The author | Xie Siyu
Edit the | Jojo
A few years ago, Li Xiru, a female driver of a large truck, almost passed away with death.
At that time, Li Xiru was driving a large truck full of couriers, running the route from Huai'an in Jiangsu province to Shanghai every day, and one day there was a sudden heavy snowfall, and there was an accident in front of her, and like other vehicles, she "slowed down the speed and turned on the double jump (fault warning light)".
But she did not expect that the driver of a large truck next to her was dozing off, did not notice the road conditions in time, and suddenly found that the situation was not right in the hazy, the driver hurriedly braked, the large truck that was driving at high speed and full of goods was suddenly braked, and the vehicle came to a 180-degree turn, and with Li Xiru's car from the middle of the road to the side of the road.
Although things have passed for several years, every time she thinks about this experience, Li Xiru is still in a cold sweat and feels that she has picked up a life and returned. Also as a truck driver, she knew all too well that large trucks full of cargo usually weighed tens of tons, and such a steel behemoth was almost unstoppable if it lost control. "A fully loaded 9.6-meter or 16.5-meter truck, when driving at high speeds, when there is an emergency, the brakes are almost all a decoration."
"That scared me to death," she guessed, the driver must have been tired driving.
Fatigue and danger are part of the life of big truck drivers, and as a result, the industry is inherently unkind to women. In addition, in the existing context of public opinion, female drivers are undoubtedly a derogatory term that many people respect.
Among the big truck drivers, female drivers are undoubtedly rare animals. In Li Xiru's company, there are tens of thousands of train drivers and about 10 female drivers, which is one of the best in the true sense.
For these "minorities", the outside world reported a curious look, and female drivers were generally asked why they came to do this business, "just like you see, there is a cat in the kennel." ”
For this curiosity and even questioning, another colleague of Li Xiru, Cao Qin, was not used to it before, but now she is at ease. In her opinion, it was an ordinary job, and she didn't feel any different from a male driver.
Courier truck drivers are a group of invisible people, hundreds of millions of couriers delivered to thousands of households every day, and before that they have to lie on the big courier trucks for hours or dozens of hours of transportation, but none of the people who receive the courier will care whether the driver of the delivery truck is a man or a woman - the female drivers hide behind the business.
01 Entering the industry
There are important prerequisites for becoming a female driver of a large car, that is, to like to drive, only in this way can you have the confidence to drive a truck, a behemoth that is tens or hundreds of tons. This is also the main reason for the low number of female truck drivers – most women have little interest in driving, let alone large trucks.
Cao Qin said that she was envious of driving when she was a child, after driving a bus in her hometown of Hubei for 7 years.
Two and a half years ago, under the introduction of a friend, her husband came to Jieyang, Guangdong to drive a big truck, but in half a year, her husband did not have a suitable partner, in order to end the situation of separation between husband and wife, take care of her husband's life, she also came to Guangdong and her husband to run a sports car.
Cao Qin now runs the longest route of all, it takes nearly 30 hours one way, four days to go back and forth, in order to prevent fatigue driving, long-distance buses generally need to be equipped with two drivers.
Therefore, the vast majority of female drivers in large trucks run a car with their husbands, so this kind of car is often called a couple car.
The vast majority of female drivers in large trucks run a car with their husbands, and the pictures and texts are irrelevant
Cao Qin feels that compared to two male drivers driving the same car, the couple car has its own advantages.
The life of the train driver is very hard, in addition to the need to refuel and go to the toilet, eating, resting, etc. almost always on the road, she believes that the biggest convenience of the husband and wife car is that two people can take care of each other in driving life, greatly alleviating the work pressure; the cockpit space of the truck is small, the two drivers need to run in personality to work together, and the husband and wife can be more tolerant of each other; the shift change is also more free, "two male drivers can account for you to drive less, I drive more", sometimes it is not too embarrassing to change shifts, But couples driving don't have this problem.
Also driving a husband and wife car is He Yidan, who has been driving a large truck for more than 20 years, she is also 45 years old this year like Cao Qin, when she was a child, she also thought it was fun to drive, learned to drive a truck, many years ago she and her husband worked as an outsourced driver, bought a 13.5-meter trailer, and sold this car five years ago as an outsourced truck driver.
She believes that from the natural differences between men and women, the combination of husband and wife cars also makes up for each other's shortcomings, "women's energy is not as exuberant as men, and physical strength is also a little worse", but on the other hand, female drivers are more delicate in handling things and pay more attention to details.
But Li Xi is an outlier among the female drivers of the truck, although she has been driving for six years, she does not like to drive.
