If there’s one type of driver that a person shouldn’t upset on the road, it’s a truck driver, since typically those driving big rigs are towing loads that weigh in excess of tens of thousands of pounds, and they’re doing their best to keep that load safe and secure while watching out for everyone on the road. But in the movies and on TV it’s pretty common to see people mess with truckers or feel that because these drivers are handling big, slow-moving vehicles that they should just pull to the side and let traffic pass more often than not. Of course, in Hollywood, the truckers get to have their way quite often and some of them even manage to get pretty violent or at least get a measure of payback without getting into too much trouble. In the real world, you really don’t want to mess with a trucker since one, their rig will normally outweigh yours by several tons if not more, two, they do communicate and at times will come to each other’s aid or at least call the authorities if need be, and three, it’s just not polite since what they’re hauling is usually needed at a set location at a set time. Truckers are essential to this country since they deliver goods all over the nation, and while it looks cool in the movies to see truckers on the road getting into all sorts of trouble, in real life it becomes a huge inconvenience for a lot of people if someone decides to mess around with a trucker.
Here are a few things that Hollywood manages to get wrong about truckers.
5. The stunts that are pulled with trucks on TV and in the movies aren’t real.
It’s true that the stunts that are seen in movies and on TV are carefully constructed and executed, but in real life, any trucker would tell you that some of them aren’t realistic in the slightest and others they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. Trucks going at high speeds that have an unfortunate accident can do a lot of damage, and the fallout of that damage is something that needs to be dealt with. But the fact is that the stunts that are pulled might be physically possible with the right set of conditions and with a stunt coordinator that knows how to pull it off. In real life though, such conditions are rare to non-existent, meaning such stunts would be disastrous.
4. Most truckers dress rather nicely.
Quite often when truckers are shown in the movies and on TV they’re in clothing that’s well-worn and they look as though they spend about five to ten dollars on a full set of clothes at a Goodwill. The honest truth is that they might not dress in leisure suits and upscale clothing, but they tend to look neat and professional most times and if they’re a bit scruffy it might mean that they’ve been on the road for a while and need a little bit of time to freshen up. But the truth is that they are professionals and they tend to look the part more often than not since they do have to deal with people eventually.
3. The ‘secret’ language of truckers isn’t too hard to figure out.
So yes, they do have their own special jargon that they communicate with at times and it’s more or less their way of speaking to each other to indicate such things as trouble ahead, road conditions, and various other things that they might feel are important. It’s not necessarily something that every trucker gets into but it is something that developed a while back and was eventually picked up by quite a few truckers that found it useful.
2. Not all truckers are big, burly men that are into arm-wrestling.
There are plenty of truckers who are women and there are truckers that don’t look like they could bench press a Buick or wolf down a stack of 20 pancakes before hitting the road for another long haul. Truckers come in all shapes and sizes and a lot of times they look just the average citizen. This kind of job does attract a lot of people, both those with families and those without, and it’s fair to say that a lot of those that go into business for themselves or work for others aren’t always judged by their appearance.
1. Truck drivers do follow the laws of the road.
This is beyond important since it’s the lifeblood of a trucker. Their license is how they make money essentially, so to get dinged or even worse, lose their license, means that a trucker driver is out of a job and has to look for alternate ways to make money. Truckers might bend and even buck the laws of the road from time to time, but unlike the people you might see in the movies, they’re out to make money the lawful way more often than not, which means illegal and illicit activities and breaking speeding laws isn’t bound to happen that often.
Truckers are way more important than a lot of people realize.
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