I’m looking out my window searching for inspiration, but my gaze keeps snapping back to the massive cement truck across the way. Let’s be honest: nothing on four (or fourteen) wheels is more intimidating than a cement mixer rolling down the highway, fully loaded with liquid stone. You can’t help but calculate the physics of what that glorious, spinning monstrosity would do to your little roadster if you happened to get in its way. Naturally, this sent my mind wandering down a well-worn path: What, exactly, is the primal attraction between the male species and trucks?
I am no exception to my gender. Like most men, I’ve dreamed of owning a pickup truck all of my life (and yes, it remains at the absolute top of my Christmas list every year). Any truck would do, really—even those bizarre, low-poly, sci-fi Tesla Cybertrucks that look like they were rendered by a 1990s video game. Every truck has its own distinct, rugged appeal. Dump trucks, cement mixers, fire engines, and classic pickups are all high on my list.
Logging trucks, however, are excluded from this romance. Logging trucks always look like they are held together by rust and sheer optimism, perpetually on the verge of dropping a forest onto your hood. I give logging trucks the kind of wide berth usually reserved for radioactive waste.
Perhaps the Creator inserts a specific truck-loving gene into the male DNA at conception. I’m reminded of my son Walter; one of his very first spoken phrases was, “Damn truck.” Apparently, he spent a little too much time in traffic with Suzy.
Ultimately, what would our lives be without these mechanical beasts? Sure, they slow us down in the fast lane, they white-knuckle us on the Interstate, and a modern dual-cab pickup requires about three standard parking spaces just to catch its breath. But trucks represent something deeper.
Philosophers have long searched for the meaning of life in dusty books, but maybe it’s been idling at a traffic light this whole time. A car merely transports your body; a truck alters the topography of the earth. It is the ultimate antidote to human powerlessness. We live in a world where we can barely control our diets, our schedules, or our inbox counts—but behind the wheel of a heavy diesel, you are suddenly the master of inertia.
So, next time the existential dread creeps in and you find yourself questioning your place in the universe, don’t look to the stars. Just imagine yourself behind the wheel of a roaring cement truck, cruising down a long, straight highway, spinning ten tons of wet concrete behind you. If that thought doesn’t instantly pick you right up, you might want to check your pulse.
🤣So funny!
Cement truck; the icon of the built environment – there is a concrete concept you have captured very romantically. Yes, all males have this wanderlust in some form.
I’m on my second truck, and you’re correct: there IS just something alluring about them. Appearance, safety, personality, not to mention the workhorses they are. Get yourself one, Webb. It’ll touch a place you don’t realize is there when you do. 👊