What would make a fifty-something, well brought-up mother all of a sudden opt to drive a truck?

It’s a great question and, like most good questions it had answers both basic and complex. From ‘it sounds like fun’ through ‘it’s a traditional immigrant job’ via ‘well, I can earn more income in a truck than I can using a Master’s degree’ with a detour along ‘I’ve driven ambulances and stretch limos, if I would like to get bigger it’s either a truck or a plane and this course is cheaper’…none of these reasons quite encapsulated all of it.

And these were merely the rationalisations for just a much vaguer pull towards the massive beasties that I’d been looking at while driving ever since emigrating from the UK to Canada. There was no rationalisation of course for that other vague pull, a lifelong dependence on doing things merely because they are somewhat unusual.

Adding to my list of reasons that it appeared to be a terrific angle for a book on trucking helped somewhat when trying to explain to people with no imagination, but not much.

Truth be told, I hadn’t predicted fright when I breezed into Tri-County Truck Driver Training one afternoon in 2008. I simply wanted to determine what it took to be a trucking lady. I wanted to discover America, how hard might it be?

Obviously there is a small distinction between studying to handle a 75-foot, slow-moving guided missile and dreaming about getting money to see the continent; and actually earning a living. Spending 14 hours a day smelling of diesel. My first job was taking trailers filled with mail from East to West. Team driving across Canada’s vast prairies and over The Rockies, and sometimes getting lucky enough to return via Texas. That Lake Effect Winter Storm was just one of our countless weather-related narrow squeaks. North American trucking can be quite the escapade.

I’ve been almost arrested in Baltimore, sick as a dog in Tennessee, terrified in Chicago, Dallas and Detroit and dug from the snow twice in a night in Alberta. I’ve made friends in Virginia and adversaries in Ontario. And, given half a chance, I might probably forget about how impossibly tiring it is and set off again to steer 18 wheels over the horizon.