Trucking Life

For NFI driver Benjamin Rodriguez, trucking is in the bloodline. He comes from a long line of heavy equipment operators in his family, and he says driving a truck was the perfect fit him from the very beginning. “I was actually born and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and my family members used to drive mostly machinery and trucks,” he said. “I began driving trucks in 1995. I drove for a waste management company; that’s when I started trucking. It was something that I always loved. I had a passion for it.” Rodriguez’s over-the-road driving career began shortly after earning his CDL at Roadmaster Truck Driving School in Florida in 2008. In the 14 years since then, he says, he’s hauled nearly everything there is. “I have driven a reefer, I have done dry van, I have hauled anything moving out there — except hazmat. I’ve never done hazmat,” he said. “Even recycled material, recycled plastic, just about anything that’s moving around out there. There was no one specific thing I hauled.” Rodriguez can boast of touching all of the lower 48 states in his career, in part because in the early days he was on long-haul routes that took him from coast to coast. It was a tough assignment for a family man. “When I first started in the U.S. I had to do all that kind of work,” he said. “When I started in ’08, at the beginning, it was a little tough because you leave your family behind. You have a responsibility to be home every day and have the time with the family, and then you go out here for four or five weeks out. “But even though that was a little hard, you know, at the same time I had the support of my spouse, which is good,” he continued. “That really helped a lot in overcoming all these different things through the years.” An additional challenge was Rodriguez’s natural desire to keep moving and not sit still for long periods. It was something he had to train his body and system to adapt to on long hauls. “The first two hours of driving, it made me sleepy. I wanted to fall asleep, just in the first two hours,” he said. “The first two hours of driving are always the hardest, but after that your body adapts to what you are doing.” After making a move to NFI about a year ago, Rodriguez is now on a dedicated run, delivering freight to Big Lots! stores along the East Coast. He said he welcomes the new role because it keeps him closer to his home in Pennsylvania. “The advantages of doing that is I come to the same place all the time,” he said. “The trailer is always loaded, so that’s a benefit versus when you are an over-the-road driver, where there is a lot of waiting. Here I don’t have to wait. I pick up, I go to the store and make my deliveries. One day there might be some difficulties, but overall, everything runs pretty good. I really like that. “I deliver to a maximum of four stores a day. The farthest I’ve gone is up to Massachusetts and New York, and as far down as Virginia and a little bit of West Virginia,” he added. Throughout his career, Rodriguez has prided himself on being a safe driver even when navigating the heavier urban traffic along his current route. As such, he’s happy to have seen trucks evolve technologically over the years. “The safety features they have are what’s changed the most,” he said. “They are looking for ways to make trucks safer, even with the new system with ELDs. And companies are getting stronger with the safety and making sure that drivers are doing better out there, so that helps out too.” On the downside, Rodriguez said, safety has become much more difficult to maintain these days, and he sees more challenging situations than ever. “The stuff with people on their phone, it’s amazing,” he said. “I always try keep on the lookout all the time. Even with the new technology going on in the truck, you have to look out. When you are going to get on the interstate and you are ahead of them, you still have to go on to the shoulder trying to get on. That happens a lot. “The other thing is, if you are stopped in one place and you make a turn and there’s a turn to the left or the right, as soon as that light changes they just cut in front of you,” he said. “So, all these things make me more and more aware of these crazy things that people are doing because they just show up in the blink of an eye.” In fact, Rodriguez said, even with all its challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic was actually a much less stressful time to be on the road because so many people were either quarantined or working from home. “With COVID, I tell you something, (driving) was awesome,” he said. “Traffic was good; you could run smoothly. You didn’t have to worry about people doing all this craziness during that year that people were enclosed at home. Now, it’s back to going crazy.” Rodriguez says he believes educating the public about sharing the road with big rigs can help improve overall safety on the road. “(Drivers need to) see what happens when you slow down in front of a truck,” he said. “These rigs do not stop on a dime.” In June, The Trucker Media Group’s CEO Bobby Ralston had a chance to experience a day on the road with Rodriguez — complete with rush-hour traffic. “I was reminded anew of the massive responsibilities these drivers are tasked with, and how our economy relies on the trucking,” Ralston said, adding that drivers are truly the backbone of the industry. “I was really impressed with Ben’s skill in safely making his way through heavy traffic, as well as the rapport he’s built when interacting with NFI’s customers,” he said.

