Whywhenhowhere… what is this book all about anyway?

TRUCK is, as simply as possible, a year in the life of an American Trucker—though it isn’t nearly that simple.

For starters, Eric West had not driven the stick shift of anything, let alone 40-ton rig. He had, in fact, never sat in a rig. In place of ability, he had curiosity. Instead of familiarity he had determination. The intention was to document everything he saw, every person he met from the perspective of someone who had no business being a “professional driver”, but in time, almost without realizing it, became one. Albeit a comically bad one – a fact made painfully obvious all too often.

Driving a truck and writing TRUCK proved more physically challenging and emotionally draining than he could have ever imagined. But it provided West a chance to astutely and personally, if somewhat irreverently and dangerously, document a massive subculture overpopulated with unique (see: dangerous, depressing, hysterical, drunk, psychotic, tweaked-out, geeked-up, fucked-over, myopic, loving, heartbroken, uplifting, proud, determined and disrespected) characters in situations that no one could have expected, nor even dreamed of without seeing it for themselves.

TRUCK is, as literally as possible, a chronological account of what it takes to become and continue as a professional driver despite brief bouts of hysteria peppered into near-constant monotony. Ultimately TRUCK shows how a trucker’s lifestyle can coalesce and eventually drive one person, West, to discover long repressed parts if his psyche. Parts that were probably better left repressed, but were wholly necessary to survive, literally and emotionally – not to mention entertain.

The memoir begins with West passively contemplating a promotion from an entry-level job he didn’t hate to a mid-level job he would have been just as excited about. With nothing holding him back, save for the expectations of everyone he had ever known, West enrolled in trucking school. He endured two weeks of classroom-based lessons and two weeks of practical, in truck training. Over that month he met a dozen people who were interesting enough to justify a book in and of themselves: from a teenage ex-con to a grizzled granny and everyone in between. He also, very quickly, realized driving a truck was infinitely more difficult than he could have imagined. After a month learning about trucks and trucking, the most interesting lesson learned was how shockingly easy it is to become a licensed, but far from effective, driver. West was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good nor knowledgeable driver which was made evident by nearly killing a couple instructors and still (eventually) passing his driving test.

After a raging house party, or ‘graduation party’, he proceeded to seek out an employer willing to take him. Shockingly, every company to which he applied offered him a job. After a week of company orientation that involved more literal and proverbial war stories than policy instruction, West began the first of two months training on the road. One month with a born-again 50-year-old who often acted as if he was indeed just born and another month with a short-fused absentee patriarch who lacked the will, or maybe a want, to strike absentee from his description. All the while West dealt with detachment from the world he knew and the girl he loved. He endured, instead, life with two people he’d never know otherwise - nor want to know, let alone live with, within an arm’s reach in fact.

Three long months after leaving the real world West was handed keys to a big rig. He was equal parts excited and dumbfounded because he’d been working toward that moment for many months, but he’d failed, gloriously, as often as not along the way. Excitement trumped bewilderment when he picked up and delivered his first few loads. He drove thousands of miles in just a few days and only caused one (minor) accident.

More and more comfortable, and much to his surprise – capable, West felt time pass by in streaks. Alternately lightning quick on the occasion he found something fun, interesting or absurd to do and then, often in the blink of an eye, slower than molasses while waiting for someone to load or unload his trailer - all amidst weather, and more importantly - people, that would quickly shift from icy cold and torrential to hotter than hell and desolate.

By the halfway point of this ‘year in a life’, West ended up in his home town, creekside, where he spent hours playing as a child then drinking stolen beers as a teenager. It was there, his favorite place, where he unwittingly developed a defense mechanism that can be non-scientifically defined as: “conscious and willing schizophrenia”. Gully was an asshole, an oddly likable asshole, but still not someone you’d want to know, let alone someone you’d let control you, as West occasionally did.

West and Gully - one and the same - go through day after day, week and month enduring or celebrating the world of a career trucker. Within hours of his emergence Gully gets kicked out of one shipping office, berates an old lady at a Taco Bell, gets drunk, high and minimally aroused by an extremely overweight girl at a honkytonk bar. Simultaneously, Eric befriends two brothers, gets drunk, high and massively aroused by an underage hotel clerk. They both get through a tornado-spawning thunderstorm, a broken down truck and so many drop-offs and pick-ups that they cease to merit any mention.

