Almost tearjerking...when people weren't being total a*holes

 The Long Haul
A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road

Goodreads is getting a 5-star rating on this book! Yes, I listened to the audiobook instead of reading the paper copy, and yes, audiobooks are usually better. But even without that boost, this is great.

All I can guess is that the ne'er-do-well high school student who started out with a part-time job in the trucking company near his neighborhood, then blew off college and eventually quit, was a very, very smart guy to write so well. Even if he had a ghostwriter helping, and I rather think he didn't...let me see...

I don't see any mention of it. He's just a darn good storyteller. And he held back the best until the end--smart of him. Only the epilogue is a little smarmy and I think he deserves that.  Sorry I don't want to relate it here--no spoilers.

Some of it is simply factual--ins and outs of how the moving industry works. Some is simple narrative--how he does his job and deals with all the oddball people he encounters along the way. And some is essay-style musings on humanity and why movers are considered the blood-sucking scum at the bottom of the cesspool of living. Interestingly, after helping so many people move their treasured possessions from one house to another, he gets a very negative attitude about possessions in general and moving them in particular. Some of the people, especially the retirees who go from the Northeast to Florida, themselves question whether or not they really wanted to move all that stuff.

And there was this one very peculiar old lady who couldn't seem to make up her mind even at the last minute. Her original estimate of what she wanted to move was very, very low, but when he questioned her item by item, yes, it all ended up going. And the bill, of course, was way over the quote. She seemed surprised about that--was she really so very clueless as she acted or just trying to pull a scam? He never found out.

Not all people were horrid, though--he had three or so examples of people whose moves were positively "nice" and even life-affirming. Both to them (sort of) and to him.