These road warriors have always been essential workers, but with technological innovation, could this be the end of the road?
“Thank God for truckers,” President Trump said last month at a White House event honoring truck drivers and their pivotal response to Covid-19. “You’re America’s heroes,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao added.
That truck drivers are “the foot soldiers who are really carrying us to victory” against the virus, as Trump put it, is not lost on the American people. Hashtags like #ThankATrucker are trending on social media, and images of signs and care packages for drivers abound on Instagram.
In light of this national celebration of truckers, it’s worth savoring their rich contribution to Americana: truck-driving country music, a genre that’s existed since before the interstate highway was even complete. From Dave Dudley to Red Simpson, artists offer listeners the opportunity to hear from the perspective of the quintessential “truck-drivin’ son of a gun,” as Dudley puts it. And quarantine offers the perfect opportunity to partake.
Not surprisingly, many truck-driving country songs glamorize the amorous adventures of truckers with a girl in every town. “I got a sweet thing I’m wantin’ to see in Nashville / But I’m down around Dallas and rollin’ fast tonight,” sings Del Reeves in “Lookin at the World Through a Windshield.”
But there are actually more songs about family and fidelity. In the anthem “Six Days on the Road,” Dudley confesses that he could have found women to hold him tight on the road, but he could never justify the unfaithfulness.
The sacrifice of trucking, which the coronavirus has brought to light, is articulated in the lyrics’ literature. In the plaintive “Roll Truck Roll,” Simpson muses about children growing up without their father: “Mama says little Danny’s not doing too good in school / said he keeps talkin’ about the Daddy he hardly knows.” The speaker hopes to save enough money to leave the road and be home with his kids.
Then there’s the sheer danger of driving—and the possibility of self-sacrifice. In Simpson’s “Nitro Express,” a trucker fighting failing brakes knows that “I had to ride her down / I couldn’t jump free / Or there’d be a big hole / where that little town used to be.”
And our heroes serve as crucial elements of the supply chain, facing perilous circumstances to deliver food. CW McCall’s “WolfCreek Pass,” for example, tells the story of a truck full of chickens barreling into the side of a feed store to avoid disaster. And the catchy “Roll On, Big O” jingle from advertisements for Lawson’s stores memorializes the rig that “brought the [orange] juice up from Florida in 40 hours.”
But the heroic character of truckers shines most brilliantly in the “recitation,” a long narrative poem set to music. The master of this form is Red Sovine. In “Teddy Bear,” he tells the story of a young paraplegic boy whose truck-driving father has been killed in a road accident. When the boy gets on a CB radio to express his wish to ride in a truck like his late daddy drove, truckers line up around the block to give him a spin. The speaker, having detoured from his route to give “Teddy Bear” a ride, is left with tears in his eyes as “Mama Teddy Bear” gets on the air to thank him.
The story of “Teddy Bear” epitomizes the best of what truck-driving country music has to offer: it’s sentimental, unironic, and uplifting. Narratives such as these are just what the country needs now.
Sovine’s tour de force, “Phantom 309,” offers another example. It tells the story of a cold, lonely hitchhiker who gets picked up by a trucker named “Big Joe” in his rig, “Phantom 309.” Big Joe provides the speaker with shelter, driving him along for “the better part of the night” in his warm cab before dropping him back off on the road. “I’m sorry son, this is as far as you go / ‘Cause I gotta make a turn just up the road,” Big Joe tells him, tossing him a dime for coffee.
When the hitchhiker stops at a truck stop to get coffee, however, explaining that the dime is from Big Joe, the room goes silent. The waiter, “with a halfway grin,” informs him that ten years ago, Big Joe took a sharp turn and gave his life to save a bus full of children that nearly collided with his rig. He’s been making ghostly reappearances ever since: “But every now and then, some hiker’ll come by / And like you, Big Joe’ll give ‘em a ride / Here, have another cup and forget about the dime / Keep it as a souvenir, from Big Joe and Phantom 309!”
Big Joe isn’t alone; the genre is replete with characters. There’s the gambler who falls victim to truck-stop temptations in “Pinball Machine.” And there’s the trucker who’s graduated beyond beer and amphetamines to fuel his rides: “If you give me weeds, whites and wine, I’ll be willin’ to be movin,’” Lowell George croons in “Willin,’” a country-rock contribution to the genre. The place names on his itinerary are evocative: “From Tucson to Tucumcarie, Tehachapi to Tonopah.”
As we look ahead to a post-Covid world, it’s difficult to discern the itinerary for the profession at large. Truckers have long been a crucial element of the economy, before “coronavirus” was even part of our national vocabulary. But this could be the end of the road. Experts speculate that driverless vehicles will soon bring the profession to its end. With a robot’s ability to drive all day, dodge accidents, and never stop for coffee, how’s a cowboy of the interstate to compete?
If technological innovation means it’s the last stand for truckers, the triumph is bittersweet. For many, trucking is not only a high-paying job but an intergenerational calling, as Simpson captures in “Born to Be a Trucker.” What’s next on the horizon for those who might have once become gear-jammers is as hazy as the future of our stricken economy, forging ahead through conditions of low-visibility.
Regardless of what lies ahead for trucking, though, the lyricism and honor of the profession will survive—at least in song.
This piece first appeared at the The American Conservative
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Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he directs the Tocqueville Project, and author of the new book, Who Killed Civil Society?
This piece originally appeared in The American Conservative