chicken obsessions

There seems to be an obsession with poultry in the trucking industry. No, I’m not talking about chicken fried steak, I’m talking about Chicken Trucks and Chicken Coops and all sorts of chicken-related terms in the truckers vocabulary.

The general public may not know it, but truckers talk a lot about turkey.

Anyone who has ever listened to CB radio knows that truckers have their own language. If a novice driver or tourist dares to step into trucker territory, he’ll quickly discover that he’s not yet one of the herd. It’s what you say and how you say it gives you away.

Truckers have their own way of talking. It’s not diesel fuel, it’s go-go juice. It’s not a logbook, it’s a comic. It’s not a rest area, it’s a pickle park.

But the terms of transportation that revolve around poultry will blow your feathers away.

An attractive large truck with lots of lights is called a chicken truck or a rooster cruiser. The yellow lights on the side of the truck are called chicken lights if there are a lot of them. A fast moving convoy of trucks in the left lane of the freeway is called a left lane chicken train. A truck weigh station is called a chicken coop (when closed, they will say Chicken Loose on Scale, Entry Denied).

It doesn’t stop there.

Orange barrels in a construction zone are called Schneider Eggs (Schneider Trucking has a similar orange color to the barrels). If drivers are warning others in the CB about a DOT inspection later, they’ll tell them to put all their ducks in a row. If something is good, it is good to lick the chickens. And of course, there’s no feeling quite like moving chickens.

The Colonel would be proud.

All this chicken chatter goes back to the early days of trucks when chicken haulers had to…well…drag their beaks to get chickens from point A to point B before they died. These guys had top notch equipment and got their loads in fast. They had a reputation in the past and their legend still influences trucking today, although many are unaware that they are the source.

Today’s chicken trucks generally do not carry chickens. They transport beef, produce, furniture, cars, and other merchandise, but they harken back to a day when trucking was fast, cargo was light, and trucking jobs were the stuff of fantasy.