Morgan had major injuries. Truck drivers are some of the most underpaid and loan-burdened workers in America. The trucking companies frequently sell them expensive trucks that they work non-stop to pay off for nearly nothing. These trucks can be taken away with the job, causing the money invested into them to be lost. The pressure to make payments means truck drivers have to break limits set on the number of hours they can drive per day by these companies, which have much stronger rules for delivering on time even across impossible distances. We all like cheap deliveries, but not at the expense of anybody’s lives.
In my case, my budget for travel to view land is very limited, and the motel stays are usually nightmarish, so extending my weekend trip into four days to limit my driving to eight hours daily was out of the question. Truck drivers have the benefit of being able to sleep inside of their truck and avoiding exposure to toxic fumes and the like at motels.
I hope to stop taking so many long-distance trips by buying a house and settling down for at least the next decade. I may finally be approaching an age when these migrations are no longer fun (not that these last few outings weren’t fun).
Meanwhile, I am spewing out a lot of carbon emissions on these excursions. Of course, it would be impossible to drive this quantity of miles in two days in an electric car, as the fastest electric charging stations, like Tesla’s Supercharger, can only recharge 170 miles worth in 30 minutes, in contrast with the minute it takes to fill a tank of gas. It would have added around 4 hours to this trip, and maybe that bit would’ve tipped me into total exhaustion. I hope a day comes when 1-minute electric charging stations are everywhere and an electric car costs less than a gas consumer. While I’ve promised myself to stick with my current little car until the day it dies, I’d break this promise if this auto miracle ever materializes.
Long distance driving is only fit for workaholics who can stay focused for days (or usually do anyway in their daily routine). America shrinks the farther you drive in a single day. The first explorers spent years making it through Texas, and now even this great expanse of land can fly by in one restless stretch on the highway.
Anna Faktorovich, Ph.D., is the Founder, Director, Designer and Editor-in-Chief of the Anaphora Literary Press, which has published over 200 titles in non-fiction, fiction and poetry.