‘A Big-Rig Career Change’: Boomers Hit the Open Road

Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 09.14.07 | 12:14 PM ET

We’ve all thought about quitting our jobs, filling up the gas tank and giving in to the lure of the open road. Now comes a story not about 20-somethings acting on the urge, but 50-somethings. The Globe and Mail reports that an increasing number of baby boomers are taking up long-haul trucking as a second career. One-third of the drivers at Schneider International, the largest trucking firm in North America, are in their 50s or older—an increase in that age group of 46 percent from two years ago.

“What’s driving these former desk jockeys to pursue second careers on the open road?” asks reporter Patrick White. “Ever since Burt Reynolds first donned a cowboy hat for

Smokey and the Bandit, the 1977 comedy centred on a tractor-trailer delivering bootleg beer, a certain romance has cloaked the life of the rough-and-tumble trucker.”

The drivers White interviewed cited good pay, independence, and, naturally, time spent outdoors as reasons for the shift.

“I’m surrounded by windows and sunshine, looking at some of the most beautiful countryside in the world,” says one recent cubicle-bound convert. “What could be better?”

Photo by dizfunkshinal via Flickr, (Creative Commons).