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.
