My seat rides up and down on a cushion of air, slides forward and back on smooth nylon rollers and has eight separate comfort adjustments. Situated approximately six feet off the ground, my seat affords me a good view of my office: the highways of this country. Where I sit, where I spend 10 to 14 hours per day, five or six days per week, is behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler.

As a professional over-the-road driver I get plenty of time to think as the miles go by. I have given many subjects intense, if not bouncing, scrutiny. I would like to share some of my over-the-road thoughts and experiences with you. In doing so, I do not expect the last word on anything. I hope that you will contribute to the discussions. E-mail makes it so easy.

Let’s get started.

A healthy economy requires a robust, efficient transportation industry and our trucking industry is the cornerstone of the best transportation system in the world. Many believe that there are far too many large trucks and that we need to get many of them off our roads. Some believe that a good way to accomplish this would be to increase the use of trains.

Trains have their uses. They can move large quantities of bulk items such as coal, chemicals, flour, etc., from one large collection point to another. However trains cannot deliver groceries to your corner market, cars to your local dealer or haul tons of municipal waste to places where it can be safely disposed of. This requires trucks. As our consumption of groceries, cars and other commodities increases, so do the number of trucks on the road.

Almost everything produced or consumed in this country moves at least once in a truck. To give just a few general examples: the building materials used in your home, school, place of business or any structure, arrived by truck. All of that structure’s furnishings, all appliances, machinery, food, clothing and personal items have arrived by truck. Your automobile, the gas and oil it runs on, the very road it runs upon, the signs and signals that direct you on your way; have arrived by truck.

To be more specific, let’s look at a loaf of bread. Wheat seed is delivered to the farmer via truck as is the fertilizer and other chemicals needed to assure a good crop. The implements the farmer uses in planting, cultivating and harvesting and the fuel they use arrives by truck. He transports his wheat to the grain elevators by truck.

The wheat, being a bulk item not prone to breakage, most likely moves to the distributor by ship or train, but then to the individual bakers by truck. The bread is wrapped in paper or plastic (which has made several journeys by truck) and is finally loaded onto other trucks and delivered to your neighborhood market. To deliver this tonnage, American heavy trucks travel approximately 2.5 trillion miles each year.

Where are all the trucks going? They are running from the railhead to the warehouse, from the seaboard dock to the inland manufacturer, from the landing strip to the inner city and beyond. They deliver raw materials and finished goods, transport households and houses. They ply up and down frozen Alaskan rivers in winter to deliver the freight to places where nothing else can. To paraphrase an old trucking song, “there ain’t no road that they ain’t seen.”

In 1996, the trucking industry in this country employed 9.3 million people, 3 million of which were drivers. The nationwide payroll for these workers amounted to more than $282 billion. In certain transportation intense hub areas such as Illinois, the trucking industry employs one out of every 11 workers. Apart from the taxes paid by these wage earners, the U.S. trucking industry paid $25 billion in state and federal highway user taxes in 1995 alone.

Who needs big trucks? We all do.

Guy Bourrie has been hauling on the highways for 20 years. He lives in Washington, Maine, and can be reached at [email protected]