Amanda Myers with her two dogs and her truck. (Image Courtesy of Amanda Myers)Trucker Amanda Myers is an avid movie fan. With over 5,000 movies in her personal collection, she’s got plenty of options to keep her entertained when she’s over the road.
Myers, of Tallahassee, Florida, started collecting movies because, she says, she’s really not a social person.
“I don’t like sitting at the counters at the truck stops and socializing too much,” Myers said. “I buy movies because I hibernate in my truck and it gives me something to do and you can’t always find a television station.”
She keeps about 75 movies in the truck at all times and usually buys two or three movies a week.
“I end up unloading two or three hundred every time I go home, and I go home like every other month,” Myers said.
When Myers isn’t home or watching movies, she’s hauling power only for R&R Carriers, Inc., as an owner-operator under her own authority. Myers’ father was an owner-operator and as a child she was the designated truck washer, and she hated it. She couldn’t see herself growing up to be a truck driver.
“I hated the truck. I hated the dirtiness of it,” Myers said. “I was like, I’m not going to grow up to drive a truck and he said, ‘Well, you need to learn how to change brakes.’ I said, ‘But I’m not going to grow up to drive a truck,’ but that’s how it started.”
She was in school studying criminal justice and human resources when she was looking for a change. Her father brought up trucking to her again, and she decided to take his advice. She started driving in 1999 and eventually got her own authority and launched her company, Two Pups in a Truck. The company’s name is a reference to her two ride along dogs, a beagle/lab mix named Nike and a coyote/shepherd mix named Zeus.
Meyers says the trucking industry has some drawbacks. She feels like she missed out on some opportunities by always being gone, but she decided to get her own truck to give her more control. She currently drives a 2001 Peterbilt 379 extended hood with an ARI 126-inch custom sleeper. Her sleeper has a full bed, dinette table, shower, toilet, refrigerator, convection oven, single burner cooktop and kitchen sink. It has a Caterpillar C15 6NZ with an 18-speed Eaton-Fuller.
Myers knows trucking isn’t for everyone. She says she’d recommend trucking to other women, but she’d recommend they follow the same advice her father gave her: If you want to drive a truck, go sit in your car after a full work day and just sit there. Look through the windshield, look at the mirrors and turn on the radio. If you can do that for about eight hours without falling asleep, Myers says, you may be able to drive a truck.
“The reason he said that is because a lot of people don’t realize it’s not just about getting behind the wheel and driving down the road,” Myers said. “There are so many things involved, that’s the least of it.”
Myers’ five favorite movies are:
1. Avatar
2. Titanic
3. 10,000 B.C.
4. Passion of the Christ
5. Star Wars (all films)
