This Week Is National Trucker Appreciation Week

Trucker appreciation week.  Oh yeah, it’s a thing.  As well it should be.  Have you ever heard the saying “If you bought it, a truck brought it”?  Well, whether you’ve heard it or not, take a good look at your surroundings.  Chances are, aside for the grass you are standing on, and the air you are breathing, everything came to where you are by truck.  Oh wait, I'm sure that grass you are standing on was once seeds, which was brought by...you guessed it...a truck.  And guess what…these things don’t operate themselves, well, not yet anyway.

So what is trucker appreciation week?  In case you hadn’t noticed, these are some hard working folks.  They don’t have the 9 to 5, 5 days a week gig like many of us do.  Their job isn’t done until the load gets to where it’s going, whether it takes 40 hours, or sixty hours, or more.  They are driving through extreme conditions to get their delivery done.  Snow, rain, road construction, road rage drivers, and more.

So this is week is here to honor those who go out and do one of the most important and demanding jobs around.  If you think driving a truck is just sitting behind a wheel for hours at a time, take a look at some of the things a truck driver does every single day.

The picture you see is of my old friend Doug and his son Linden.  Doug has been a trucker for many years.  Take a look as his testimony below...

When I hauled oversize we could only run during daylight so leave on Monday morning and drive 11 hours into Indiana then go to the hotel where they had truck parking. Next day deliver machine where they usually had a trade in that would have to go to the Indiana shop. Sometimes they'd have a used machine to go to a customer so you'd take that and maybe they had a trade too. By the time you had that all done it was time to shut down for the night. Day 3 head back towards Clarion but not enough hours to do it. So, on Thursday you make it back into the yard and load another for a short one and maybe go to South Dakota, Nebraska or Iowa. If you're lucky, you make it home by dark Friday. That was what I did for Hagie Mfg. They gave me a tech job so I could be home every night.

After reading that, I'm sure you can come to your own conclusion as to just how demanding this job can be.  You can thank a trucker, I’m sure they’d appreciate it.  But don’t do it while they’re driving.  It’s not easy to stop those trucks as they are cruising down the interstate.