Cowboys and Truckers, Part 1

Oh, a man there lives on the Western plains,

With a ton of fight and an ounce of brains,

Who herds the cows as he robs the trains

And goes by the name of cowboy.

He laughs at death and scoffs at life;

He feels unwell unless in some strife.

He fights with a pistol, a rifle, or knife,

This reckless, rollicking cowboy.

He shoots out lights in a dancing hall;

He gets shot up in a drunken brawl.

Some coroner’s jury then ends it all,

And that’s the last of the cowboy.

“Oh, a Man There Lives” – popular 19^th century song

 “Oh, a Man There Lives” sums up what I’ve always believed about cowboys: they were rootin’, tootin’, shoot-‘em-up rough riders who lived life on the outskirts of society.  They were rebels and outlaws.  Even the “good guys” had a little bit of larceny in their soul and that edge was part of what made them fit for the role of cowboy.  I grew up watching Errol Flynn in Dodge City and John Wayne in True Grit; therefore, I thought I knew what the life of a cowboy entailed.

Not long ago, I was on 1-75 and got to thinking about truckers.  I can’t really say that I’ve thought about truckers a whole lot.  I know that I find them annoying when they get into the left lane and slow me down.  A few years ago, my brother and his wife basically got sucked underneath one while trying to pass it, so that was frightening.  Truckers who hang male genitalia from the back of their trucks or have naked girl silhouettes on their mud flaps gross me out.  To date, my only thoughts about truckers have been based on these experiences and impressions or on stereotypes.  That is, until I started thinking about the similarities between truckers and cowboys.

First, my thoughts went to the logistics of being both cowboy and trucker.  Both are hired by someone to get a product from Point A to Point B.  Both have a very specific (and easily identified) mode of transportation.  Both can’t go home until their job is completed satisfactorily.  Both might not be re-hired if they do a poor job at what they were being paid to do.

Then, I turned to thinking about the image of these two professions.  Truckers and cowboys have that “lone rider” persona about them.  I suppose that some truckers work in pairs or might drive in fleets, but just based on observations from the road, it appears that most truckers work alone.  It’s the same with cowboys.  I know that cowboys didn't work alone all the time, but even when they were working in groups, they were riding a horse by themselves, and this helps to cement the picture in my head of them as individuals.  Both trucking and cowboy-ing can be dirty and/or require physical labor, so the “blue collar” aspect of being either one is a reality.

All this being said, what struck me as I continued to find similarities between cowboys and truckers is the lack of noticeable mythology surrounding truckers.  I mean, cowboys are cowboys.  There have been more movies and songs written about cowboys than any other historical American figure.  Ask anyone to name you one cowboy movie (or one famous cowboy), and I’m sure they’d have at least three.  Little boys (and girls) across the nation dress up as cowboys (and cowgirls) each Halloween.  My grandmother has pictures on her fridge of my father and uncle dressed to the nines in cowboy gear, and my father tells stories of his childhood imaginings and exploits as a cowboy, his trusty couch-arm horse always at the ready.  Go to any country music concert and you’ll find grown men who still believe themselves to be cowboys.  And some of them really are!  The romance of the old West and the legend of the cowboy are alive and well in America.

But where is the legend of the trucker?  I can’t say that I’ve ever heard kids on a playground shouting, “Let’s play trucker!”  Nor can I remember a time when a friend (or even a friend-of-a-friend) went as a trucker for Halloween.  In recent years, the trucker hat has enjoyed some popularity in the fashion world, but those usually have some brand name on them that most truckers wouldn’t sport.  Hearing a child answer “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “I want to be a cowboy!” might bring a smile or laugh from an adult, but a child who declares, “When I grow up, I want to be a trucker!” would probably get a different response.  The History Channel’s show Ice Road Truckers was the closest to trucker mythology that I could think of.

This difference baffled me, and I wanted to learn more.  So, I went to the library and checked out a bunch of books:

Stewart Ross, Fact or Fiction: Cowboys

Robert Klausmeier, Cowboy

Martin W. Sandler, Cowboys

Charles W. Sundling, Cowboys of the Frontier

Lawrence J. Ouellet, Pedal to the Metal: The Work Lives of Truckers

The cowboy books were all children’s books and the trucker book was a piece of ethnography (a study of human culture in the natural settings in which people live) by a sociologist who worked in trucking and used his time there to write about truckers from a sociology standpoint.  It was found in the adult section.  (This fact was not lost on me.)  Reading them gave me interesting perspectives on the two jobs, no doubt.  What I’m excited to share is what I learned about the reality of being a cowboy, how cowboy mythology really got going, the national character of America, how work defines individuals, and how the American view of work (and its significance to our lives) has changed over time.

Oh, and I do have a theory as to why cowboys enjoy a larger-than-life image and truckers do not.

Stay tuned!