![]() To cater to a broader base than just the truck driver, Truckstops of America tries to provide a family atmosphere. ![]() Union truck drivers average about 150,000 miles a year, according to Jack Ormond, Teamsters representative organizer for Local 710 in the Chicago area, who added that the drivers earn 44 to 46 cents a mile. Parks says he gets paid on the percentage of his load, "which works out to about 30 cents a mile" for the 100,000 or so miles that he drives per year, he says. Parks acknowledges that while he will not enjoy the same retirement benefits as union drivers, he does save on monthly dues of $34. "Some guys are union-oriented, and some guys are not," says Bill Parks, 52, a Youngstown, Ohio, owner-operator who has stopped in for a burger on his way to a Wisconsin landscaper with hemlock trees from North Carolina. He says that only 12 perecent of his clientele are union drivers, working for companies such as Yellow and Roadway. Sybrandt is referring particularly to non-union owner-operators, or "independents," meaning they own the rig they drive and sometimes additional rigs they lease. They are the blue-collar working-class and the white-collar worker, too, because they are their own managers, and some are small-business owners," he says. Sybrandt, of Racine, Wis., points out that while most truck drivers once wore the cowboy hat, "today they wear a lot of hats. "We see them come in," Sybrandt says, "but they seem to be few and far between." Smith may have to wait until more women become truck drivers. "These jeans and flannels are too `guy-ish,' " she says while her hands impatiently flip through the clothing on the racks. Smith, who says her dad once owned a trucking business but went back to his factory job because "Mom got too mad at him for being away all the time," wishes the gift shop had more clothes styled for women. That statistic disappoints Crystal Smith, 17, of Kenosha, who has stopped in primarily for a job interview as a cashier. "But when the `urban cowboy' came in, the truck driver went away from that look." He says cowboy boots are still popular with truckers because "they are easily kicked off when they go to sleep." According to Sybrandt, 90 percent of the gift shop's merchandise is for the truck driver's needs. "Years ago drivers were noted for their cowboy boots and Western shirts and hats," says TA manager Bill Sybrandt. Long-lasting road atlases, said to be the trucker's bible, sell for $44.95 Drivers can outline their routes on the laminated pages in wax marker, then wipe them clean when they arrive.ĭominating the gift shop is a huge display of Durango brand cowboy boots. "But they're not dropping their CBs, because it's still a cheap way to communicate." "A lot of truck drivers are putting in cellular phones," Glasel says. Citizen's band radios are still a popular item. The gift shop, which rents books on tape, returnable at any Truckstops of America location, sells Nintendo Game Boys and various appliances-such as coolers, TVs and vacuum cleaners-that can be powered by plugging them into a cigarette lighter. They know it's a waste of time to write a $60 ticket on a `four-wheeler' when they can write a $500 ticket on a truck before it ever leaves the side of the highway." ("Four-wheeler" is trucker lingo for a regular car or its driver.) I don't care if you have a brand new rig, they'll find something wrong. "Once a state or county official sees your truck, he wants to stop you and get into your wallet. "People don't want to fill them because the money's not good enough for the harassment you go through to make a living," he says bitterly. ![]() "There are a lot of jobs in the trucking industry," says Dave Tucker, a driver from Steubenville, Ohio, who is familiar with the bulletin board. "Their view is if you buy American products, they're going to have a job." "Buy American" is the implied motto here because "many truck drivers haul American auto parts," says Glasel, a Kenosha, Wis., resident who was born in Lake Forest and raised in the Lake Villa area. Three huge color photo murals depicting rural America, with flags, trucks and children, hang above the gift shop like a sentimental political commercial. Truckstops of America's red, white and blue logo and interior white walls trimmed in red and blue fit the truck driver's patriotic image. TA is on 60 acres just south of the Wisconsin border and west of Interstate Highway 94 on Russell Road, a plus for 18-wheelers discouraged by trucking companies from pulling off in big cities where their valuable hauls and $125,000 rigs could face a greater threat of robbery. Super clean and super friendly, according to many of its road-weary clientele, the 20,000-square-foot facility is staffed by 80 people on three shifts and has been open 24 hours a day since November 1988, when it was built.
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