It’s hard to explain just how vulnerable you are as a trucker. It reorients my understanding of the bravado in the profession. You are beholden to the carrier. They control your wages. They own your home and source of livelihood in fact, if not in “owner-operator” name. They determine when you get to see your family and when you get the opportunity to work. You are beholden to the economy as a whole in a way that is far more intimate than for most of us. You are locked in a culture that venerates self-reliance and individual persistence and is hostile to displays of weakness or need: a
...more
