A Thousand Miles from Nowhere: Trucking Two Continents

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 28, 1995 | by Rex Roberts

As far as road trips go, A Thousand Miles From Nowhere: Trucking Two Continents (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 285 pp) has its moments -- at least for those patient enough to endure 72-hour traffic jams. "I'd been thinking that it would be good, an interesting experience, to have to spend two, three days in a border queue," muses author Graham Coster as he sits in the cab of a Seddon-Atkinson Strato, its 400-horsepower Cummins engine having pulled a load of frozen food, ice cream, wine and beer from Dover, England, to Moscow. In reality, hanging around customs waiting for clearance is tedious, as is much of the trucker's life.

Coster doesn't drive trucks -- he rides shotgun on several runs across Europe and North America, one reason his narrative often lapses into redeyed reportage. Nevertheless, he manages to convey a sense of life in the convoy. Mostly, it's a race against time.

"It's not like it was," laments one old pro, a British driver who hauled to the Middle East. "In the old days you'd get into Dover after three months away and say, 'Hi, I'm back.' Now they want you to ring in every day even if you're only going to Spain." With satellites pinpointing the locations of trucks and portable faxes keeping depot and driver in constant communication, companies can reroute rigs at a moment's notice, taking advantage of every hour a truck is on the highway. "This was driving away from enjoying yourself, driving away from taking stock, from ever catching your breath," writes Coster. "It was like always overshooting the runway of your life."

In Europe, at least, drivers have the diversion of narrow roads in ancient cities, myriad cultures and currencies and the occasional civil war to keep them engage. The Russian winter air freezes door locks and fuel lines, rickety ZILs with no headlights lurch suddenly from the brim and hijackers are just another road hazard. At the endless border queues, barren fields offer little privacy when nature calls. "Never mind the lack of washbasins and hot water and soap to maintain hygiene afterwards," sighs Coster. "This is the real definition ... of the trucker's lot: the spread-axle by the roadside in front of a captive audience."

Coster, a Brit and former editor of the literary review Granta, is equally appalled by American fastidiousness -- the Mormon Church-owned Flying J truck-stop chain is "colonizing the territory of the truckers' traditional choke-and-pukes with their sanitized, corporate homogeneity." Then there's the problem of aesthetics. Riding in a Kenworth hauling chassis frames to Spokane, Coster crosses the Snoqualmie Pass in Washington to find that the interstate "had ruined the valley.... Snoqualmie had become solely a conduit for traffic like us -- and the traffic had more important things to do than admire what remained of a phenomenal natural monument."

Having gathered enough material for an amusing and informative article, Coster must embellish the long rides with such commentary to fill out the book. More annoyingly, he is compelled to discuss the music he (not necessarily the drivers) believes is all part of being on the road. "Is there anything more delicate than the one-handed extraction of The Very Best of Little Feat from its case without the sleeve insert falling out, twirling it over with drum majorette's fingers to position it for Side Two, 'Texas Twister', and ejection of Joe Ely's Lord of the Highway to allow its insertion?" he exudes, apparently suffering road fatigue. "It is driving's equivalent of boogie-woogie piano."

Long-distance truckers certainly have stories to tell and unsung skills to celebrate, but readers of A Thousand Miles From Nowhere may find themselves looking for the shortcut back to town.