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Below are blurbs from two women featured in the film. Loretta and her husband explain the prejudice against females in this industry, and Doris reveals her history with violent partners before finding escape and reconciliation in the profession of truck driving.
LORETTA: Ya know I’ve been amazed at these things ever since I was a little girl. I can remember riding down the road on vacation and laying up at the back window of my mom and dad’s car, going like this [gestures pulling of horn] at the truck drivers and waving at ‘em and just being so happy, ya know out there, ya know. That would be the perfect thing for me because it’s my world... I did not have a good childhood. No I didn’t. I had to get away from home, and not from my dad. It was from my mother. She wanted me to be that frilly, little girl and I was a tomboy. I couldn’t stand all the frilly, prissy stuff. Ya know, I played football with the guys, tackle football. It was more fun to do that and help my dad work on the car. My mom didn’t like it any.
TIM (Loretta’s husband and former trainer): She is a very good driver and she takes a lot of criticism, ya know, that is not deserved because she is a female driver out here and she puts up with these male drivers. And it’s to the point where she’s ready to choke ‘em.
LORETTA: You wanna go to 19 [radio channel between truckers] and hear these dirtbags, we can. That’s how I feel about ‘em.
TIM (on issue of assaults against truckers): West Memphis, it is really bad. I have heard about so many drivers getting killed there just from walking from their truck to the truck stop. So many people hide, between trucks and stuff, situations that someone like her doesn’t need to be in by herself, and she has been lucky so far that something bad, really bad, has not happened to her.
LORETTA: I do have a couple of things that I keep with me in the truck. And uh one of ‘em is a taser gun which we are allowed to have… I get out of the truck and they see a woman by herself and automatically everybody’s like, they surround you and they’re wanting something, ya know.
DORIS: 36 years old, I’ve got a husband, three kids. He’s really a wonderful, wonderful husband. He supports me no matter what I wanna do...
My first husband was abusive. He tried to kill me. My son’s father was abusive. He was very, very abusive. He was the one who kept me under his thumb all the time. He would get drunk and come home and beat me up. And I put myself in that position and abusing me was one thing. That was my stupidity, my choice. But after I had my son and he um jerked my son up at one point cuz he was crying in the middle of the night and he didn’t change him, ya know, (he was only like two months old) and started shaking him to get him to be quiet. And it was at that point that I knew it was time to get outta there...
Love’ll make you do some stupid things sometimes and I surely did love him. It, that, and I was scared of him too. Ya know, women who get into abusive situations like that and their friends or relatives say, "Why don’t you just leave? Just leave." Because that man has threatened them into the, to the end, to the end of their lives: "If you ever leave me, I’m gonna hunt you down and kill you."
That was the worst I’d ever felt in my life and when I got out of that situation, I swore I would never let myself get into that, ever again, that I was gonna be able to make my own way, make my own money, and take care of myself and my child. The fact that I had been kept under a man’s thumb for so long, I wanted to be in their face, and being a truck driver gave me the independence to be able to know that I will never do that again.
I don’t think they’re hard to drive at all. A lot of other women say, "Oh I could never get up and drive that big ol’ thing." But yeah you could.
This is the film trailer.
And here are some words from two female representatives of Bella’s Gentleman’s Club in Las Vegas. They offer viewpoints on the personal lives and needs of sex workers and truck drivers which counter conventional beliefs about both groups. Their names and titles were not identified in the film.
WOMAN # 1: Ninety percent of our business is with truck drivers, so if you wanna know about truck drivers, this is where you come. Truck drivers basically have the same needs as we all do. And unfortunately, being out on the road all the time, those needs aren’t met. So this is where our house comes in... Hookers and truck drivers get along really well because of the stigma of both industries. You will find a lot of times truckers are stereotyped as coffee-drinking drug addicts. This is not true, and not all truck drivers cheat. Not all hookers give free sex on their days off, ha ha, because once you sell it, trust me, you sure in the hell won’t wanna give it away.
WOMAN # 2: Well a lot of times, by talking with them, they give us things to think about too, just like we can give them things to think about. They might help us out once in a while, ya know. For us, it’s not always about the sex, ya know. We have a life too. It’s like, this is our truck, ya know. This is the truck that we’re stuck in for three weeks.