Word: trucks
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Goodrum is hunched over the wheel of a Freightliner, straining with all her 106-lb. might to maneuver 61 ft. of tractor-trailer into a parking space that doesn't look large enough for two Corvettes. Like most novice truck drivers, she is confronted by too many tasks demanding simultaneous attention: eyeballing six side-view mirrors, working a gargantuan steering wheel and a muscle-wearying clutch pedal, and monitoring an instrument panel befitting a 727. Goodrum eases the rig back until . . . kerplunk, she mashes into a barricade of tires...
Nothing is very easy here at the American Truck Driving School of Texas, a boot camp for long-haul drivers. The school's aim is to take a driver who may never have driven a car with a stick shift and, in three weeks of nonstop instruction, turn the greenhorn into a licensed, road-ready trucker. That means endless hours of double-clutching around a 3.2-mile course of rutted concrete while dodging orange traffic cones and 50 other student truckers...
...Chicago run loses its luster after the 100th trip. Romance is worn down by long days and lousy food. The course books don't talk about maneuvering Manhattan in a snowstorm. "They'll % soon find out," smiles a young instructor. "Drove ten years, truckin' got both my wives." Truck-company reps, roaming the halls to recruit talent, mince no words about the tough life. "Glory goes out the window when you're pounding 5,000 miles a week," says an old-timer. "Trucking used to be an honorable profession too. Now a lady can't even...
...Bear out there on the highway," says a recruiter. The real road is tougher than the school, but at this point, who wants to tamper with romantic illusions? "At the jail, all I learned was about the bad people," recalls Hernandez. "In the truck, you get the chance to learn something about yourself...
Many attacks go far beyond a beating. In New York City's West Village last summer, a young tough wielding a golf club from a speeding car knocked a gay man unconscious, leaving him permanently brain damaged. In Fort Lauderdale, a pickup truck swerved onto the sidewalk outside a popular gay bar, killing a 33-year-old man. Randy Schell, a client advocate at Community United Against Violence, a San Francisco social-service agency, reports cases of men being beaten with logging chains and sliced with razors. "Anything you could imagine being used to desecrate another human being has been...