By that point the driving had become routine and monotonous. Gully handled the heavy lifting while West, from a loading dock overlooking his alma mater of all places, contemplated exactly how easy it is for people to stray from their dreams – and how naïve those dreams can be. He considered how many people, if any, dreamt of becoming a trucker and, if so, whether they’d follow that dream if they knew how dangerous and underappreciated it actually was.

Weeks went by with nary a mention. West unknowingly and incrementally became one among the army of drivers he marveled at months earlier. When he found himself again in Iowa, he reconnected with the normal life he had been trying to deny still existed. Gully called in sick so Eric could watch a couple minor-league baseball games, in classic throwback ballparks, along the banks of Mississippi. Shortly after the high from a few unexpected and undeserved days off (not to mention a high from amphetamines), he and Gully hit their low. They fled an accident that was wholly their fault and West contemplated, for the first time, what the fuck he was doing.

As was always the case, driving for a living provided enough quiet, undistracted and gut-wrenching alone time that denial took over and the two continued driving, cross country where Gully happened upon the most gluttonous meal of his short life and Eric happened upon the best, and the most-unobtainable, solution to the broken heart his ex-girlfriend gave him six months earlier.

West celebrated his birthday with a free piece of pie en route to another drop spot that could have been California, Arkansas of Florida, the whole world had become an endless strip of cement. Driving - dazed by monotony, lead to drinking – far too much drinking. A bar overrun with snow-bird retirees proved to be the greatest incarnation of this phenomenon. West or Gully, depending on the moment, sang karaoke atop a sea of elderly fans who clearly thought he was the bees knees AND the cats pajamas all in one.

Clearly, West hoped none of the horror stories he’d heard about driving would ever prove prophetic, but he also hoped trucking in general would provide him the opportunity to explore the country. Reality proved that the only part of the country he’d see was that which could be viewed from his tractor/trailer and, unfortunately, horror stories could happen to anyone, especially him, the accidental trucker. On a brutal afternoon in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, West looked death in the eye, blinked once then felt death all around him. He, or something else entirely, managed to keep his truck upright and on most of its 18 wheels.

Through a nearly debilitating haze of mind, West and Gully made ‘his’ way across the country to suburban Chicago where he confirmed, again, there can be incredible nobility in driving for a living. A young father, just twenty, replaced expectations for seeing the country with a beauty more simple (and normally available) than a traditional travel memoir could hope to reveal. Riddled with guilt, West vowed to spend whatever time he had left embracing the good and the happy amidst the people that he previously thought were exclusively miserable. Happy, good and optimistic people were everywhere. Finally, Gully, Eric and eventually the third member of his team, Memphis, would seek the outrageous, the hilarious and the absurd. Willingly, happily and fearlessly – they’d all three ensure that this cockamamie gig in a rig came to its natural end.

November saw West spend a couple days in costume, an afternoon posing as a gay homeless man, a few proverbial bouts with self imposed - and hilarious - insanity, one literal bout with a hooker and a heartwarming reunion with an old trucking school classmate all brought West to Thanksgiving at which point it was all too obvious the career needed to make its final drop site – and soon.

The threesome drove up and down California’s I-5 and finally ended December, the holiday season and the trucking career thanks to a chance encounter with the wisest of wise men… or so he assumed. Clarity was… not clear… at that point. Despite legitimate concerns about West’s mental state he was still cognizant enough to realize quitting was his best, maybe only option. After a fine “fuck-you” to his employers he kicked Gully and Memphis to the curb, drove a small car home confident he could speed by the trucks with nary a wonder about what their lives were like.

In the end, TRUCK does the same. West wouldn’t claim to know or understand every trucker, but through is humorous insight, occasionally heartbreaking revelations, terrifying experiences and truly mystifying encounters one can get a good feel for a fascinating lifestyle that is everywhere, and nowhere, at the same time.