On Mon, 15 Feb 2016 22:08:52 -0000, Micky wrote:

On Sun, 14 Feb 2016 00:17:31 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 13 Feb 2016 21:53:17 -0700, rbowman
wrote:

On 02/13/2016 09:25 PM, Muggles wrote:
yeah I like truckers, for good reasons. I'll nearly always let them in
if I can do it safely, flash my lights at them if they let me in to
thank them, and try to give them a wide birth. On the way to work I
could swear they let me in the rocking chair on purpose so I could get
off on my exit. Least I'd like to think they did that more than once.


You develop a different attitude, particularly as an OTR driver. You're
driving ten to twelve thousand miles a month and you're typically not
running on a tight schedule. By that I mean you don't have to get to the
office by 9:00. Most of my runs were at least 1,000 miles. You learn to
take the long view. A few minutes one way or the other don't mean
anything and you have plenty of time to study traffic patterns.

I would appreciate it if you would leave a blank line between your
words and the previous poster's.

A decent newsreader like mine shows each poster in a different colour, aswell as indenting it, so it's clear which is hers.

I wish all OTR drivers thought the same way you do.
Too many ARE on a tight schedule - they have to have their load at the

This was a long time ago, 1971, but I was standing on the interstate
where the road from St. Louis split, with one fork going to Chicago
and the other to Indianapolis. I was headed for Chicago. A semi
stopped for me. He told me that he had missed me the first time he
passed me, going too fast and he'd gone to the next exit, turned
around gone to the previous exit, turned around again, and picked me
up. I thanked him graciously, but it still amazes me.

A similar thing happened to me. A trucker was heading the wrong way for where I was going, but was dropping something off and returning in 20 minutes. He deliberately went past me on the way back to see if I was still there, and picked me up.

I wonder if there's any truth in the rules that most truckers are forbidden by their companies from picking up hitchhikers? I have had a few hand signals from them driving past which looked like "sorry I can't".

It was a beautiful day, no later than 11AM. He could have easily let
someone else pick me up. It was Feburary though, about 3 days
after Mardi Gras. Still, I don't get it. It must have taken him 20
minutes to turn around twice.

In the UK, most car drivers don't pick up hitchhikers, which I think is ridiculous. I always pick them up.

He dropped me off on the Springfield Il. bypass, and it was hard to
get a ride there. A cop must have driven by because a voice came out
of nowhere, Get off the road. But there was nowhere to go which
woudln't have required hitching. I got a ride before he came back.

Typical cop.

I had hoped to get rides with truckers because I thought they'd be
interesting, but I think I only got two, from New Orleans to Chicago.
The rest were all cars.

Truckers also tend to be going further, so you make more distance before having to find another ride.

--
More people in the UK are injured by standing on upturned mains plugs than by electric shocks.