You have to get all psyched up and keep your alertness all the time. There’s a lot of stomach trouble in this business, tension. Fellas that can’t eat anything. Alka-Seltzer and everything. There’s a lot of hemorrhoid problems. And there’s a lot of left shoulder bursitis, because of the window being open. And there’s a loss of hearing because of the roar of the engine. The roar of the engine has a hypnotic effect. To give you an idea of the decibel sounds inside a cab, nowadays they’re beginning to insulate ’em. It’s so tremendous that if you play the radio loud enough to hear above the roar and you come to a tollgate and stop, you have to turn it down it’s screaming so loud. You could break your eardrums. And the industrial noises in the background . . . I’m sure his hearing’s affected. There was a survey made of guys that transport cars. You’ve heard the loud metal noise, where the different parts of the gates comes together. They found these fellas have a great loss of hearing. It’s one more occupational hazard. There has been different people I’ve worked with that I’ve seen come apart, couldn’t handle it any more.
I’ll tell you where we’ve had nervous breakdowns, when we got in this ’67 thing, the wildcat. We’ve had four people associated with us in Gary have had nervous breakdowns. And at Pittsburgh, they’ve had several. The tension of this labor thing, forty-six weeks, is real strong. The tension’s even greater for a guy with a family to support . . .”
There seemed an unusual amount of fellas having problems with their family, with the wife in particular. They’re average guys with their wives going through the change and so forth. Really, that’s an awful problem for the wife, because she has to raise the kids, she has to fight off the bill collectors on the phone. She can’t even count on her husband to attend a graduation, a communion, any kind of social function. She’s just lucky he’s home Christmas and New Year’s. He’s usually so darn tired that he’d much rather be home sleeping than getting ready to go out Sunday night.
Sure, truckers eat a lot of pills. It’s a lot more prevalent than I thought. I heard fellas say they get a better price on bennies if they buy them by the thousand. We know a lot of individuals we consider hopheads off on benzedrine. A couple of guys I know are on it, even though it’s on the weekends when they don’t need to stay awake. It’s become a habit.
The kids call ‘em red devils. In trucking, they call it the Arkansas Turnaround—or whatever your destination is. A lot of ’em are dispensed by drugstores on prescription for weight control. So their wife gets the pills and the old man ends up usin’ ’em to keep awake, because they’re a benzedrine base. It’ll be the little black ones or the little red ones . . .
They’d like to pick up the kids, hitchhikers, if it weren’t for the prohibitions. I think the biggest transporters of hippies would be the owner-operators, because they want company. For years you didn’t see a hitchhiker, but now with the hippie, with kids traveling across the country, every interchange has got a bunch of long-haired, pack-sacked kids hitchhiking from one end of the country to the other. It’s a reborning . . .
It’s a strange thing about truckers, they’re very conservative. They come from a rural background or they think of themselves as businessmen. But underneath the veneer they’re really very democratic and softhearted and liberal. But they don’t
realize
it. You tell ’em they’re liberal and you’re liable to get your head knocked off. But when you start talking about things, the war, kids, when you really get down to it, they’re for everything that’s liberal. But they want a conservative label on it. It’s a strange paradox.
In the steel mill, the truckdriver is at the absolute bottom of the barrel. Everybody in that mill that is under union contract has some dignity, has some respect from management. If he’s the fella that sweeps the floor, he has job status. The man in the crane, if there’s no work for his crane, he doesn’t have to do anything. If the fella that pushes the broom in Warehouse Four, if he’s got everything groomed up, they can’t tell him, “No, you go and do another job.”
Now comes the steel hauler. Everybody in that mill’s above somebody, from top management down. At the bottom of the ladder, there’s the hooker on your truck. He wants to feel that he’s better than somebody. He figures I’m better than this steel hauler. So you get constant animosity because he feels that the corporation looks down on this steel hauler, and he knows he can order him around, abuse him, make him wait. It’s a status thing. There’s a tremendous feeling.
