Diesel Smoke on Danger Road

The rookie was driving. He was just a kid, about twenty. Bounced around a few odd jobs here and there, he told me once, then decided to become a long hauler on a whim. Not like me, I wanted to be a driver since I was a little boy, riding on the Pennsylvania State Turnpike with my mom when I was young, watching while she drove, and the trucks went flying by. I wanted to be up there with them, in thier four and five hundred horsepower road beasts eating up the asphalt heading off to all four corners of the countryside. I grew up, went to high school, eschewed college for a life on the road. Never put much stock in truck driving schools, myself. I always saw them as a money pit, and a CDL mill, so, unlike the rookie, I came up the old fashioned way. Started as a local driver delivering milk, of all things, in a small tanker, then moving up to over the road, where I've been for the past twenty years.

I was in the sleeper, catching some bunk time, and the rookie was driving. It was late, and there was no traffic, no bad weather, so I decided to let him have a turn at the wheel while I slept. I would later regret it, if I lived that long.