Driver helping tune minds to the big issues of the day
The last week in July marked something of a turning point for the issue of public parking along the nation’s highways. National Public Radio, USA Today,the Wall Street Journal and a myriad of local papers and broadcasters around the nation weighed in on the then-just-beginning closings of a whopping 19 public rest areas in Virginia. For many truckers, mainstream attention to the issue was a long time coming.
Desiree Wood, for one, had been immersed in the closings for months, ever since news of New York hauler Jason Rivenburg’s murder reached the Palm Treo she carries on her nationwide journeys. When we talked in early July, Wood was on an (eventually successful) effort to secure funding for Rivenburg’s widow, Hope, to attend the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas to garner support for the law named after her husband currently making the rounds on Capitol Hill.
On the way to this project, Wood had become something of an ambassador to the trucking public for T. Boone Pickens’ plan for reshaping the energy sector toward sustainability, as well as a sort of instigator in the truck-driver training debate. Her Twitter page served as a sounding board for news from her cab, and increasingly, mainstream news outlets called on her to comment on stories pertaining to trucking, culminating in the “Dear VDOT