Mary Peterson Norton has many passions in life — trucking, her beloved four-legged friends and the Green Bay Packers, just to name a few — and she has found the perfect way to blend them all as a professional driver. She and her canine companions, Karhma and Casey Aaron, travel the highways in a 2014 Kenworth T660 teamed with a refrigerated trailer — both decked out to proudly represent the Green Bay Packers football team, In addition to her Packer-proud truck, Norton also makes sure that her faithful traveling pals, Casey Aaron and Karhma, often sport their favorite Packer gear. In fact, the pups won first and second place in last year’s Walcott Truckers Jamboree Best Dressed Pet competition, dressed in their Packer finery. “Karhma is a rescue, and she is 14,” Norton said. “The vet thinks she is a Shih Tzu and Yorkie mix, but I don’t know. I call her a Heinz 57. Casey is a Shih Tzu and he’s a little shy. He will be 6 in September.” Originally just named Casey, Casey Aaron is of course, named after Packer’s quarterback Aaron Rodgers … but that wasn’t always the case. He was originally just plain Casey. “The people I bought him from were from Minnesota,” Norton said. “They said, ‘You named that puppy Casey, and not Aaron Rodgers?’” Norton was so tickled by the comment that she told them that Casey should have a middle name and from then on he was dubbed Casey Aaron. “They go every trip with me,” Norton said. “They are my babies.” Both dogs provide companionship and entertainment for Norton on the road. “They like to aggravate each other,” she said. “They have this thing — well, I should say, Karhma has this thing. Karhma is getting older, and she has this thing where she likes to touch something. Casey gets warm because he’s a hot-blooded dog. He’ll sit in the chair and Karhma will be in the bed in the floor by the doggie door on the passenger side. So, she will get up in the chair and sit on him. Then he gets down in the floor and this goes on and on all day. They don’t get in the sleeper because it’s not as entertaining.” Norton, who grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, says she developed a love for trucking at an early age. “We had Jersey cows, the black and white ones. We showed them at the county fairs, state fairs and national shows,” she said. Her first experience in trucking was helping haul cattle to fairs. At a young age, she was a master at loading cattle into stock trailers taking them on the road. “I had my CB radio, and I was listening to all the truckers because we lived next to the interstate,” Norton said. “(Trucking) was always in my blood.” After graduating from high school in 1977, Norton’s first step in her career was helping her father with his milk routes. She started her official trucking career in the late 1970s, and by the time the 1980s rolled around she was driving her own truck, a used Peterbilt. In 1985, she bought her first brand-new truck, an International Eagle. In the early days, she mainly ran west coast routes from Wisconsin to California for ATX, a division of Snyder National. Those runs are still her favorites to this day. Today, as an owner-operator leased to Bob Erickson Trucking, Norton hauls refrigerated poultry products from Minnesota and Wisconsin to Los Angeles, usually returning with a load of fresh produce. “Even though I basically run the same route all of the time, I always try to find something new,” she said. “(In springtime) I always like to see the baby animals being born and the leaves coming back on the trees. I love the flowers and the different scenery, especially the cactus when they are blooming in the desert. Norton relishes the freedom she feels on the road. “After 40-something years, I’ve made a lot of friends on the road, and I’ve met a lot of interesting people,” she said. Norton also shared the feeling of family that has grown over her years in the trucking industry. The people she has met over the years were there for her during one of the most heartbreaking times in her life — the death of her husband Jack in 2015. The couple had driven as a team for three decades. “We did a celebration of life for him. We didn’t really have a lot of friends in the neighborhood, but so many of our trucking friends made it up here for the celebration of his life,” Norton said. “It was unbelievable. Even the local people commented on how we had friends there from all over the country. We had people fly in from as far away as Arkansas and Texas,” she said. We had grown into such a big family. It was such a nice feeling.” Norton is doing her part to inspire the next generation of truck drivers, partnering with local schools to visit third- and fourth-grade students a few times a year. Norton, Karhma and Casey Aaron, along with their eye-catching rig, are always popular with both the youngsters and faculty. “I give all the kids a treat and they get to tour the truck,” Norton said. “It’s funny, because as shy as Casey Aaron is, he always picks one person there and that’s his person. Karhma will just run from person to person, but Casey Aaron will pick just one. This last time, it was the teacher. He wanted the teacher. He fell in love with her, and the kids were so jealous.” Norton collects different trinkets throughout the year to make sure she has something to give each student at the school. The treats range from pencils and pens to coloring books to hand-crafted items created by Norton. Each student receives a goodie bag. “I always try to make something that they can keep for a long time,” Norton said. “This year I made blankets. Last year I did beach towels.” Because she enjoys embroidery, she often stitches her name, along with Karhma and Casey Aaron’s, onto the items she shares with the kids. “I also make the kids ornaments at Christmas time — just something they can keep if they want to,” she said. “I see these kids grow up. Whenever they see me later, they always come up and give me a hug and tell me about the time I visited their class when they were little.” Although she only brings the truck at the end of the school year as a special treat for the students, Norton and her four-legged friends stop by a few times a year to visit the kids and answer questions about both her dogs and her travels. She also sends pictures and postcards from her travels throughout the year. “Sometimes this is the only way some of these kids will get a chance to see faraway places,” Norton said. One thing is for sure, this Packer proud family loves their time together on the road — and they are always ready for the next adventure.