She had never driven a big truck before she entered the industry, and the reason she had come to work as a driver six years ago was simple, when her husband was also driving in the company, needed two people to pack a route, and did not want to find anyone else to cooperate. At her husband's suggestion, Li Xiru also went to learn the driver's license of the truck and drove with her husband.
The script of life is often unexpected, and two years later, Li Xiru's life ushered in a change, and Li Xiru, who originally assisted her husband, became the pillar of the family.
In 2017, her husband fell seriously ill, and doctors told Li Xiru that the disease could not stay up late, which meant that her husband had to leave his original post - more than half of the big delivery trucks needed to drive at night.
Because she could not stay up late, Li Xiru's husband no longer went to work and began to recuperate at home, Li Xiru began to drive alone, but according to the company's regulations, in order to avoid fatigue driving a car, two drivers must take turns to drive, so she had to drive a car with another male driver.
This is an embarrassing situation for everyone, the husband heard that she was driving with others, she could feel that he was "a little unhappy", but Li Xiru was also helpless, "I hope he can understand me, I am for this family." ”
Now Li Xiru's only way is to find a short-distance route that can run alone, and all the lines in her company are divided into long lines and short lines, the former needs two drivers, while the latter only needs one driver. The criteria for division are simply 550 km as the dividing line and 550 km below as the short-distance line.
But now she helplessly found that "but there is no new short line now", she felt that there might be a chance in half a year.
02 Don't call me a strong woman
Whether you like to drive or not, driving a behemoth full of tens of tons or hundreds of tons all year round will not be an easy and pleasant thing, and the ultimate motivation to support the all-day running is essentially from the pressure of life.
An interesting phenomenon is that the average age of female drivers in large trucks is about 45 years old, and income is the most important factor that attracts them to work in the industry for a long time, at this age when their parents are retiring without income, their children are still in school, and the family burden is the heaviest.
They are not highly educated, and driving a large truck is not a high-income option. Cao Qin's current income is twice that of her previous city bus, and she revealed that if it is a route of seven or eight hundred kilometers, the husband and wife car earns about 20,000 yuan a month.
Of course, the price is not nothing, just started to drive a large truck, she felt that it was much more difficult than the bus, for example, the reversing direction of the truck was completely opposite to the bus, and the large truck was longer than the bus, and the field of vision was more difficult to grasp, which took her a while to slowly get used to.
There are also more difficult things to get used to, the most obvious of which is that work has become longer and life has become more irregular. In the past, when the bus was driven, it was possible to leave work at 11 o'clock at night, but now it often leaves in the early morning.
In order to hurry, the big truck needs to run day and night, Cao Qin and her husband take the method of changing people without changing the car, only when the gas truck goes to the toilet, they will enter the high-speed service area, stop for ten minutes and leave.
In this case, eating and sleeping are solved in the car. To ensure safety, cooking was strictly forbidden in the car, and she was used to bringing dry food — making a little meal from home before driving to take it on the road, and sleep for hours on the bunk bed behind the cab. The rest conditions have improved a lot compared to before, "because when driving a big truck a few years ago, I could only sit and sleep in the seat." ”
Driving a large truck is the most worrying thing about safety, and once a safety accident occurs on the road, the mortality rate is higher than that of the car.
In 2017, the Ministry of Public Security issued a report that although freight vehicles accounted for only 12.28% of the domestic motor vehicle ownership, truck-responsible road traffic accidents caused 48.23% of the total number of deaths.
The high incidence of accidents in large trucks is due to fatigue driving, on the one hand, a statistical survey of truck home, 84% of the 30 million truck drivers, 84% of the drivers have an average daily driving time of more than 8 hours, of which 40% are more than 12 hours.
Another reason is related to the large truck itself, Cao Qin used to drive a bus in the city, the maximum speed is 60 km / h, generally 40-50 km / h, and the courier company truck often runs at a speed of 100 km / h, at this speed full of trucks encounter emergency situations, "brakes are useless."
Driving a big truck is running all day, the balance between work and life is simply magical, and female drivers have to give up some of the things they want.
Cao Qin's daughter is studying at university in Wuhan, but she and her husband do not have the opportunity to visit their daughter in Wuhan, and the daughter will come to see them during the summer vacation, or Cao Qin will not take a few days off to go home to see them until the New Year.
He Yidan and her husband have two children, the eldest has graduated from college, the youngest has not yet gone to junior high school, usually there is no time to go home to take care of it, only to let the eldest son take care of his younger brother.
