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Transcript: Michelle Kitchin, long-haul truck driver
I have never been in an accident. I’ve had my equipment hit [at] truck stops and at shippers and receivers, never so bad that it’s been towed, but I’ve had equipment damaged, but not on the highway. I’ve had near misses. I’ve had wrong-way drivers on the interstate, all kinds of stuff, yeah.
I don’t know about fearless, but I think that you have to be aware of your surroundings. You really have to know where you’re parking, you know, you can’t just jump out and advertise that you’re the only female in the parking lot. And sometimes you can tell [from] the atmosphere when you pull in or maybe [from] the chatter on the CB, that maybe you shouldn’t tell anybody you’re a female — you know, put a baseball hat on and get out if it’s dark.
The men that drive do watch for the women. I mean you do have... there’s always a bad apple. You don’t know if there’s a driver out here that might have skirted around reporting that he had a felony or something. I mean, that can happen in the mall, too.
You miss a lot of birthdays. You miss weddings. You miss graduations. Even though you think you’re going to be there, so you get all excited, it’s a disappointment to you and it’s a disappointment to your family, or whoever, because you had it, you were so close and you missed it, and you just don’t get that time back.
I would like to see things on the highway be a lot safer, just for everybody, not just for trucks. But I think that we kind of lost our courtesy out here, as the motoring public. Just be more courteous and just be nicer to each other.