Professional trucking
From Conservapedia
Professional trucking is the career followed by professional truckers, who are often self-employed on a freelance basis, or employed by trucking companies. A freelance trucker will typically own his own truck, while company truckers will be paid an hourly salary to drive the trucks belonging to the company for which he works.
In the United States, most products are shipped via professional trucking. In prior times, the railroad shipped a lot of goods, but the development of the National Highway System and the consequent general shift from rail transit to the automobile is put more emphasis on trucks as opposed to rail. Very little freight is transported by air; air mail being one key exception. (In contrast to the public USPS, privatized mail services such as DHL and Federal Express still deliver mail in trucks.) Each day, more than 1 million tractor trailers and semis hit the road.
Professional trucking is a lightly regulated industry. Most trucking companies police themselves, with the caveat that the federal government requires a certain standard of behavior to be met by each employed trucker. For example, truckers coming into the United States from Mexico must be U.S. citizens, or else have green cards that allow them to work within the United States of America. Furthermore, they must be fluent in English, which is necessary to understand essential road signs such as traffic lights and speed limits.
The image of the "lone trucker" as an outlaw in American pop culture has been erected over the years in films such as Smokey and the Bandit and Buckaroo Banzai, songs such as "Convoy", and modern TV shows such as Ice Road Truckers. To combat this perception, some organizations have called for stricter certification procedures for professional truckers. For example, truckers might have to pass a written test or even a driving test before being issued their rolling papers. Such calls have met with stern disapproval from trucking companies.
