My beat will cover what it takes to be a professional truck driver as well as discussing the challenges they have to overcome while being over the road. My reports will be about how driving affects their family life as well as their mental and physical health and overall well being. I will also discuss in what ways being a driver and being the backbone of the American supply chain makes them feel. I will touch on how they have changed their driving and work habits in a Covid-19 world. My goal is to educate a newer and younger audience of the often underappreciated profession of truck driving and its importance to our national economy.

Majority of my information will be direct interviews with truck drivers as well as other driver managers like myself that work in the industry. I will put majority of the focus on those drivers that drive directly for me in my workplace. Some of them I have known for years, while there are still plenty of new ones that I have yet to meet face to face. Due to the pandemic majority of my interviews will be conducted over the telephone and most likely while the driver is over the road. During my years in the transportation industry one thing I have learned is that no two work days are ever the same. No matter how long you have been “in the game” you will always hear, see or come across a situation that you have never seen before. With this being said some of what I write about in future posts may be about a situation or situations that have not even happened yet, and thus no way to preplan an article about it. Wednesdays seem to be a great time for me to post updates and new information to the class website starting with the first beat article being posted on September 9, 2020.