On-highway reads: Revisiting ‘In the Driver’s Seat’

It’s been quite a while since I wrote about Marc Mayfield’s stellar memoir of the trucking life, In the Driver’s Seat. Published in 2011, it still holds that special little place in my highway heart as the No. 1 book I’ve read that has anything to do with trucking in my time (though former household-goods-hauling owner-operator Fred Afflerbach’s 2012 work of fiction was also quite good). Appropriately, it’s written by a former owner-operator, covering the decade Mayfield ran leased to a large carrier, called Linehaul in the book, and truly caught the trucking bug. That’s not to say that the events chronicled over those years are all happy-go-lucky, of course. The book’s a masterpiece of true-life drama, literary in a great way. If you haven’t yet given it the time, you can pick it up for just $2.99 on Kindle and $13 in print from Amazon. Well worth it.

Marc Mayfield

The reason I bring him back up is that Allen and Donna Smith will be hosting Mayfield for a talk tomorrow, Thursday, March 7, at 7 p.m. EST on their Truth About Trucking Live online radio show. About time, don’t you think? As Allen noted to me last month when he finally found the time to schedule Mayfield for TAT Live, “better late than never.”

The book is dependent on timing in any way, anyway — its themes, and Mayfield’s writing, are timeless in the best way. Tune in at 7 p.m. EST tomorrow and hang out with Mayfield and fellow drivers to hear the lite version of the former owner-operator’s story. Follow this link for the live show and on-demand rebroadcast following.

Read an excerpt from In the Driver’s Seat here.