Wes Harman, leased operator
Age: 56
Past Jobs: College professor, director of marketing, country DJ, heavy equipment operator, sandwich maker, carpenter’s apprentice, paving crew laborer, NASCAR guest service coordinator, office supply clerk, radio station account exec.
“The food I haul nourishes literally millions of my countrymen each year.”
--Wes Harman
I never cease to be surprised when I meet my fellow truck drivers out here.
Case in point, Wes Harman.
When I first spoke to him, I could have just as easily believed the former English professor turned reefer hauler to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 trucking concern as a leased operator for Prime. But one of the most interesting aspects of this gearjammer is not only that’s he out there crushing it, just weeks away from having his truck paid off, but that he is doing it all without a home base.
Wes Harman
Harman is conscious of the preconceptions that guide the wider world outside the business, yet doesn’t dwell long on them.
“People who don’t know a trucker might think we’re dirty asocial degenerates, but that’s because they have only their preconceptions to guide them,” as he put it. “In reality my work and that of my brothers and sisters out here is the lifeblood of our country, our economy, our entire way of life. I can’t be bothered over what some insurance salesman or middle manager thinks about me based on his notions of what my job entails. Like a lot of truckers, I’m extremely proud of my labor and would stack its social value up against any of the better-paid gigs my college friends have landed.
“The whole time I’ve been trucking, even before that, really, I was living a bit of a nomadic life, driving around in my 4x4 experiencing nature, investigating Native American rock art and cliff dwellings.”
He confesses to living a “bit of the [Jack] Kerouac thing, minus the drugs,” a reference to the Beat-era novelist. “It was noticing that pretty much every semi I passed had a WE ARE HIRING sticker on it. That got me thinking about getting my CDL.”
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Harman had spent time living “in what others would consider cramped, spartan conditions before,” he said. “By comparison, life in a tractor is pretty luxurious. I spent a year and a half living in a 178-square-foot cabin with no power or water in the rain forest outside Olympia, Washington. In my Freightliner I’ve got power, at least, not to mention a comfortable and secure place to rest and fritter away the odd idle hour.”
He offers up a little math: “I’m saving about $1,600 a month by not having a home, or $19,200 a year.”
Living on the road as a basic rebooting strategy or lifestyle decision has been around since long before Jack Kerouac’s day, for certain. Southern Pride’s Mike Beatey, a longtime owner-operator, recalls his days of doing without a stationary domicile. He spent seven years “either living in the truck or in a travel trailer parked behind my shop,” Beatey said. “I was going through a divorce and trying to hold my business together. This time also coincided with the Great Recession, so keeping expenses low mattered. When my daughter came to visit me, we’d get a nice hotel in town and enjoy room service and the pool. I was able to save a lot of money that way. Today I have homes in Virginia, Colorado, and Belize, but still spend 5-7 months per year in the truck as we work towards our full retirement. At some point we may consolidate these into one property. Until then, we’ll continue cutting household expenses by living in the truck when we’re working.”
For Wes Harman, the decision to live in the truck was as much a flight from the confines of white-collar convention as Beatey's was a calculated act of blue collar survival.
Wes Harman and his 2024 Freightliner Cascadia, "The Bee"Dean Hinnant
“I love this work so much I don’t anticipate ever changing,” he said. “I don’t want to go back to academia. It’s depressing that the students are so lazy. Now that there’s AI, kids are going to use AI to write their papers for them. I don’t want to have to struggle against an institutional and generational tendency toward honor code violations. White-collar work is likewise depressing. It doesn’t really matter how good you are. If you work hard you are just going to be punished with more work and not given a raise in most cases. Here, I get to work as hard as I want, which is pretty hard. Generally speaking, I like to run, so nobody’s ever gonna call me lazy after I’m doing 12 to 14 hours a day, every day, for eight weeks at a time.”
At once, there are things he misses about life “onshore,” he said, “primarily access to a gym that has steam and sauna…. I wish I could be as clean as you can get when you do hydrotherapy every day. I love that feeling when your skin isn’t greasy. Your hair is clean, your beard is soft. I lament that I don’t get to do that out here.”
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Harman calls his truck, the yellow 2024 Freightliner Cascadia pictured above, “The Bee.” The Cascadia, furthermore, he said, is the “Ford Taurus of trucks. You can get parts for it anywhere. I'm very easy to spot. I bought yellow after having leased a dark red 2019 Freightliner. You don’t have to spend too many days parked in Phoenix or Needles [California] to realize that a dark truck is a frickin’ oven and your APU just isn’t going to be able to keep up with that. So not wanting to run the big diesel, if I can avoid it, I wanted a truck that was a high albedo color,” reflecting a large amount of sunlight, “but, unlike white, would still stand out in fog and low-light conditions. In a white truck, you might as well be the fog.”
Typical of many Prime-leased operators, Mr. Harman opted for the graphics package.
“So I’ve got this pissed-off-looking bee that almost looks like the Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket. When I’m in Georgia, I’ve pulled up to a guard shack and the guy says ‘Hey man, this is Bulldog country ’round here!’” [How ’bout them dawgs! --ed.]
The 2024 Cascadia Bee is nearly paid-off, said Harman. “It’s completely stock. Stock motor, stock transmission, stock ratios. Running super singles, again, because it’s Prime. The only thing that isn't stock is I sprung for the FlowBelow aerodynamic system. I understand there’s some great old tradition of long-nosed hoods and manual transmissions,” but he despises the notion of what he calls “man cards. I’m getting 9 miles per gallon in this Tupperware Torpedo. I’m doing super well. There are people here who don’t seem to be able to make money at Prime, and I honestly don’t understand that. I do think the relationship I have with my fleet manager has a lot to do with it. He knows me well enough to know how I like to drive, and where I like to drive. It’s not paying like it did during COVID, but I’m still getting enough loads that pay over two bucks a mile, which is pretty much my floor for a good-paying load, here.
“It’s absolutely possible to do OK here, to do even better than OK. But, as with anything, you can’t be a terminal queen. You can’t be taking time off every week. You gotta be out here to drive.”
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