Interview with

BRITTE VAN MEURS

What brought you to long haul trucking?

I used to hitchhike a lot. Hanging out in parking lots along the highway it struck me that some truck drivers would spend entire days and weekends on small patches of grass, waiting to start driving again. So I wanted to know what that would be like.

It became the thesis subject for my master in visual anthropology. I investigated daily life of long distance truck drivers, using sensory ethnography as a method. This means that I would put myself in the same conditions as the people whose experience I was trying to understand. I would accompany drivers for days on end, sleeping in the bunk bed above them. Their stories, my observations, and my own bodily experience became the data for my thesis.

What did you learn about long haul trucking and the effects of this kind of lifestyle?

In total I was on the road for 21 days and nights, spread out over several trips. I would leave for 2, 3 or 7 days, and come back exhausted. While on the road I wrote down: 

In this rhythm of driving-sleeping-driving, it felt as if we left a human dimension and became bodies at the disposal of a machine: attending to the machine when the schedule required us to, eating, resting and using the bathroom when the tachograph told us to do so. The tachograph being the little machine on board that tracks all driving activity. We were living to the pace of the production process. I found it incredibly lonely. To be honest it made me quite sad. 

You have completed drives with different drivers, Dutch and Eastern European but settled on a Ukrainian driver as your protagonist. Did you observe differences between the Dutch drivers and Ukrainian drivers working in the Netherlands and surroundings? 

The differences were stunning. I drove with Dutch and Ukrainian drivers who drive for the same client, and in the Netherlands we often attended the same addresses. The Dutch drivers would normally chat when we arrived somewhere. Often they knew the people where we stopped, and loading and unloading were cheerful moments, much like a coffee break in the office.  A moment to connect with other people, something that breaks up the lonely driving.

These chats were entirely absent when I travelled with the Ukrainian drivers. We would make coffee inside the cabin and wait there until it would be time to leave again. The language barrier of course makes it hard to converse. I also sensed a general hostility toward the Ukrainian drivers when we were in the Netherlands. On one occasion, someone completely lost it on us, before we even had the time to get out of the cabin. Just because the driver had stopped the truck in a place inconvenient for the man who was shouting. 

I was certain at this moment that this man would have never yelled at us like that if our number plate had been Dutch and not Polish. This of course has a big impact on what a working day feels like. And on the loneliness you may feel while on the road. 

A few years ago there have been some changes in the European regulations concerning breaks and sleeping schedules. How did this affect the trucking community and what does it mean for labour practices as a whole? 

There are two things: regulating breaks and driving hours on the one hand, and maximising efficiency on the other. The driving time regulations are meant to protect truck drivers. The Ukrainian drivers who drove in the Ukraine before driving in the EU are very happy with these regulations. This because they have known working conditions where they were forced to drive up to 100 hours per week. 

The urge to maximise efficiency comes with increased competitiveness in the sector. This in turn is a consequence of the liberalisation and internationalisation of the transport sector that the EU has been striving for. Technology on board helps planners to keep track of where the trucks are, and makes it possible to create tight schedules, often with last minute orders. 

The planners want to make optimal use of the hours the drivers are allowed to drive. A driver is thus not allowed to stop before their legal daily driving hours are completed. Nor are they allowed to take a break before their mandatory break time. Otherwise the company would lose on efficiency. 

The combination of this need for efficiency, the driving time regulations, and the possibility to strictly monitor and control, makes it so the driver is left with little freedom to decide when or where to stop. This sometimes means spending weekends on random patches of grass. 

This is a stark contrast with the freedom truck driving provided and it makes the profession a lot lonelier. Before, a truck driver could call their colleague to ask where they would stop for the night. If they were one hour ahead, they could simply continue an hour more and join them at the next service station to spend the evening together. Or they could stop one hour earlier and wait for the other to join them. These developments define not only where they spend their working hours, but also their leisure time; their evenings and weekends.

In the opening scene of the film, different drivers meet up at a service station. You can feel that they are excited to be together. Although they are always on the same highways, not far from one another, this happens maybe once a month. 

MAY, 2024