It is 6:00 a.m. on a late March Tuesday morning. I have been at work for 1-½ hours already. Right now I am waiting for a load at a shipper high on the Oquirrh Mountains west of Salt Lake City. As I face east to the Wasatch mountain range, also above the Salt Lake valley, I watch the first fiery blaze of the rising sun play its rainbow orchestra on the heavens. More intensely on the scattered clouds that drift majestically between patches of pale blue to turquoise to deep purple sky.

Later today will come varying degrees of stress and pleasure as I traverse the highways of Utah and possibly of Idaho and Wyoming as well. There will be all imaginable levels of traffic, heavy and light. There will be all types of drivers, professional and ignorant. And there will be all types of shippers and receivers, pleasant and rude.

Some days I hook and drop as many as twenty trailers before I can rest this tired old truck or my tired bones. Other days I move only two. Some days I work all of my legal fifteen hours and other days I am sent home under protest after only eight. I need twelve to survive but in the intermodal drayage business in Utah, the spring always brings more eight-hour-days than fifteens.

Some days I can think of nothing in this world that I'd rather be doing. Other days I curse the moment I looked up with amazement at that first big shiny truck and knew I was looking at my future home.

As I write this I have no idea what this day will bring. Yesterday left no hints and every call on the dispatch radio will change the aspects of this day's adventure.

Good or bad, I take 'em as they come and thank God for my family that another one did come.

I don't think that society or the government owes me anything but a fighting chance for what I do but I know in my heart that neither could survive without me. I often wonder if either of them realizes that.

Without those like me, there would be no food on the shelves, no fuel in the pumps and no lumber for the houses. Traffic would not be a problem because only a wealthy few would be able to own cars and those would have to be all terrain vehicles. Without trucks our highway system could not exist.

Some people call this the technological, computer and information age. That may be true but no computer can produce a single 'byte' of food and neither can they keep you warm. Even if they could, without trucks, there would be no computers. Not only because of the need to transport those computers but more importantly because society without mass transportation has more important things to worry about. Things like getting the cows fed and milked, the eggs collected and the crops harvested and stored.

Transportation, and more specifically, highway transportation, is the secret that turns third world countries into superpowers. It is what allows a mid west farmer to sell his wheat in New York and a west coast computer manufacturer to sell his wares in Washington D.C. It allows us in Utah to sell our salt and copper in Idaho and then get Idaho's potatoes back to our stores still fresh from the field and all of this in a day's work. Try that with a mule team and you will soon be pining for the old days, diesel fumes and all.

So what does all this have to do with an early morning appointment and a colorful sunrise? Not a lot I guess. Later today may prove to be not so great. I may meet the worst kinds of people in the worst traffic or warehouse. One of my own company's drivers might give me the shaft. Actually one already did. He hung back to watch me inspect empty trailers for one suitable to the task only to jump in front of me on that trailer while I ran to get my truck. But right now, at this particular moment, on this particular day, I can think of nothing in this world that I'd rather be doing. And when this day is done, the best that I can hope for is the ability to tell my family, my employer, myself and most importantly my God that I gave my honest best effort and that no mistake of mine caused death, harm or loss of property.

When the trucks stop, America stops, period, exclamation point.