Beautiful Trucking

Why I do this job

“The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.” - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I should be writing a book. I keep starting articles, but they all keep growing as each expression leads to a new thought.

Never mind, let me show you some pretty pictures in the meantime, if you’ll allow.

About three years ago I was driving across Cambridgeshire and was watching a beautiful sunrise unfold. So I stopped and took a snap, the one you see below, and put it on Facebook for friends and family to see. Everyone liked it, so now it’s become a bit of a tradition that I stop and snap sunrises and sunsets whenever I get the chance, and then share it with those dear to me.

And I mix it up sometimes, like with a moonrise over the Aosta Valley in Italy:

Or generally beautiful or interesting scenes in which I find myself, such as crossing from France to Italy through the Fréjus Tunnel (by the way, any truck that’s central in the pictures is, or was, “mine”, I’ve just been working for different companies):

Or ferry crossings:

Or when I was dragooned, along with some colleagues, into keeping the London area supplied with toilet-roll during the lock-down of early 2020:

Of course all these snapshots are just single moments in time, and even short video clips are just a brief glimpse into what it’s like to be in the World in this way. I truly believe truck drivers are seeing the World differently to the vast majority of the population. And of course I mean that in a literal sense, but that then leads to the metaphoric sense as well.

All day, everyday, we are out in the World. High up in our cabs, we look across the cities, we drive past the farms and the open fields. We see the mountains, we see the forests. We experience the vicissitudes of the climate and the march of the seasons. We see the whole of a country, knowing far more than just the parts.

For me, this also adds to what I’m listening to. I survive on audiobooks, and often the scenery I’m piercing adds to the title to which I’m listening. So I’ve listened to Cervantes crossing La Meseta in Spain, and Carlyle in the hills of Scotland.

And us truckers are in the supply-chain, we see the economy, so we have that knowing as well.

I was talking to a very clever man the other day, and we were talking about the supply-chain and finance, subjects about which he was clearly an expert. But then a question came to me “have you ever been to a container port?” It turned out he hadn’t.

I’d suggest that the World is full of abstract understandings. For most people, this astonishing supply-chain is a concept, not a thing. It is numbers on spreadsheets, not the endless mechanical choreography of men and mighty machines. Only when you’re in amongst it, can the awesome nature of this thing be seen.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse into this world, into my world. Have a good one!

“My love is in league with the freeway

Its passion will rise as the cities fly by

And the tail lights dissolve in the coming of night

And the questions and thousands take flight” - Robert Plant, Big Log, 1982