ALT-3 Trucking is a Thankless Job
Every job is a thankless job. There are no trades or professions that really earn respect anymore. Construction workers, plumbers, roofers, electricians...all in the same boat.
Let's be honest with ourselves for a moment. Why don't people respect truckers or truck drivers? Usually its because of bad past experience.
Having worked for a large truck leasing/rental firm for about 2 years I ran into every shade of driver I could have imagined. There were short guys, tall guys, dudes of all races and body types and even a few women.
Of the people I dealt with I would guess around 15-20% were actually nice and the rest were surly, cranky and rude. I'm sure I would be too if I spent half my life cooped up in a tiny cab sipping away at sweet stuff and peeing into a jug I'd be a little irritable on the outside.
The necessity of a job rarely correlates with respect unless there's a tangible and usually warm fuzzies feeling associated with it. I love that there's a crew of guys who come by and take my trash away every week but I don't think that means we should respect them. I once met one of the guys who was in charge of keeping the pipes at the state fair moving. He told me about trying to break up a huge mass of human feces with a pressure washer and couldn't make a dent in it. That's gross but does it conjure up instant respect?
It doesn't. I don't think it should. In any service-heavy economy people depend on others for the things they need because otherwise we wouldn't work as a country at all. Unless you're a doctor, an actor, a rockstar or a model don't count on getting respect just for doing your job. If you want respect in any field you have to remember two things.
Your job title does not change whether you are a hard working professional or some jerk who lucked out because of a family member in the business. If you bring dedication and excellence to the table you will go further than if you whine about how hard your job is. If you don't like it then quit.
Old technology loses its sex appeal quicker than ever. Trucks have been around for more than fifty years so they might as well have come with the planet.
Despite my stance on this issue I do sympathize with people whose job gets them no respect. It's a real shame when someone hears what you do for a living and drops you into a little box with a nasty word written on the side. That is wrong but its also not going to change. Sadly the only thing you can do sometimes is to just keep on truckin'
Until truckers are all replaced by robots anyways.
