In Georgia: Footnotes from a Trucker's Heaven

By Anne Constable

"The truck is their horse and they are I the cowboys," says smooth-talking Richard Moyers, a vice president for Transport City. And it is true that they come on in Stetson hats, tooled leather belts and pointy-toed boots trimmed in iguana or wildebeest. But the men who roll into Transport City do not have the lean, weathered look of wranglers. Those pearl-buttoned denim shirts barely cover bellies bulging out from too many orders of mashed potatoes and chocolate cream pie. These cowboys are at home not on the range but in the claustrophobic cabs of 18-wheel trucks that thunder back and forth over the nation's 42,000 miles of interstate.

Twenty-four hours a day, the drivers jockey hundreds of big rigs--reefers, dry boxes and flatbeds--in and out of the world's largest and most complete truck stop. Transport City is a 51-acre, $7 million complex that is still growing in the outskirts of Atlanta, just off Interstate 285. It smells of diesel fuel and looks like a giant J.C. Penney complex, but it is the nearest thing to trucker's heaven yet invented. In it, tired truckers by the hundreds can fill up their 150-gal. tanks, take saunas, wash their clothes, grab a few hours of shuteye, get a quick clutch overhaul and eat their fill. The place has 24 computerized fueling stations that can pump 3 million gal. of gas a month.

About the only thing a driver can't get at Transport City is a bottle of beer or a shot of bourbon. No alcohol is available because, says Ralph Hutchinson, one of Transport City's developers, "drinking and driving don't mix." In the 99-unit motel, drivers can rent functional, two-bed rooms for $13.50 a night. They rarely stay that long. The occupancy rate usually runs from 100% to 130%, as truckers slam in, grab a shave, a nap, fill up and head out again.

On the other end of the sprawling building, in the 24-hr.-a-day maintenance department, 35 mechanics and helpers stand ready to do everything from change a 100-lb. tire in 20 min. to make an oil and filter change in 40. There are four en closed repair bays, and sometimes the big rigs are lined up three and four deep waiting for service. At another bay, an automatic truck wash with 16-ft. brushes scours the outsides of 55-ft.-long tractor trailers in eight minutes at a cost of $25.

The hub of the complex is the sales office and call board, department store, barbershop, lounge and restaurant. The food is steam-table cuisine, but it is cheap and plentiful. A hungry man can heap his tray with chicken-fried steak, creamed potatoes, green beans, corn bread, salad and homemade pie for less than $4.50. One trucker is celebrated for ordering seven scoops of mashed potatoes at 350 a scoop.

In the general store, under the gaze of a ceramic bust of Elvis Presley, drivers can buy everything from iridescent oil paintings (often depicting trucks) to pantyhose. What they buy most is hats ($30) and boots (up to $150). The newsstand is jammed with copies of Overdrive, the CB Times and Country Music News. And in a concession to the growing number of female drivers, Vogue and Mademoiselle.

In the lounge upstairs, drivers pass the time shooting pool or watching TV. Afternoons, a handful of drivers usually hang around the call board, smoking and talking. On the board are buttons that connect them directly with the Georgia offices of 29 nationwide freight carriers. "May I have your attention, please," an amplified female voice will vibrate through the room. "Anybody with a reefer interested in going to New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania, please come to the desk." What a driver hauls depends partly on his truck. "Reefer" is jargon for a semi that carries refrigerated items, flatbeds tend to be for shop machinery, a dry box hauls everything else.

Allen Carter, 29, who works for International Transtar, explains that for professional drivers, two chief problems are fatigue and boredom. Truckers fight off sleep with speed and pep pills (known as "pocket rockets"), but stories of dozing at the wheel are not uncommon. The only way to make money on the 2 1/2-day trip from Florida to New York is by driving the 23 hrs. straight through. Carter thinks nothing of leaving Chicago and deadheading home to St. Cloud, Fla., without a break.

