I always had a great deal of respect for truck drivers. As I've mentioned there have been a good number of friends and family members that made a living behind the wheel. Driving truck was, to me and most other people my age, a respectable living if you could handle it. I've always loved trucks, if I hadn't been so attached to sleeping in my own bed and showering daily in my own shower I would have probably been driving instead of what I do.
The trucking industry has gotten a real bad rep over the years. The attitude of people like me has shifted from "I wish I could go do that for a living" to something closer to "Oh hell no!" Before any of you gets a chance to get your nose bent out of shape let me explain the view from outside the cab.
We meet hundreds of drivers every week on the job and the majority of them are lowlife dirt bags. For every decent, friendly, intelligent, educated driver there are 5 (closer to 10 if we are loading shipping containers) that can't speak English, stink, disrespect us because we are American. To many companies have a hiring policy of "If it's breathing we'll hire it."
The 'hire anything still breathing' companies are the ones we hate to deal with. Occasionally they have some good drivers that come in but the majority of drivers look like Borg walking in the door and probably have 3/4 of their ass hanging out of their low hanging pants going away. We watched a driver climb out of his cab then retrieve his cane and oxygen tank. At the corner of the building he stopped to lean on the wall and catch his breath sucking on the oxygen for all he could get. "ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING!?" Then I read through the post about the guy getting hassled over the CPAP machine and physical and thinking about the 500 pound guy with the cane and oxy cylinder. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING!?
Don't get me wrong. I have no particular hatred for people from other cultures. I often want to talk with them and learn about their people, customs, land and lifestyles. When they walk in with a crappy attitude towards us because we are American then it's GAME ON! One of those Russian sounding guys showed up in a one ton van to pick up a 7,000lb load. He had his crappy attitude on so the guys on the dock loaded the van. They just wanted to see if the tires would explode.
Sorry about the side rant.
I see those adds on TV and in the trucking magazines drivers leave laying around and to be honest they **** me off something terrible. Everybody knows that veterans face a huge challenge when they come back from serving in those war zones. They'll be looking for work, trying to readjust to civilian life and many of them are dealing with PTSD. As far as I'm concerned the trucking companies, especially the ones with their own "schools" are little more than vultures. "Hey Buddy, yeah, you in the fatigues, spend your military education money in our school. We'll give you an awesome job, you'll love it!" After 6 months of being no better off than they were when they were sleeping in a pit in Iraq and treated like shit by guys who look just like the ones who used to lay IEDs in the road for the Humvee they are that much poorer and looking for a job that will let them stay home with their family.
My son even thought one of those truck driving schools would be his answer to an easy, well paid lifestyle. When I heard which company was going to sponsor (loan him the money for school) I thought it in his best interest to rain on his parade a little. I said "Dude, they seriously drug test when you get started and a DOT cop can pop a test on you if he thinks you're fugly". Besides that you'll be a slave working for next to nothing until you pay back the loan. I don't know if it's true but it steered him away from trucking into delivering pizzas.
From another perspective I'm thinking about veterans fresh back from hell behind the wheel of a truck in a high stress, rat race job. Does it make sense to target guys that may be unbalanced by PTSD for employment? I know that not all the vets come back with major issues lurking but how many combat vets with flashbacks and anger issues do they want driving their trucks and mingling in truck stops with guys that look and smell like terrorists? Some of those guys scare the hell out of me.
End rant.