Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/730281
18 www.bigrigowner.com O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6 worried about what might happen." Thomas, who's married and has one son, one daughter and four grand- children, figures he'll keep work- ing as long as his health holds up. "Maybe 'til I'm 66," he added. Like ABC, Thomas is from Eufaula. Before starting his career with the company, he served in the Army and gained early experience driv- ing trucks, then got a job in nearby Columbus, Georgia, that lasted "a month or two." "Then this job came up," Thomas said of his beginnings at ABC. There, he had been working for about a year when a driving position became available. "I told my coworker I could drive, and he said I couldn't," Thomas said. The coworker – per- haps out of disbelief and a need for proof, or divine intervention – filled out an application for the driving spot using Thomas' name. The safety-minded veteran has never looked back. He's now lived in Pinson, Alabama, for 15 years, and today he hauls mostly prefabricated steel building materials and coils from Pell City, Alabama, to Virginia and Mississippi. He returns to vari- ous Alabama destinations – McCalla, Eufaula and Pell City. Other times, he hauls to Carson City, Nevada, a three-day run. Thomas has all of the comforts of home in his 2005 International 9400i, including a refrigerator, mi- crowave and TV. The rig had nearly 1.23 million miles on it in mid-May. One issue Thomas frequently en- counters on his overnight stints is parking. "That's a big problem," he said. "The truck stops now are charging us to park. They already make money off of us when we buy fuel and supplies from them. Other places, we get told to move a lot, that you can't park here." Thomas said that when hauling steel building materials, "sometimes you can park at the job sites, but even that's an issue now." Another issue is one cited by both Thomas and likely many of his fellow drivers: overzealous scrutiny by law enforcement. He recalled a recent Sunday in Atlanta when traffic was bumper-to-bumper on the downtown interstates. "My truck was cut off by a car cutting in front of me, and an officer said I was following too close." He got a warning. "We get accused of some things unjustly," Thomas said of both the incident and the professional driver community in general. "That cost me and my company CSA [Compli- ance, Safety, Accountability] points. It'll cost me money to fight it off. It's unfair. Warnings are still points. Lots of drivers talk about it." By comparison, Thomas said, no one watches four-wheel drivers nearly legends of the road