"Some people say that I am a strong woman, what kind of strong woman I am" He Yidan was a little discouraged, "what is a person living, just to earn money." She began to calculate, "The two sons, and later the sons will still marry their daughters-in-law and have children, they will have to spend, and our two couples will also have to spend outside, and the money earned will not be enough to spend." ”
03 Trapped and hopeful
If you communicate more with female drivers, you will find an interesting phenomenon - they can be accurate to the single digits of how many kilometers of the route they are running.
Cao Qin ran the route from Jieyang to Taiyuan, the longest route of all her colleagues, "2250 kilometers to go and about 2400 kilometers back." Li Xiru ran the route from Huai'an to Hangzhou, a total distance of 513 kilometers; He Yidan ran the route from Xuzhou to Linhai, Zhejiang, with a total distance of 864 kilometers.
The reason why they remember so clearly is not that they are born with amazing memories, nor just because of the number of runs, the most important reason is that in order to pursue timeliness, the courier company has extremely strict requirements for the transportation time of large trucks, and in the system of the courier company, how long each route takes is accurate to the point of minute.
Of all the truck drivers, courier drivers are probably the busiest and most time-critical. Statistics show that the daily peak of express delivery truck drivers is more than 1500 kilometers, and the total monthly mileage can reach 45000 kilometers, which is 5 times the industry average; in the case of the most mileage in a single day, its punctuality rate is still as high as 91%.
In the case of He Yidan, her company's requirements for herself are 12 hours and 20 minutes one way.
Overtime means fines, "overtime one minute fine two yuan, overtime one hour means to fine more than 100 yuan", He Yidan was fined more than 900 yuan for overtime in the most month.
The deterrent effect of the fine is obvious, and in order to be in a hurry, drivers will reduce the number of times they eat and drink, or even eat only one meal a day. As for the rumors that truck drivers have been stolen from the outside world, they have all said that they have heard of it, but they have not encountered it, the reason is simply that the vehicle has been driving non-stop on the road, and there is no chance of being stolen.
Cao Qin said that drivers are most afraid of rain and snow days, this kind of weather road is slippery, vehicles dare not run fast, often eventually overtime - but there is only one case, the driver overtime will be exempted from fines, that is, encounter traffic jams, whenever this time the driver needs to upload the video in time to report.
The fine will not only come from the company, but also from the traffic police and the service area management.
Cao Qin gave an example. Express delivery trucks are often fined by traffic police and service areas One reason is that in order to transport more express deliveries as much as possible, express delivery trucks generally use standard carriages that do not meet the national regulations, and are often stopped at highway intersections and service areas, and the usual punishment result is "deduct 1 point and fine 200 yuan".
For drivers, money is generally a trivial matter, because these fines are reimbursed by the company, "but the trouble points are often not deducted enough." However, she said that traffic police sometimes will also humane law enforcement, "seeing that it is indeed only one point and two points deducted will also be open to one side, no deduction." ”
But no one can guarantee that every time they will encounter the traffic police, they are so affectionate, so how to avoid the traffic police, how to avoid how to fight wisdom and show weakness has become a compulsory course for them to master.
Even so, although the work is very hard, most of the female drivers do not have the idea of changing careers, and they can only insist on the pressure of life.
The word "no way" appeared many times from Li Xiru's mouth, and she broke her finger to count: the source of livelihood, the children's schooling, the husband's poor health has to spend tens of thousands of dollars every year, "This family must rely on me to support." ”
"People usually drive by men, women take care of the family at home, it doesn't matter how much they earn in a shift, but I can't, because my husband doesn't earn money."
What she envied most was the woman who did not have to drive a big car, "People drive a small car to enjoy, and very few women drive a big car to earn money to support their families." She also envied the female drivers in other couples' cars, she believed that these female drivers were relying on their husbands, "when they are on the highway, they run, really to what is not easy to drive, or men come forward." ”
Li Xiru did not think about changing careers, but calculated that according to her conditions, all the jobs that can be done are still the highest income in driving large trucks, so she does not want to change for the time being.
But in any case, there is always a pleasant part of life that allows them to reconcile the pains of work.
Whenever I think of my daughter Cao Qin, I will become happy, her daughter has loved music since she was a child, played the piano well, was recognized as a "talented girl" among relatives, and was admitted to a well-known music conservatory in China when she took the college entrance examination, and this year she has been in the fourth year of college.
She said her daughter's dream is to be a music teacher in the future, "no matter what job she does, as long as she likes us, we will support", she does not want the next generation to choose a career because of the pressure of life.
Li Xiru's husband, because she could not go to work, became a "full-time house husband" at home, and took care of her children with adoptive parents, which relieved her worries. And cooked a good dish, every time she came home, she was greeted by a hearty meal.
Every time at this time, looking at her husband, Li Xiru said that she felt that "the hard work is worth it." ”