Interview with an Arizona Trucker

Interview with Strahan the Arizona Trucker was done in the TalkCDL studios in Homosassa FL. We sat down with Strahan and his friend Chantele and talked about his career in trucking.

We talked about CB radios and asked him if he owns one? His reply will stun a veteran truck driver. When we interview truckers we like to ask obvious questions but we sure don’t get obvious answers all the time.

Do over-the-road truck drivers still like to use CB (citizens band) radios to communicate?

That’s a big 10-4, good buddy — although not nearly as much as they did before the days of cell phones and GPS.

Look on any internet trucker forum, and you’ll find rookie drivers frequently asking whether they need a CB.

“And the answer from veteran truckers is always yes, yes you do,”. “As one experienced driver put it, ‘It’s not a dying tool; it’s a forgotten tool by many drivers. Any trucker that gives a damn has a CB.’”

Some would argue with this assessment.

“The CB is dead!” “You will go days without hearing anyone on the radio! It is a shame!”

But you don’t have to search hard to find those who agree.

For those too young to remember, CB radios were the social media of their day, providing a quick and relatively inexpensive way to communicate with family, friends and anyone else who was listening in. Nobody, however, probably would have predicted how wild the craze would become after the Federal Communications Commission established the Class D CB service at 27 megahertz, popularly known as “citizens band,” on Sept. 11, 1958.

Truckers these days are stronger than ever in this writers opinion. Many old timers will say “This generation doesn’t know what they are doing’ but they fail to realize that their generation got the same harsh welcome by the old timers of their young time.