Commonwealth Chronicle

Tammy Pendleton might not have 19 years of trucking under her belt, but she’s still gone far. She can remember exactly what she was wearing when she was last in California. It was January and she was standing in a strawberry patch, in shorts and taking in the incredible sight of the snowy mountain tops on the horizon.

Tammy Pendleton keeps a photo of her son and her fiancé on the dashboard of her big rig. (BECKY BRATU/The Rockbridge Report)

It has been almost two years since Pendleton traded her housewife apron for an air-ride-equipped 18-wheeler that she’s since driven through at least 40 states.

“If you don’t mind being alone, it’s good,” Pendleton said. “I come across around the corner up in New York and saw Lake Eerie and the blue sky, and the blue lake, and then snow out on the ice. It was just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

But life on the road is tough for truck drivers, and even more so for a woman driver. Pendleton says she feels she needs to watch her back more because she’s a woman. Her sparkling eyes have gotten her into tight situations a few times already, once while she was delivering a load to a customer.

“This guy says to me, he says, ‘You have the prettiest blue eyes.’ And I said ‘Thank you,’ and he said, ‘You know, those would look really good in a jar on a shelf somewhere.’

“I’m not joking,” she said, shaking her head.

Pendleton thinks women truckers face resentment from their condescending male counterparts, but she said that the situation has gotten better as more women have entered the industry.

Pendleton’s trucker boyfriend taught her how to drive a truck and helped her get a license. She’s grateful for the lessons because she doesn’t think getting a commercial driver’s license was as hard as it should be. Pendleton said she went to trucking school for three weeks and got only an hour of driving time.

“They’re just pushing people through,” she said.

Other professional truckers agree that obtaining a truck license is not difficult.

“It’s a six-week process,” said Chism. “But I mean you can find anybody that, you know, owns a truck that is willing to spend a couple weeks with you to show you how to shift the gears, blah, blah, blah, and, you know. You can take it from there.”

Male or female, truckers say the lessons and special license required of truckers don’t prepare them for the reality of life on the road.

Pendleton has learned through trial and error where it’s safe to stop and where she’s likely to encounter “spooky characters.” She starts her day before sunrise and tries to be in her truck and ready for bed before dark because she doesn’t want any trouble. She learned not to open her truck door at night after being solicited by a surprised female prostitute who quickly halved her price.

Other truckers have learned to tune out those nighttime knocks. But it’s impossible to ignore other concerns, such as the tougher competition in the industry, especially since the economy tanked.

In 2001 The Industrial and Labor Relations Review found the average trucker worked 62 hours a week with only nine days vacation a year. Those hours equal one and a half full-time jobs, according to the review, an academic journal published by Cornell University.

That means less time at home with family. Dissatisfaction with the amount of time truckers are able to spend with their families is a leading cause for high turnover rates in the trucking industry, a Transportation Research Board study found in 1998. The research board is a private, nonprofit institution, operating under the National Research Council.

Steely’s desire to be permanently homeward-bound is further enhanced by his longing to be with 13-year-old son. A rising star as the quarterback for his local middle school, Steely’s son uses Facebook and email to brief Steely on game recaps, schoolwork, and the life of a Nashville teenager.

The old days of the CB radio, celebrated in countless trucker songs, are gone. A Verizon wireless card plugged into his laptop computer connects Steely to his son. Other on-the-road comforts include a satellite radio, which he uses to listen to FOX News and NASCAR races.

Steely’s truck is also equipped with a fax machine and a printer that help him keep track of his orders and organize his business. The cab has all the amenities of a small apartment, including a refrigerator, a small TV set and a microwave oven. Pendleton uses the microwave oven in her truck cab to make her favorite on-the-road snack: Easy Mac.

Steely even brings his son with him for week-long trips when he is on his school breaks. That means Steely has to rearrange his cab so that his son can sleep on the twin bed’s top bunk, an area he usually uses for storage.

“I gotta dismantle everything up there,” he said, laughing.

But Steely isn’t complaining. He says he jumps at the chance to spend time with his son. And that does not happen as much as he’d like. (to be continued)