Explain Trucking
Paramendra Bhagat
January 11, 2003

What is there to explain? I have a decent job, a rather mainstream "median" job: one out of every 100 American is a trucker. Thanks to it, I have been to 44 states. It can pay well, possibly. How does 40,000 dollars for a year sound? Possibly more if you become a trainer. Probable. Maybe. We will talk about it when we get there. For someone who at one point wanted to launch a dot com, there is the satisfaction of feeling like you own a little small business of your own. There is no salary. There is substantial latitude in how much dough you end up with. And I am counting the cents. No apartment, no car payments.

This is a serious career move. I am looking at two years before I make the next switch: full-time writing for which I gather material as a crisscross this country on the move like no other. If you want to see America, if you really want to see America, hit the road. To see India, you hit the crowds. You would.

India is next. I am going "back" after all. For a few years to possibly return to America again. So when I leave, I want to do so without making any plans to come back, although I probably will. A minor exercise in self-deception.

I am an aspiring global citizen. If I can do 44 states, I can shoot for 150 countries, maybe 170. Maybe all 192 of them. How many are there? Before the decade is over. For the heck of it. To some day rattle the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Maybe. Make a few friends along the way. I am already raising funds for my political allies in Nepal.

The early European immigrants came on boat. The metaphor remains, as in Fresh Off The Boat, FOB. But this is the era of e-mail and jets. You don't have to choose between countries. I open up an account with Citibank here in America, and I could be writing checks on it in Calcutta. Or Mumbai, Delhi, all places on the to do list.

I have had fellow truckers look suspiciously at me when I am seen boring into my hot copy of USA Today for the day, that bestselling among American newspapers devoid of the pretensions of a New York Times or, worse, a Wall Street Journal.

"Are you stupid?"

The looks of people who never expected to make it beyond high school. I went to school, I told a co-driver, a Chicago native, a 6 foot 4 guy, 45 years old.

"Oh, truck school?"

College did not occur to him, although his wife/girlfriend is a Penn State graduate herself. "Here in Florida they don't seem to recognize our live-in arrangement."

The Qualcomm, which is the dumb end of your satellite communication link to the company, can haunt, enough for someone to pour some coke into it and make it go dead. If it makes you feel stupid. I did not see it happen, but my next co-driver, 16 years into alcohol, smoke and drugs all the way to 1996, the year I came to America, surmised that much after I told him the details: "I hate Qualcomms." I felt numb for a week. I am addicted to the keyboard.

Smarter than those on the factory floor, but not there with the white collar workers who make you run around the country from their cubicle spaces, or so the feeling goes. Occasionally you see a victim of corporate downsizing, people still adjusting to their new class status, less of income, more of social perception. But for the most part it is blue collar culture, and male. At truck stops, the CB blares ads for "commercial company. Switch to channel 31 for commercial company."

A friend wrote recently: "Where is your common sense?" I guess trucking does not truck with everyone, if anyone. What do you do when you want to travel full time but don't have the bucks for it: you go trucking.

A belated happy new year. Ya' all. Just got back from "New Jorzey." My North Carolinian co-driver, lost in the maze of traffic: "They must have put these road signs up when they were high." The self-consciousness of a Southerner.

The guy owns a 150,000 dollar house is a big city.

Miami Beach is happening.

"Man, is that an island in front of us, those lights?"

"No, bro. Those are ships waiting to enter port, bro. That is the Atlantic in front of you."

My first 1000-dollar week trucking was coupled with a few shouting matches with my Jamaican co-driver from Miami - "a few of my high school friends are in the parliament" - who went on to get his own truck and we parted ways amicably: his wife cooks swell curry chicken. He has a son called MJ who kept coming back to sit in my lap - "MJ, you are a big man, will you please get off for a few minutes, you can come back later" - while I devoured a Bob Marley DVD. Marley da man. The guy also took me to see one of his girlfriends.

Trucking is a nice attempt to try and keep down to earth, to add to your library of experiences in raw living for possible writing, to reach out to the illiterate billions in the Global South, for if you can't relate to some of these American high school dropouts, what chances do you have with those who never saw the light of school? Humanity pulsates where the numbers are large. For someone who went to a good high school in Nepal and a good college in the United States, both on scholarships, there is this lingering guilt you feel on behalf of those who never made it, not because they were less smart, were less hard working, but not lucky enough. Talent is evenly distributed, what is not is opportunity. The need to give back is real. The need to keep communicating is real. It is raw in the nerves. The roots beckon, as they always will, hopefully so.

Crisscrossing America On 18 Wheels: book title. To be worked upon in 2005 after trucking is bid farewell. My editorial assistant recently got accepted into Oxford. Perhaps it will end up being a novel.

Perhaps I am an artist. Public policy perhaps is not for me.

It is not that big of a trade off anyway. I don't know of any graduate from my high school or college who became a millionaire. Heck, I don't even know of any who might be trying, taking chances. Let the dogs out.

And then there is that occasional surprise in e-mail: "Paramendra,

"I read your Article today on Epinions.com as was amazingly surprised how much this has to do with the situation I�m currently in. My background is French and African American and I�m dating a guy from Bangalore India. We�ve been dating for 9 months, however we knew each other for 8 months prior. I was always attracted to him for many reasons but just didn�t know if he would consider dating me because I wasn�t Indian. Now we�re dating and he hasn�t told his parents about me. He says that he wants to travel to India and tell his parents about me rather than tell them over the phone. This has cause a great deal of uncertainly on my part. I�m a big family person and the fact that this guy hasn�t shared me with his mom and dad really upsets me. He tells me that it�s hard to explain, that he doesn�t know how they are going to handle him dating someone who�s not Indian. He wants me to be patient but it�s really hard. During Christmas I didn�t want to expose him to my family because of not knowing how things were going to turn out for us. I don�t want my family to meet this guys, then turn around and I have to tell them we�re not together. Now because of this, I feel like even if his family does accept me then it will always be a separate situation. Him and his family and me and my family. He is a wonderful guy outside of this one thing. I don�t want to break up with him, but I�m afraid that time will go on and I will eventually get hurt.

"My question for you is; is this really the case? Will his family have a hard time dealing with me NOT being Indian? Do you think that in this case if his family does not accept me that he may opt to dump the relationship? I find this so hard to believe, and I cannot relate to it. Should I be patient? I�ve met his sister and a few of his friends. It�s just amazing that he feels he cannot tell his parents about me, when he says and acts in a way that he really cares and loves me. Our relationship literally has been the best relationship so far. I also find myself constantly asking him when he�s going back home. It�s been somewhat difficult right now due to work.

"Advise needed Please,

"Nicole."

Who says this trucker is about to go out of business?