Article Helps Save Marriage
By writing the article on truckers’ wives (cover story “Keeping the Home Fires Burning,” February 2005), you have given all of us truckers’ wives the voice we’ve been needing for so long. I can’t thank you enough. You stated loud and clear how difficult it is on the women of trucking but also how important our role is.

I love my trucker with every piece of me, but I was on the brink of walking away from him. We’ve had so many problems in the past eight months, but since he read your article it gave him the insight needed to understand my situation and feelings, too. The lines of communication between us were all but broken until he brought that article home for me to read. We have talked more in the past four days than we talked in the past couple months. It’s such a breakthrough, and now we’ve been talking and working on other parts of our marriage that were failing as well. I feel that not only is our friendship renewed, but our marriage is as strong as it ever was.

I totally understand that neither job (trucker nor the wife) is ever easy, but it’s all worth it in the end. It takes a special kind of person and a special kind of love to make it through those times.
Laci Mulder
Mt. Elgin, Ontario, Canada

Wake Up
For years airline pilots, locomotive engineers and ship captains, all with competent representation, have enjoyed wages in excess of $100,000 per year, full medical benefits and a pension plan with which they could retire with dignity. When was the last time you heard the word “dignity” associated with the trucking industry? Do truck drivers enjoy all the conditions listed above?

If drivers don’t, we should, since truck drivers are the most important part of surface transportation! Everything that moves to and from planes, trains and ships gets loaded onto a truck. Without trucks and truck drivers, neither grocery stores, department stores, hospitals, steel mills nor any other business will receive any goods.

It is time for truck drivers, motor carriers and owner-operators to wake up! All drivers need to start thinking like business people and demand changes. Sign-on bonuses or prizes are not what we need. It is the long-term fix that’s called for now! It is higher freight rates, pay rates that keep up with inflation, fuel prices that make profit part of the business again and working hours that are not a detriment to our safety and health.