North Carolina-based independent Taj Wallace, known on the CB and to his fans as the “Supa Trucka,” splashed onto the truck show scene this year with pop-up performances of his original gearjammer ballads in North Carolina and Georgia.
The longtime flatbedder, who pulls in an ELD-exempt 1996 W900 powered by a Cummins N14 with an 18 speed, puts his own stamp on the trucking-music subgenre as a recent empty nester. “Our kids are grown and out of the house," as Wallace put it. "Everything we have is paid for. I’ve always done hip-hop. But a friend got me back into this.”
His debut single, “Trucker Love,” would even get a little air with a call-in a cappella rendition on the nationally syndicated morning show "The Breakfast Club."
A third-generation trucker with proud blue-collar roots, on first impressions flatbedder Taj Wallace comes across simply as a man who knows his way around a cheater bar. But there's much behind that exterior. His vocals can be R&B smooth, with a quality reminiscent of Isaac Hayes, such as in his ode to the lady trucker in “Take Your Time."
Supa Trucka Taj Wallace hauls, among other things, a lot of lumber from the ports of Wilmington and Morehead City, both in his home state of North Carolina, and he's cautiously optimistic about freight headed into next year. "It’s been a little slow lately, but all my accounts are customer direct, so it’s not been as tough for me as it has been for others,” he said.
"I call it 'trucker soul,'” he said.
For some, the moniker trucker soul might sound like just another subgenre-within-a-subgenre, but Supa Trucka represents a new wave of independent artists releasing music and videos in the trucking space. Wallace brings to it a production quality formerly available only to labels with six-figure budgets, all while maintaining full-time work as an independent owner-operator and small fleet owner.
Wallace calls it trucker soul, some call it "country hip-hop."
I just call it some good trucking music, and it's finding a community hungry for a fresh sound that speaks to trucking reality, minus the pedal steel.
Once upon a time, it'd have been unheard-of for an independent owner-op to self-fund and -produce a track and accompanying video with the quality of, say, “Country Boi: An Ode to Carolina.”
But after the great digital democratization in audio recording and video production we've seen over the last couple decades, all it takes is a driver with talent, who’s not afraid to work for it.
Find more of Wallace's music via his website.
[Related: Canadian bull hauler-songwriter Mike Murchison, lucky to be alive, releases new record]
More in Long Haul Paul Marhoefer's "Faces of the Road" series of profiles and oral histories.