The first couple of years when I got abused, I howled and I yelled and I did my dance: “You can’t do this to me.” After a few years, I developed a philosophy. When I scream, it gives them pleasure, they can put it to me. They’re sadists. So the average steel hauler, no matter how abused he is, you always give them that smile and you leave it go over your head. You say to yourself: One day my time will come. If you don’t take this philosophy, you’ll go right out of your mind. You cause an incident, you’re barred from the mill. It’s such a competitive business that you dare not open your mouth because your company will be penalized freight—and you get it in the neck. You try to show ’em a cockiness like you could care less.
Over a number of years, your face becomes familiar. It breaks the ice. The loader considers you an old-timer, he has some identity with you. You might find, on rare occasions, friendship. The loader is the foreman on the shift for truck loading. He has a desk in between all the piles of steel and he lays out the loads that are gonna be placed on the truck. If the hookers see the loader’s giving you respect, they’ll accept you.
The newer people get the most grief, do the screaming, and get the worst treatment. Younger fellas. The fella that comes into this business that’s over forty takes his life’s savings and buys a truck because somebody told him there’s big money to be made and he wants to get in his own business. If you last the first five years, you last the worst hardships. Success means you survive. If you don’t make a dime on your investment, but you’re still in business after five years, we say he’s a regular. Those first five years is your biggest nut to crack. You don’t know the ropes, you don’t know how to buy and service your truck reasonable, you make all the mistakes. Fifty percent turnover in our business every year. They drop out, lose their trucks. That’s the only reward: In your mind, you feel you’re in business.
There’s been a change since the ’67 wildcat. It spread across the country like wildfire. We’re respected in a lot of places now because they know we stand up and fight for our rights. As much as it was a money problem, it was a problem of dignity.
“Ninety percent of the fellas were Teamster Union members, but you’d never know it. Outside of the dues money they take out of your check, they did absolutely nothing. They did less than nothing. We know that a few telephone calls by high Teamster official to steel mill officials could have changed our picture completely. If they would call up and say, ‘Look, you’re abusing our people and if you don’t straighten it out we’re gonna do something about it.’ They could put one man down there at U.S. Steel, for instances, and say, ‘I’m a Teamster official. We’re asking you guys not to load in this mill until they treat you fairly.’ In twenty-four hours we’d be getting loaded out there so fast we couldn’t keep our hat on our head.
“But they’re establishment. They’re interlocked with the steel mills and the trucking companies. They don’t even know who their members are. Our guess is between twenty and thirty thousand steel haulers. Nobody can come up with the figures. A Teamster official was maybe a tritckdriver twenty-five or thirty years ago. Fought the good fight, built the union, got high on the hog. So many years have passed that he doesn’t even know what a truck looks like any more. He now golfs with his contemporaries from the trucking companies. He lolls about Miami Beach at the Hollywood Hotel that they own. To him, to have a deal with a truckdriver is beneath his station. It’s awfully hard when you get to the union hall to talk to a Teamster official. They’re usually ‘busy.’ That means they’re down at the Palmer House, at the Steak Restaurant. It’s a hangout for ’em.”
Truckdrivers used to spend ninety percent of their time bitchin’ about how they got screwed at the mill, how they got screwed by the state trooper. Troopers prey on truckdrivers for possible violations—mostly regarding weight and overload. It’s extremely difficult to load a steel truck legally to capacity. If you’re a thousand pounds over, it’s no great violation but you have to get around the scales. At regular pull-offs, they’ll say: Trucks Must Cross Scales.
You pull in there and you find, lo and behold, you’re five hundred or a thousands pounds over. You’ve got to pay a ticket, maybe twenty-five dollars, and you have to move it off. This is a great big piece of steel. You’re supposed to unload it. You have to find some guy that’s light and break the bands on the bundle and transfer sheets or bars over on the other truck. Occasionally it’s something that can’t be broke down, a continuous coil that weighs ten thousand pounds. You work some kind of angle to get out of there. You wish for the scale to close and you close your eyes and you go like hell to try to get out of the state. You have a feeling of running a blockade in the twenties with a load of booze. You have a feeling of trying to beat the police. Or you pay the cop off.
