My vacation started on Friday. Today is Sunday and I’m putting the finishing
touches on this column at a table in Bob Lodge’s 730 truckstop. I started it
earlier today on the picnic table of campsite 119 at the Silver Lake Provincial Park campground on Highway 7, a few miles north of Kingston, Ont. That was before a thunderstorm sent me packing to higher (and drier) ground
across the street to the Silver Seven truckstop. Deadlines wait for no one.

I’ve spent more time in truckstops in the past couple months than I have in
quite some time. Recently, I took Volvo’s VT 880 for a two-dday test drive through North Carolina and Tennessee, stopping at various truckstops.

Two weeks after that I was in Denton, Tex. driving Peterbilt’s new Model 386. Again, more truckstops, and more CB time. I miss life on the road, but I have to say it’s changed. It’s not like it used to be. A line from a song called “On the Border” by Al Stewart sums it up well:

In the village where I grew up
Nothing seems the same
Still you never see the change from day to day
And no one notices the customs slip away.

The coffee at truckstops, I’m saddened to report, is as bad as it ever was. Or maybe it’s that after 20 years on the road it all tasted the same and I didn’t notice the horribleness of it all.

This should be a recruiting issue: any wannabe truckers who enlist on account of some old Dave Dudley song about how good the coffee is, are bound to come away disappointed. Maybe it’s something the trucking associations should look at. If they think they can impose speed governors on Texas bull
haulers, surely they can convince a few hundred truckstop operators to ante
up for better java. The penny-a-pound stuff they now flog has to be keeping people out of the industry.

But I’ve noticed recently that the odd T/A now sports a Starbucks stand, which amazes me. First, the stuff is way overpriced, and secondly, the
Starbucks culture seems out of place in a truckstop. I just can’t see some big, hairy heavy-haul kind of guy asking the kid with the nail in his nose and his pants on backwards at the Starbucks stand for a low-fat latté
grandé. Let alone digging deep enough for the three bucks to pay for it.

I see many truckstop travel stores still stocking the same old stuff, and
now satellite radios are on offer too. That’s good. But in the locked glass
cabinets, they still have Screamin’ Meanies, which worries me. They’re
little electronic timers that let off a deafening yelp at the end of a preset amount of time. I needed one of those to wake me up when I was
driving, and I guess drivers still need them, even with the new HOS rules. Maybe change isn’t all that good for us after all.

And finally, a note about chivalry. The good news is it still exists; the bad news is, it’s getting rare.

My daughter and I were standing alongside Highway 7 on the first night of
our camping vacation. I had an arm full Popsicles, Doritos, firewood, and
the like, when from the west comes a small herd of trucks. The first two trucks dust me, as do a pair of SUVs somewhere in the middle. Tailing the pack slightly is a John Grant Haulage truck, whose driver kindly swings into the westbound lane so as not to plaster us with dust and gravel.

My daughter remarks, “Why couldn’t the other trucks do that, Dad?” No comment.

I noticed while driving in Texas and North Carolina recently that a few
drivers still remember what the dimmer switch on the turn signal stalk is for. I always dip my headlights for trucks while in my car, but few
acknowledge the gesture. Another one of those little customs that seems to
be slipping away.

Anyhow, gotta get out of here before someone spots me and starts talking about trucking. I’m on vacation, after all, and it only lasts a week.