In Texas: Where Road Scholars Get Their Education

By Richard Woodbury

On this raw, gusty winter morning, Mary Goodrum is wishing she were someplace else than the cab of an 18-wheeler on an abandoned Texas airfield.

Goodrum is hunched over the wheel of a Freightliner, straining with all her 106-lb. might to maneuver 61 ft. of tractor-trailer into a parking space that doesn't look large enough for two Corvettes. Like most novice truck drivers, she is confronted by too many tasks demanding simultaneous attention: eyeballing six side-view mirrors, working a gargantuan steering wheel and a muscle-wearying clutch pedal, and monitoring an instrument panel befitting a 727. Goodrum eases the rig back until . . . kerplunk, she mashes into a barricade of tires.

Disgusted, Student Goodrum, 49, jumps out and watches an instructor effortlessly slide her rig back into the hole. She joins other dejected novices who have flunked the backing test. "This is grueling," she sighs.

Nothing is very easy here at the American Truck Driving School of Texas, a boot camp for long-haul drivers. The school's aim is to take a driver who may never have driven a car with a stick shift and, in three weeks of nonstop instruction, turn the greenhorn into a licensed, road-ready trucker. That means endless hours of double-clutching around a 3.2-mile course of rutted concrete while dodging orange traffic cones and 50 other student truckers.

An instructor warns new recruits of the rigors: "You can't come in here with a hangover. This is no vacation. We're giving you nothing. You're going to work for it." Rows of bleary-eyed, mostly young faces nod grudgingly. Most have forked out $3,000 in tuition fees for practical reasons -- they want better jobs and more money -- and they prefer what Curriculum Director George Beaulieu promises them the next day: "M-O-N-E-Y. Big trucks, big bucks."

And the jobs are out there for the picking. Thanks to deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980, there is a growing demand for nonunion drivers. Tighter licensing procedures and drug screening have worsened the trucker shortage. As a result, beginners can select from a variety of offers, some paying more than $30,000 a year.

No wonder, then, that such a motley class has assembled here on the bleak prairie outside Waco. There are a former helicopter pilot and a nurse, out-of- work oil roughnecks and two grandmothers, a bookkeeper and a county jailer. Even a computer programmer. People with lives gone sour or careers on hold. People treading water, looking for a break. For them the open road beckons as a great new beginning. "I'll make my husband's $45,000 within two years," whispers Goodrum. She and a friend have enrolled so they can travel the country with their trucker husbands. An appliance technician is here because "there are too many technicians in Fort Worth." The pilot "wants to see life on the ground" and sock away a retirement kitty.

The excitement grows as newcomers slide admiring hands across the fenders of gleaming Peterbilts and Kenworths, aligned in sleek rows like so many Tonka toys. "Ain't nothing gonna stop me," shrieks one youth, bounding from one cab to the next, sounding long, guttural blasts from the air horns. "The way I figure it," says Brian Eastman, an erstwhile roofer in the Rio Grande Valley, "computers will be gone in another ten years. But anything this country uses has to go by truck." "Damn right," chimes in a buddy. "Country's always gonna need truck drivers."

The euphoria begins to fade as the recruits confront the regimen of 7 a.m. * classes and long nights of homework. "Welcome to the world of full-angle parking," crackles a voice from the control tower over radios. Like a ringmaster, he directs a grand promenade of trainees in 20 giant tractor- trailers down the runway. Admonishments come thick and fast: "Truck six, you're in a hopeless position. Hard left!" "Don't shift on curves." "Watch your r.p.m.s." "Don't run up curbs." Brown-jacketed instructors with walkie-talkies strut the field with the authority of drill instructors.

Taming 350 horses is no task for the fainthearted, recruits quickly find. Gary Brown takes a last nervous drag from his cigarette, then hoists himself tentatively behind the wheel of a Freightliner twice his height. At the controls he is master of a 26-ton ship. Not like the old Toyota, he chuckles, warming to the banks of switches and lights. A shaky finger finally finds the starter button. "You're in luck, this is a ten-speed," the instructor soothes. "Clutch in, clutch in, don't wiggle the stick. Watch those mirrors -- they're not there for drying socks."

The huge machine bucks and bolts. "I can't find third," Brown cries. In jerks and starts, he manages to navigate a lap in second and fifth, then lurches to a stop. "You're not leaving now?" he calls out in alarm as the teacher jumps out. But soon he is bobbing effortlessly through a slalom course of oil drums and yellow lines. "Weird. Tougher than I figured," he mutters above the rattle and rumble. "It's going to take lots more practice."

For Brown, the assistant manager of a Houston dry-cleaning shop, trucking is a shortcut to the American dream, a jump start to economic respectability. "It's a quick trade, no long years training like a lawyer," he boasts, thinking about the baby he and his wife want. The county jailer, Jose Hernandez, agrees. "I'm already used to hard work. This is going to be like owning my own business. People are impressed."

But for others, the real lure of the highway is the prospect of having fun and letting go: the thrill and freedom of piloting a silver comet across the plains, chrome stacks sparkling in the sun, stereo pounding with Waylon Jennings. "The open road, going places I haven't been -- that turns me on," says Eastman.

The professionals know better. The Dallas-to-Chicago run loses its luster after the 100th trip. Romance is worn down by long days and lousy food. The course books don't talk about maneuvering Manhattan in a snowstorm. "They'll % soon find out," smiles a young instructor. "Drove ten years, truckin' got both my wives." Truck-company reps, roaming the halls to recruit talent, mince no words about the tough life. "Glory goes out the window when you're pounding 5,000 miles a week," says an old-timer. "Trucking used to be an honorable profession too. Now a lady can't even get on the CB without getting harassed. And John Q. hates us." As Instructor Ed Bagby warns his students, "A lot of drivers have it out for truckers. They want to get even for being cut off ten years ago. You leave your problems at home."

By the second week a dozen trainees have dropped out. But dozens of others like Goodrum, undaunted by failure, have hung in and passed their tests on the second and third tries. They swagger about the smoke-filled coffee room with all the bearing of veteran road hogs. Their bravado is largely superficial. "Deep down, these guys realize it isn't B.J. and the Bear out there on the highway," says a recruiter. The real road is tougher than the school, but at this point, who wants to tamper with romantic illusions? "At the jail, all I learned was about the bad people," recalls Hernandez. "In the truck, you get the chance to learn something about yourself."

That learning has already come for Richard Coombes, a lanky Missourian. Despite much self-doubt, Coombes has made it through the school with a 91.4 average. As instructors pump his hand, the ex-store clerk clutches a diploma in tractor-trailer driving and grins broadly. "I kept telling myself, 'You can do it. You can do it.' " He sallies into the Texas night, now a king of the road with a new measure of self-esteem: "I can't think of anything that hasn't been hauled in a truck," he says.