Truckers Live in an Enclosed World

Recently a truck driver was responsible for the shooting deaths of six young women at a Pennsylvania Amish school. This individual was a milk delivery driver to that school. The headlines, and the comments on the trucking boards, (Here at http://roundtable.truck.net/index.php for example.), would suggest somehow we, as an industry are bad people.

It was later disclosed in several messages he had left notes stating he was suffering from guilt of molesting young children, all his relatives.

He further stated he was, (I'm paraphrasing), "Getting even for something that happened 20 years ago."

This was NOT the action of a TRUCKER, instead that of a deranged, disturbed man who just happened to drive a truck. Yet the critics are quick to suggest the stress of driving were a factor. Poppycock!

Other incidents involving truckers add to the media hype, intentional or not. (Remember the mantra of the media, "If it bleeds, it leads.") The media will use whatever headline, shocking lead in, or film clip they can to entice you to watch the later show, or purchase the newspaper from the box.

While it is indeed, sadly, tragic in many cases when a large truck crashes, and it does make spectacular headlines and film clips, the incidence of such crashes are rare, compared to the number of trucks, drivers and miles driven each day.

But when any such action occurs, we, the truckers, are the first to pile on … well, some of us anyway. When the driver crashed into the van in Florida last year, the driver had been tried, convicted and sentenced by other drivers before the smoke had cleared from the scene.

Such speedy judgments not only serve to enflame the media bias against truckers, (and it does exist), but it places a pall of doom and guilt by association over the entire industry.

While inside our enclosed world, we fall prey to outside influences, and often make comments, or decisions, based upon the false facts or accusations of others. We should, (in my humble opinion), rally behind a positive force that will demand logical, rational changes for the industry. Changes that will demand better pay and working conditions. More attention from the carriers that hire these drivers and place unrealistic demands upon their ability to operate the CMV in a safe and orderly manner.

And lastly we, the drivers, must be willing to self police ourselves. In days past it was not unusual for a group of drivers to approach someone perceived as an idiot in his operation of a truck and quietly inform him it was time to find religion in the operation and public perception of how he was tainting the entire industry by his actions.