(NewsNation) — Trucking can be a dangerous, yet rewarding job for the 3.5 million drivers who transport vital goods across the country every day. It means long hours, and time away from family as they drive a whopping 125,000 miles a year
To highlight what truckers go through, NewsNation decided to have a “Truck Week,” where drivers and their families could tell their stories.
NewsNation viewers weighed in with their own thoughts about the industry, and coverage of it.
For some, it is a lucrative field.
Iesha Jeter, a truck driver and NewsNation viewer, was working at a car wash making $7 an hour before she started driving a truck. Now, she owns a house and is seeing the world.
“I always wanted to drive a truck,” Jeter said. “But I always had backlash … A lot of people are like ‘It’s not for women. You won’t be able to do it. You’re too short. You’re too small.'”
But Jeter “took a leap of faith” and went to college to start the career she’s had for six years now.
Pat Sullivan, a NewsNation viewer whose late husband was a truck driver, wants to see healthier food for those on the road. “There are really very few truck stops now with actual restaurants,” she said. Now, Sullivan said, it’s mostly fast food places.
“There is absolutely nothing healthy about all that fried food and all the french fries and all the sodium,” she said.
Some people, such as a viewer from Virginia, offered more critical feedback of Truck Week, saying NewsNation should have done more reporting on unions, or gone deeper into the industry’s present corporate structure.
Others, like husband and wife Chris and Ruth Smith, were anxious to show off their truck on TV. The Smiths’ vehicle has a full kitchen, that helps them as they travel from coast to coast transporting airplane engines.
“After we got married, we moved out to the U.S. and I went to truck driving school,” Ruth Smith said. “He became my trainer, and we’ve been driving ever since.”
Rick Montgomery is a proud dad of a truck driver who reached out to NewsNation because he wanted to give his 28-year-old son a salute. Montgomery’s son is on the road five days a week.
“He’s very good at it,” Montgomery said. “It should make it any parent proud if their child decides to take up something so important and so difficult.”