Most state troopers consider truckers to be outlaws, thieves, and over-loaders. The companies and the union don’t try to upgrade our image. They don’t go to the police departments and say, “Stop abusing our members.”
Everybody’s preying on the trucker to shake him down. The Dan Ryan is unbelievable. They’re working deals you couldn’t believe, that nobody would care about, because they’re out of state truckers. Who cares what happens to them? What would you think of a trucker coming up the Dan Ryan for the first time? He’s coming from Pittsburgh with an overload. He approaches the South Side of the city and it says: All Trucks Must Use Local Lanes. But the signs aren’t well enough marked and he’s out in the third lane and gets trapped. He can’t get over because of the other cars, he goes right up the express lane. Well, there’s cops down there makin’ their living off these poor guys. They pull him over and they say, “Hey buddy, you’re out where no trucks are supposed to be. We’re gonna have to lock you up.” They go through their song and dance about they’re horrified about how you’ve broken the law, endangering everybody. And they’re hinting around that maybe you want to make a deal.
Maybe you don’t want to make a deal? Oh, you have to make bond and appear in court, that’s twenty-five dollars. If you’ve got an out-of-state chauffeur’s license, they’ll take your chauffeur’s license. So if you’re going to come up with a ten, he’ll hold court right there and he’ll tell you never do it again. But if you’re gonna be hardheaded—I’m gonna fight this thing —he’ll say, “Okay, we’re gonna take you in the neighborhood out here and we’re gonna park your truck and we’re gonna take you over to the station in a squad car.” I can’t swear to it, but there’s a story goin’ around that these cops are working with the people in the neighborhood. So you park your car out on those streets. While you’re at the station making bond you come back and there ain’t much left to your truck. The tires are gone, the cab’s been broken into, the radio’s gone. That’s what happens to thousands of truckdrivers.
The cops tell you, “You get back on your truck any way you know how.” Because they don’t want to be there when you see your truck. You take a cab over there and there you stand. Now you call the copper, this official paragon of law and order, and he tells you, “How am I gonna find out who wrecked your truck and stole everything off?” A truck tires costs a hundred dollars. You’re liable to come back from the station, trying to fight your ticket, to have four hundred-dollar bills gone right off the trailer.
Why the devil do you do it, right? There’s this mystique about driving. The trucker has a sense of power. He has a sense of responsibility too. He feels: I know everything about the road. These people making mistakes around me, I have to make allowances for them. If the guy makes a mistake, I shouldn’t swear at him, I shouldn’t threaten him with my truck. You say, “That slob can’t drive. Look at that dumb woman with her kids in there. Look at that drunk.”
You’ve
got status!
Every load is a challenge and when you finally off-load it, you have a feeling of having completed a job—which I don’t think you get in a production line. I pick up a load at the mill, going to Hotpoint in Milwaukee. I take a job and I go all through the process. You have a feeling when you off-load it—you see they’re turning my steel into ten thousand washing machines, into a hundred farm implements. You feel like your day’s work is well done when you’re coming back. I used to have problems in the morning, a lot of heartburn, I couldn’t eat. But once I off-loaded, the pressure was off. I met the deadline. Then I could eat anything.
The automobile, it’s the biggest thing in the country, it’s what motivates everybody. Even that model, when they drape her across the hood of that car . . . In the truck stop, they’re continually talking about how they backed into this particular place in one swing. The mere car drivers were absolutely in awe. When you’re in that truck, you’re not Frank Decker, factory worker. You’re Frank Decker, truck owner and professional driver. Even if you can’t make enough money to eat, it gives you something . . .
There’s a joke going around with the truckdrivers. “Did you hear the one about the hauler that inherited a million dollars?” “What did he do with it?” “He went out and bought a new Pete.”
39
“Well, what did he do then?” “He kept running until his money ran out.” Everybody knows in this business you can’t make no money. Owning that big Pete, with the chrome stacks, the padded dashboard, and stereo radio, and shifting thirty-two gears and chromed wheels, that’s heaven. And in the joke, he was using up the inheritance to keep the thing on the road.