A boy who loves trucks is disappointed when he receives a cat named Lola instead of a toy fire truck, but Lola proves to be a "trucker" after all.

ANGEL I know what you're whispering in the car as you pass me by. Hitchhiker. When you see me walking along the side of the road with my thumb out, you'll probably keep driving without giving me a second glance. You probably think I'm foolish. Naïve. You might assume I've made some bad decisions. You might think I'm too young to be on my own. You might be right. TRAVIS I love my job, but driving an eighteen-wheeler comes with a certain stereotype. When you hear I'm a trucker, a specific image might come to mind. Uneducated. Dirty. Perverted. Rough around the edges and a little bit dangerous. But the truth is, I'm not any of those things. In fact, I'm pretty far from it. You'd be surprised to find out I'm one of the good guys.Trucker is a standalone novel. Due to language and sexual content, this book is intended for readers 18 and older.

“There’s nothing semi about Finn Murphy’s trucking tales of The Long Haul.”—Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair More than thirty years ago, Finn Murphy dropped out of college to become a long-haul trucker. Since then he’s covered more than a million miles as a mover, packing, loading, hauling people’s belongings all over America. In The Long Haul, Murphy recounts with wit, candor, and charm the America he has seen change over the decades and the poignant, funny, and often haunting stories of the people he encounters on the job.

Long-haul trucks have been described as sweatshops on wheels. The typical long-haul trucker works the equivalent of two full-time jobs, often for little more than minimum wage. But it wasn’t always this way. Trucking used to be one of the best working-class jobs in the United States. The Big Rig explains how this massive degradation in the quality of work has occurred, and how companies achieve a compliant and dedicated workforce despite it. Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews and years of extensive observation, including six months training and working as a long-haul trucker, Viscelli explains in detail how labor is recruited, trained, and used in the industry. He then shows how inexperienced workers are convinced to lease a truck and to work as independent contractors. He explains how deregulation and collective action by employers transformed trucking’s labor markets--once dominated by the largest and most powerful union in US history--into an important example of the costs of contemporary labor markets for workers and the general public.

Introduces the various parts of a tractor trailer and their functions as a truck driver prepares to take his "big rig" on the road.

Trucking Country is a social history of long-haul trucking that explores the contentious politics of free-market capitalism in post-World War II America. Shane Hamilton paints an eye-opening portrait of the rural highways of the American heartland, and in doing so explains why working-class populist voters are drawn to conservative politicians who seemingly don't represent their financial interests. Hamilton challenges the popular notion of "red state" conservatism as a devil's bargain between culturally conservative rural workers and economically conservative demagogues in the Republican Party. The roots of rural conservatism, Hamilton demonstrates, took hold long before the culture wars and free-market fanaticism of the 1990s. As Hamilton shows, truckers helped build an economic order that brought low-priced consumer goods to a greater number of Americans. They piloted the big rigs that linked America's factory farms and agribusiness food processors to suburban supermarkets across the country. Trucking Country is the gripping account of truckers whose support of post-New Deal free enterprise was so virulent that it sparked violent highway blockades in the 1970s. It's the story of "bandit" drivers who inspired country songwriters and Hollywood filmmakers to celebrate the "last American cowboy," and of ordinary blue-collar workers who helped make possible the deregulatory policies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and set the stage for Wal-Mart to become America's most powerful corporation in today's low-price, low-wage economy. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

This is a book about truck driver's lives, risks, and views on safety. As "a "group, truckers represent a significant population of road users whose high-exposure driving creates a major challenge for safety. Research into the larger social, political, and economic forces that affect trucker's safety problems has been scarce. "The Trucker's World "comes to terms with the socioeconomic environment that contributes to breakdown in trucker safety and chronicles the lives and times of truckers as they try to make ends meet. It analyzes driver risk by exploring the reasons, reactions, and consequences of risk. The author approaches his task with a research question: Why is the average trucker continuously placed in conditions that, according to truckers, demand risky driving? As a result of direct experience with truckers and trucking, Rothe observes that truck drivers act as they do to gain autonomy over their work, freedom from control of others, and assurance of a reasonable livelihood. In order to maintain a sufficient income in the transportation market, even the most serious drivers perform tasks that often impinge on lethality and safety, not as blatant radicals or daredevils fighting the system, but as persons responding to the fear that they may lose their livelihood in trucking. The thrust in trucker safety has followed a victimization philosophy in which emphasis on interventions has been aimed directly at truckers. Rothe contends that safety programs would work better if they emphasized what influences, motivates, or encourages truckers to take chances on the road. With this in mind, he analyzes driver risk, vehicle maintenance, owner-operator, company driver, policing, home life, drugs and alcohol, government regulations, and hours of service as they are seen by truckers, industry officials, and others. Expanding our vision to encompass essential factors in the socioeconomic reality of the truck-driving culture. Rothe elucidates the far-reaching consequences that safety issues have for truckers, other road users, policymakers, and traffic safety educators.