Bubba Branch was just knee-high to a grasshopper, as they say in the south, when he first climbed aboard his granddaddy’s big rig in Florida. His earliest memories include rowing through the parked semi’s gears, turning the wheel and pumping all the leftover air out of the brakes. “I drove a million miles and never left the yard,” he said with a laugh. Branch says he’s proud to still live in Florida as “one of the few who are originally from here.” Most of all, though, he’s proud to be a trucker — like his dad and granddad before him. “I have been around trucking all my life,” he said in a husky southern drawl. “Grandad and Dad were in it for 40 or more years. I like to say I was born in a truck. I was one of seven kids, but I was the only one that took to trucks. I would ride with dad anytime I could.” Branch said he also has special memories of riding along in his grandad’s truck. “You could do no wrong with Granddaddy,” Branch said. “He was the cat’s meow with me.” At age 18, Branch earned his CDL. His first job was driving an old, run-down 1970s-model GMC Brigadier General for Miller and Sons in Central Florida. He had to work hard to land that job, he said, adding that he “pestered” the company for a long while before they finally gave him a shot. “They said all they had for me to drive was an old truck that had a lot of issues,” Branch said. “There were holes in the floorboard, and the fumes were so bad my eyes would turn red. I took it home, washed it, and Dad and I patched up the holes. I drove it for a while before I got caught by the DOT.” After the truck was red-tagged and ordered out of service by the DOT, Branch didn’t have to worry about it anymore, and in the ensuing two and a half decades he moved up the ladder of success in the trucking industry. Now, at 44, he and his wife, Krystal, operate Atlas Heavy Haul out of Lakeland, Florida, his hometown. The company primarily hauls heavy equipment. “I wanted to haul equipment all my life, so I got some good experience and started on my own,” he said, adding that his heaviest haul so far was a massive electrical box that he delivered to Heinz Field, home of the NFL Steelers football team, in Pittsburgh. The load weighed 200,000 pounds, and it took Branch nearly 15 days to make the run from Miami. These days, Branch enjoys spending time working on his show truck, a 1996 Kenworth W900 dubbed “Just a Phase.” When he picked it up the truck was white, but he knew he wanted to paint it red so it would stand out. The entire interior had been stripped, down to the bare metal, so a new hush mat was put in the cab and sleeper, then new floors, seats, an SH Tube twisted shifter and new door, roof and sleeper panels. Bubba’s son, Kolt, painted the dash, and all the accent pieces were painted by his wife. Once the interior was complete, SH Tube crafted all the stainless-steel accent pieces on the rig, along with the speaker boxes in the cab. Other custom pieces include the mirror brackets, exhaust pipe holders, the dipstick and gear shifter, and more. The Kenworth is powered by a CAT 3406E engine with an 18-speed transmission. The entire truck has taken Branch about a year and a half to build, but he said it still isn’t 100% complete. In June, at the annual Shell Rotella SuperRigs event held in Branson, Missouri, Branch’s rig won the categories for best chrome and best engine, and he placed second in the working truck with limited mileage category. “I have wanted to be at Shell Rotella for so long, and this was my first time,” Branch said. “I am so grateful to have the opportunity.” As for the future, Branch said Kolt is the one of his three kids who is most likely to follow in his footsteps. Kolt rides with Branch in the big rig any chance he can get, just as Branch did with his dad and granddad. “Kolt is hooked on it,” Branch said. “He said he wants my rig one day, and he said he is going to paint it blue. I told him to make sure I’m gone before he goes and does that.” In talking about the industry he loves, Branch said he sees a lot of room for improvement and hopes some changes will be made before Kolt gets his CDL and hits the road. “Lack of parking is critical,” Branch said. “There is nowhere to go. Now you are told by a computer when you are tired, even if you are not, so you have to get off the road when it says so. You have to have a place to stop that’s safe, and there just aren’t that many.” Like many drivers, Branch has had to park illegally to meet hours-of-service requirements. “I was in Jackson, Georgia, on an on-ramp one night. The two nearby truck stops were packed — like they always are — and the ramp was the only place I could park. I got woken up by the Georgia Highway Patrol to a Level 1 inspection. He told me I couldn’t park there, but he let me stay for the night because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” Most of all, though, before his son becomes a professional driver, Branch said he hopes the profession will be seen as one of honor. He wants those who aren’t in the industry to respect truck drivers and the jobs they do. “Do you realize what this country would be without people choosing to be truck drivers?” Branch said. “Do I think they owe us something? No. But we should get a little more respect.” Looking back on his career thus far, Branch says he feels blessed. “I am doing what I love, and I am so beyond grateful for it,” Branch said. “I am thankful to be a truck driver, and I just want to say thanks to all my fellow drivers. You have my respect.”