Coming of age in the 1970s, you could spot the truck-crazy kid -- dual CB antennas on an old pickup truck was the prime giveaway. I guess I was one of those kids, to an extent, except the lone CB antenna in my case was mounted to my parents’ Ford Country Squire LTD station wagon. Right at apex of '70s trucker culture, me, my parents and siblings barreled down I-80 talking to the truckers and heading for California. I got to do most of the driving that trip. Soon enough, I was 19, sporting a Peterbilt cap and a chain wallet, pushing a Mack straight truck down the road.
Trucking is a progressive disease. Now, well into my 60s, I wondered if there were still any kids like that left.
Then last year, I met Jordan Foreman, who offered up a snapshot of his life at the time.
Jordan Foreman
Occupation: High school senior (since graduated), grain hauler
Past jobs: Hay bailer, farm hand, retail worker
Who said 18-year-olds can't drive? Jordan Foreman can.
“I started riding with my grandpa three or four years ago," Foreman said. "When he had his knee surgery, I would help pull the truck up when we were loading at the farms. I’d drive around the grain bins and pull under to load. That's where I learned to drive. People at school say, ‘All you have to do is hold a steering wheel.'”
As Foreman duly notes, there's a lot more to it than just that, and growing up in it has helped his precocious entry in trucking immensely. "Grandpa drove before Mom was born, and Dad has pulled a tanker, a wrecker and hauls heavy machinery now.”
When we talked, he was fresh off a load of corn he'd pulled locally, quite literally after school let out for the day. "All I could think was, ‘This is so refreshing,’“ he said. “Last year at this time I was working the counter [at a large auto parts chain], hating every minute of it."
He got work for a brief time early that year "pulling a walking floor" trailer, "hauling the shucklings in and the shucks and whatnot back to the farm for silage," he said. It didn't last long. He bailed "hay for a guy, and when that ran out, I was sitting at McDonald's in Tipton when Mitch Sloan from Hilltop Farms, who my grandpa knew, called and asked, ‘Would you be comfortable pulling a grain wagon'" with farm plates?
No sweat, he said. "Sure."
When I asked Jordan Foreman what he'd say to other 18-year-olds aspiring to drive, he was succinct. “Don't get in a hurry and learn from the old-school guys. You've got to love it or don't do it. When I get done with high school, I’m getting my CDL, I’m going to C-1 [driving school]. Grandpa says that's probably the best one out there."
Pictured, left to right: Jeremy Foreman (Jordan's dad); Mikey "Pappaw" Moon (grandfather), and Jordan
We've heard the stories about the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Safe Driver Apprenticeship Pilot Program, and the hoops both carriers and drivers have to jump through to participate in it, and the inherent difficulties therein, the generally positive experience of young trucker Will Dodson notwithstanding. The program allows CDL holders under 21 to work interstate as long as they're willing to drive a 65 mph-governed truck with a collision prevention system, an automated manual transmission and a road camera (FMCSA earlier this year removed the driver-facing-cam requirement).
When I asked Foreman about that program, the then-18-year-old chortled. And, let’s be honest, nobody really chortles with quite the same panache as an 18-year-old.
“If it don’t have a stick, I ain’t drivin’ it,” Foreman decreed. "I’ll probably haul livestock and grain in-state until I turn 21. That’s what my cousin Kevin did. Maybe I’ll buy a truck or maybe I’ll just work for someone.”
Jordan Foreman, running Chicago back in the day
These days Foreman, recently graduated, is working in a tire shop, biding his time until truck driving school.
Seeing the now 19-year-old and the sense of unalloyed pride that leaning against that old International gives him, it really takes me back to my own early trucking days. There was nary a force in heaven or earth that could talk me out of making this my life's work, though I've tried a couple times to get out of it since.
So in the interest of full disclosure, I have to cop to being a bit jealous of Foreman's grandpa, Mikey “Pappaw” Moon. As an owner-operator, he was able to pass down three generations of institutional knowledge to his grandson. It's something I've always wanted to do for my own grandson, who has loved trucks all his life. But sadly, my owner-operator days are over.
Long Haul Paul is a 4 million mile trucker, freelance writer and singer-songwriter. He can be reached via email.
[Related: One of just 16 unsupervised under-21s in FMCSA interstate pilot program: Meet Will Dodson]
