When I learned the topic of this month’s ITE Journal was freight, I realized something. Even though heavy trucks make up nearly a third of the traffic on some of the freeways in the Mountain District where I live, I know almost nothing about freight trucks!
As a transportation engineer, my experience with freight trucks has generally involved 1) making sure they can drive around the curb returns and roundabouts in my designs, 2) ensuring my pavement design can support their weight, and 3) taking their size and slow acceleration into account in capacity calculations. Big trucks have definitely been an afterthought in my work.
I needed to do some research, and here’s some of what I learned. Did you know that the term used for freight trucks varies depending on where you live? Southerners tend to call them 18-wheelers, while those in the Northeast usually call them tractor-trailers, and we out West call them semi-trucks.
By the way, semi-trucks are named as such because the trailer is only a partial (semi) trailer that doesn’t become whole until it’s attached to the tractor. These vehicles first hit the roads in the 1910s, and refrigerated trucks, which allow me to enjoy fresh fruit in Colorado in the dead of winter, came along in the 1930s.
Also, I learned that the reason you make a pull-down motion with your hand to signal a trucker to honk their horn (instead of motioning to hit the steering wheel) is because the air horn is actuated with an overhead string. Who knew?
I also learned that even though they have usually been a secondary consideration in my work, freight trucks are anything but dispensable in our society. According to one website, after just one day with no freight truck activity, nationwide food shortages would begin. Within about three days gas stations would run out of fuel and hospitals would begin to run out of oxygen and other supplies. Within a week the clean water supply would run dry (Why? I wondered—because water treatment plants rely on chemicals delivered by trucks). Keeping freight trucks moving is critical to our way of life.
And consider the task of driving a freight truck. I used to have a pop-up camper that I could barely backup into my garage. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to drive a trucking simulator at the University of Wyoming, and I jackknifed on a snowy freeway in under a minute. Driving a freight truck cannot be easy work.
If you’re older than 50, you probably remember the short-lived “Truck Driver Pop” phase in the 1970s that gave us the catchy song “Convoy” and the masterpiece film Smokey and the Bandit. Not since have truckers enjoyed the status and glamour of that decade. But shouldn’t they, given the importance and difficulty of their work?
We talk a lot about needing to consider all users in our projects, and we need to remember this includes freight trucks (it also includes motorcycles, but that’s a topic for another column). I’m going to do my best to remember the importance of freight trucks when I’m designing my next project. You may even catch me pulling down an imaginary air horn string at my desk in solidarity.