Truck Drivers' Jargon

Abstract

THE DATA FOR THE PRESENT STUDY have been gathered from three sources.' The first is a publication of the American Trucking Association, in which a majority of the terms were found.2 The second is an article published in 1955, detailing the jargon of the truck driver at that time.3 The third is my own sociological study of truck drivers, for which I spent a great deal of time in participant observation.4 The data for my study were gathered through the use of three different research methods. A random sample of 150 union truck drivers in the New York metropolitan area was contacted by a mail questionnaire in the summer of 1969. Additional data were received from in-depth interviews held with drivers who had indicated on the questionnaire an interest in being interviewed. These interviews, held with twenty or so drivers, often lasted from six to eight hours. Finally, data were gathered in the participant observation phase of the research, during which I spent about a thousand hours hanging truck stops, truck garages, and truck terminals. In addition, I took a number of trips with drivers both locally (in and around the New York area) and long distance (from the New York area into the Midwest and as far as Battle Creek, Michigan). The interviews both in the formal interview situation and in the participant observation were focused rather than structured. I knew what I wanted to ask, and consequently I let the form of the questions be dictated by the situation in which I found myself. The lack of standardization is not crucial since every opportunity was taken to verify questionable data. Truck drivers' jargon appears to serve three distinct purposes: First, such jargon as or cackle crate enables the truck driver to express complexities without lengthy technical discussions. Second, such expressions as bobtailing a twin screw jimmy enable the truck driver to exclude from his conversation (whether consciously or not) those who are not truck drivers and