Risk Services of Arkansas - August 2020

Risk Services of Arkansas - August 2020

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My Time in Corn Country

T here was a point in time when I knew almost every truck stop in Iowa. I knew which ones were good, which ones to avoid, and which diners had the best breakfast. This is the kind of highway knowledge only truck drivers tend to have, and that’s because, for several summers, I worked as an assistant truck driver. My little town in Iowa had a seed corn manufacturing plant. It was the biggest employer in town. There’s a reason Iowa is corn country. Each spring, prior to planting, the plant sold thousands of bags of seed corn to farmers all over the state. The thing is that most farms didn’t use all those bags. Every summer from the time I graduated from high school to the time I finished college, I would come home and take a job with the plant. We went all over Iowa in an 18-wheeler to collect the unused bags of seed corn so the farmers could get a credit on their account with the plant. In a single day, we would fill up the trailer with bags of corn. Mind you, it was just the driver and me doing all the loading ourselves, by hand with a conveyor. We’d back up to a barn and there’d be between 75–100 bags. The driver and I would load up all the bags, give the farmer his receipt, and

drive straight to the next farm. Our first appointment of the day was always scheduled at 7 a.m., so we had to be on the road very early, sometimes by 3 a.m., to make it on time. We’d go to the farthest farm first, then spend the day working the route back to our little town in the heart of Iowa. Then we’d drop the trailer off at the plant, go home, and do it all again the next morning. These were long, hard days. I’m talking 12–15 hours driving around the state and loading bags of seed corn. We were loading hundreds of 50-pound bags, all day long, five days a week. At the end of every day, I was exhausted. But I also got in really good shape, and the job paid really well. I was making more money than anyone else I knew my age. This was in the late 1970s, so the money I earned loading corn all over the state was my spending money at college over the next year. There was no GPS back then, so we had to really get to know the roads. I learned quite a bit about navigation and reading a map. I also learned that I did not want to be a truck driver all my life. I was glad for the work but did not want to be sweating in the back of a truck trailer every summer. I have immense respect for truckers and the job they do. Those were the most exhausting summers of my life. I don’t subscribe to the idea that one job is better than another because it pays more. Every job should be respected for the fact that it is a job and you are doing something to benefit humankind. There is honor and value in hard work, and truck drivers are definitely some of the hardest working people out there.

“These were long, hard days. I’m talking 12–15 hours driving around the state and loading bags of seed corn.”

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