible
due to the physics of it all, like, you know,
you'd accelerate too fast and crash into the inside of
the truck. But actually it's totally possible. Thanks to our
friends over at MythBusters. They did this episode where they
did it at thirty miles an hour and then again
at fifty five miles an hour, and apparently the cars
(38:20):
inertia keeps it going at the same speed relative to
the ground and that lets it safely drive onto the
tractor trailer. That's that's amazing. Like I've actually got to
watch the episode because I always believe that the you'd
crash into the truck, but I think the fact that
you brought a night rider fact into the episode on
trucks seals the deal. So you get the trophy. I
thought that was gonna do it. Thank you very much. Well,
that's it for today's show, and if we missed any
(38:42):
truck facts you think we should have included, be sure
to drop us a line at part Time Genius and
how Stuff Works dot com or call and leave a
message on our seven fact hotline. That's one eight four
four pt Genius. It's been so much fun seeing the
facts that are coming in from listeners after the episodes.
H thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a
(39:13):
production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without
several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't
even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI
mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the
Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams
and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
(39:35):
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like what
you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us.
Did we did we forget Jason? Jason who
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