What makes a trucker a hero?

Updated Jul 22, 2013
truck on highway

In response to Progressive Insurance’s Real Life Trucking Hero contest that began earlier this month, Overdrive sister site CCJ’s Senior Editor Kevin Jones breaks down what he thinks makes a hero and, more specifically, a trucking hero.

Getting up each day and going to work to take care of a family is a big step in that direction, Jones writes, but he lists five points that to him make a trucker-hero:

1. Love your work: Your heart has to be in the work, Jones says, or otherwise the job will demand too much of your body and your spirit.

2. Be safe: For the sake of yourself and other on the road, truckers must be the ones ensuring safety on U.S. roads.

3: Be professional: Other than piloting the country’s cargo, drivers must also take care of themselves, their customers, their co-workers and their equipment.

4: Teach and be patient: Jones says passing the weight of experience on to the next generation of drivers is important, and truckers must ensure new drivers respect the job.

5: Be your own man/woman: Don’t let the bottom-feeders drag you down, Jones writes. If you’re doing things right, you’re in a heroic place.

Though you may not have been called upon the road to rescue someone in danger or after an accident on the road, doing a job well done is important, too, and something heroic in itself, Jones concludes.

Click here to read his article.

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