Oral traditions shared by American truck drivers. Because they work in relative isolation
and need timely information, truckers rely heavily on informal oral networks. Though
handy and often entertaining, these networks encourage fantastic tales, both true and
untrue. Tales of the small town—name forgotten—where one man served as patrolman,
judge, jailer, banker, and telegraph employee may be safely discredited only because a
trucker would never forget the name of such a town. Equally fantastic stories about a
scalemaster extorting money from truckers (and that scale having been bombed) are true.
The following riddle-joke (which has variations among other groups) illustrates the
problem. “Q: What’s the difference between a fairy tale and a trucker’s story? A: The
fairy tale starts out, ‘Once upon a time,’ and the trucker’s story starts, ‘This ain’t no lie.’”
Truckers have unique versions of urban legends. Rumors of the truck in which a driver
died (and literally exploded after several summer days) parallel the urban legend about a
cheaply available “Death Car” whose successive owners cannot rid it of its smell. In the trucking
variant, the smell, which has resisted sandblasting, causes heart attacks and blackouts,
and the death truck’s number is said to be the “Beast s” number, 666.
Stories drawn from trucking tradition indicate that truckers may once have enjoyed
their own versions of “The Vanishing Hitchhiker,” though these are not in circulation in
the 1990s. In those versions, it is the truck driver who vanishes mysteriously. In one
version, a rescued rider conveys the drivers greetings to truck-stop employees and is-told
that years before, the trucker drove off a cliff to avoid a stalled school bus. His ghost now
helps motorists. In another variant, the ghost adopts and trains a fledgling driver before
disappearing, leaving the newcomer with his truck.
Two other genres are the cautionary tale and the Trickster tale. In most cautionary
tales, a truck driver suffers for unconscientious or noncollegial behavior. Disasters
(spilled, spoiled, or stolen loads, collisions, arrests, and so forth) follow shoddy work,
failure to help colleagues, or refusing radio communication. Trickster tales, on the odier
hand, illustrate cleverness in fooling law-enforcement personnel, toll-road authorities,
shippers, and occasionally even dispatchers. Tricks range from practical operating tips to
the impractical tales of a man who avoided punishment by pouring coffee on his illegal log book and claiming that his urine bottle (to be used by truckers when they can’t or
won’t stop; more a joke than a reality) had spilled. Both genres illustrate an ethic of
personal responsibility: drivers who do not adhere to that ethic are punished, as are
officials who challenge it.
CB (citizens band) radio use in the 1990s is more subtle than the flashy styles
popularized in the 1970s. Numbered signals have faded, leaving only standards such as
ten-four (agreement), and ten-twenty (location). Meanings of other words have shifted:
the once-friendly address, “good buddy,” is now considered an insult. And older terms
(like “discolights” for the signal lights atop police cars) are being revived. Most surviving
terms are practical metaphors, like “chicken coop” (scalehouse), “load of postholes”
(empty trailer), or “bingo card” (permit stickers). Others compare trucks and humans:
Driving is “running,” the cab’s firont may be a “nose,” an overturned vehicle is “bellyup,” nontruckers are “four-wheelers,” and prostitutes are often “commercial carriers.”
Because one shouldn’t “walk” (overlap speaking) on someone else’s transmission, many
traditionalized speech patterns, like saying “come on” or “‘four” after speaking, reflect
etiquette shaped by the CB.
Handles (CB nicknames) are social overtures, as the names “Country Convert,”
“Rambling Rabbi,” “Florida Boy,” and possibly “Moonshine” indicate. “Salt Shaker,”
who collects salt and pepper shakers, is often hailed by “salt shakers” who salt winter
roads. And the handle “Eightball” has been used by both a pool player and a balding
African American trucker. Other CB names express images of trucking, as do “Lone
Wolf” and “Midnight Runner.” And since a shared sense of persecution can evoke
community among truckers, most can identify with “Oudaw,” “Trouble,” and “Nobody.”
Because truckers use the CB for everyday communication, they are unlikely to use sexy
names as their primary handles, though some adopt secondary handles in order to flirt or
joke anonymously. Some truckers clown, pretending to be drivers for another company;
when other drivers return the “favor,” this creates a running gag.
Running gags are popular among truckers. For example, the straight line, “Be quiet so
I can get some sleep,” predictably elicits a chorus of “Turn your radio off!” Neither the
straight man nor the respondents actually believe anyone would ask an entire truck stop
to refrain from talking; they are mocking their own radio use. Some running gags convey
social values by echoing belligerent speakers with a barrage of caricatured threats. Others
are less didactic: Truckers caught in the same traffic jams have been known to
experiment with limericks and animal imitations. Not surprisingly, running gags are most
common in traffic jams, truck stops, and other situations where killing time is a shared
goal.
One running gag is part of a cycle of jokes about a company we’ll call Huge. A Huge
truck in the act of parking elicits a chorus of “Watch out! Huge’s backing up!” (In
contrast, Huge drivers tell of a colleague who sports a striped cane and dark glasses as a
gag.) In another joke, a Huge driver who is reprimanded for ignoring a crashed colleague
responds, “Ha! We don’t have wheels on top of our trucks.” The jokes are also visual:
Graffiti beside toilet-paper rolls sometimes reads “Huge job applications.” In this and
other cases, jokes are used to force collegiality: Huge drivers are snubbed or teased
because their company is considered unethical.
All of these folklore forms help truckers discuss and share feelings about their work.
Slang, jokes, and narrative traditions depict conditions and convey values important to professionalism, and CB handles allow truckers from diverse backgrounds to announce
identity with a minimum of fuss. But shared culture does not mean homogeneity. Within
the traditions outlined, new diversities have arisen: haulers of various commodities,
drivers for each company, union men, and independents all have unique traditions. If
specialization and diversity are tests of true cultures, then trucking delivers.
Clover Williams