Weeks on the road are hard on a man's home life. One driver who has been married five times explains, "You get in the truck and leave, and they [the wives] see something they like better at home. But if you worry about that, you can't do your job." On the other hand, prostitutes flock around truck stops. Some drivers complain that Transport City harasses the women traveling with truckers. But the owners say they are just trying to protect the drivers. Like rock music and politics, trucking has its groupies, young girls who stand outside places like Transport City waiting for a hitch.

Even so, few truckers willingly share their cabs. "That's mainly why a driver is a driver," says Carter, pushing back his tractor cap and folding his arms over his ample paunch. "He's by himself. Drivers can't stand a lot of racket. They like to get out by themselves and think." But not many go to the extreme of one young trucker doing his laundry at Transport City. He literally lives out of his rig. His dispatcher even reads him his mail over the radio. "I wouldn't trade it for anything. You're never in the same place. There's no whistle telling you to go to work, take a break or go home."

Talk at truck stops centers on highway conditions, the size of the biggest pothole, state regulations and, endlessly, the highway crimes and misdemeanors of "the four wheels," the feckless, reckless drivers of private automobiles.

High on the list of legal horrors is an Arkansas regulation requiring trucks traveling through the state to buy 65 gal. of gas. "You can't realize how ununited the U.S. is unless you drive across it," says Trucker Tom Strampel. The worst regulations, everyone agrees, are those governing the length and weight of tractor trailers. Smack dab in the middle of the U.S. are seven states that allow trucks a gross weight of only 73,280 Ibs. The states on either side permit 80,000 Ibs. Truckers will do anything to avoid the weigh stations ("chicken coops") in those seven states. "You just can't make it from California to the East Coast legal," sighs Jerry Reeve, 37. "The Federal Government and state bureaucrats have made liars and thieves of us all," adds a driver. "Everybody finds ways around the rules." Just to break even, they all feel, they must break the speed limit, drive longer than the regulation ten hours or 450 miles at a stretch, and doctor their logbooks.

From jamming the useful CB circuits with dumb and frivolous chatter to hogging the highways, the four wheels can do no right. "The four wheels are parasites," says one driver. "They use you as bear meat." Growls another: "All year the four wheels plan for a two-week vacation. They throw a big party the night before they leave, jump in the car, the wife has the map in her lap and there are three screaming kids in the back seat. The guy is going 70 m.p.h. and looking backwards." Trucker Phyllis Crush, who drives with her husband Ted, describes a recent run-in. "I was driving in the giddyap lane and some broad stopped dead at 65 m.p.h. She was starting to back up at an exit. I slam on my brakes and my trailer hits the guard rail. But I'd have been responsible if I hit her."

Truckers drive for a living, ply a demanding trade, jockey unwieldy rigs in all weathers. They think of themselves as careful behind the wheel, though National Highway Safety Council statistics show that tractor trailers are involved in more fatal accidents per million vehicle miles than passenger cars (5.9 vs. 3.6 in 1977). Drivers say that more and more truckers smoke pot on the road. Says Allen Carter, "I hear on the radio all the time, 'anybody working high? Anybody got a joint?' " A five-year U.C.L.A. study just completed reports that even a few tokes of marijuana reduce driver reaction time from 10% to 20% and affect peripheral vision as well as the driver's ability to judge distances. Many truckers disdain the weed, claiming it puts them to sleep. Other truckers argue that, as one of them puts it, "It depends on what kind of smoke you got -- Colombia Red Bud, Mexican Brown, home grown." They contend that smoking drivers compensate for loss of reaction time by reducing speed. Says one: "You never see a marijuana smoker chasing a guy down the road."

Charlie Stallone, an independent owner-operator from Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (the sign on his T shirt reads SMOKE COLOMBIAN), explains: "Drivers smoke pot to unwind. You've been running ten hours through ice and snow. You're wired. You pull into a stop. They don't sell beer or whisky, so you light up a joint and go to sleep." Those who smoke when driving, adds Stallone, don't do it to get stoned.

"You're not ripped. You've just got a buzz on."

"We're an outlaw breed," boasts Paul Sherman, 29. "We're the last free sons of bitches in the U.S."

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