For truck drivers, it’s a long and lonely haul

Sanjay Salunkhe has a good laugh recollecting the incident.

It was late in the night and he was driving a truck from Madhya Pradesh and just ready to enter the Chattisgarh border. This was when he noticed a police road block and braked the truck to a stop. It was pitch dark all around with no cop in sight.

Suddenly, a voice from one of the trees startled the living daylights out of Salunkhe. “What are you doing here? Who are you?” it demanded to know. As a light shone down from high in the branches, he figured out that it was someone sitting right up there with a torch.

The man identified himself as a policeman who had planted the obstacle on the road. After checking out Salunkhe’s credentials (whilst remaining on the tree), he told him that it was an asinine idea to drive a truck this late at night into a naxalite-infested zone. “That is when I realised that why he had decided to spend the night on a tree,” he recalls with a laugh.

As I listen to this narrative, it only puts in context how difficult the life of a truck driver in India can be. Along with Salunkhe and his co-driver, Dayanand, we are seated in a 40-tonne MAN truck heading from Pune to Navi Mumbai, a distance of over 100 km.

While I will get off at a spot called Kalamboli, the duo will continue driving on for the next three weeks through the terrain of India till they reach Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh. The drive is part of an endeavour to showcase German truckmaker, MAN’s prowess in the haulage segment and this gigantic vehicle is part of a convoy of five which are traversing different parts of India before wrapping up the marathon in Pithampur (the home for MAN’s plant) on December 12. Salunkhe and Dayanand will traverse through Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana where there will be daily stopovers at depots and dealerships. The people coming here are part of the celebrations where the drivers are felicitated. “It will be a lot of fun and we are looking forward to it,” says Salunkhe.

He has been with MAN Trucks for 11 years now and is, what one would term, a ‘master driver’ or the captain of the ship. This literally means that his daily job includes driver training and looking into every technical/mechanical aspect of the truck’s anatomy. It is not an easy job for sure since these are huge monsters that rumble down the highway with their heavy loads.

This particular trip will yank Salunkhe away from his family for the longest while away thus far. As we begin pulling out of Pune, his wife calls him on his cellphone to say that she will be waiting at a point with the kids to say goodbye. We spot them en route and Dayanand pulls the huge 40-tonner to a stop while Salunkhe bids farewell to his wife and kids. He later tells me that the son was getting emotional but he consoled him saying that he would be back soon.

Just some time prior to this reunion, we had pulled over the truck at a fuel station and it is for the first time that I saw 250 litres of diesel dispensed at one go into a vehicle. The 49-tonner MAN sibling that is accompanying us for the drive takes in a little over 270 litres. Salunkhe tells me that this is good enough for the next 750 km, which means the second refill could be at Surat, Gujarat.

Dayanand and he take turns at the wheel and I marvel at their concentration and skills while navigating the truck, especially during sharp turnings. While this seems like a breeze on the Mumbai-Pune expressway, it is a different ballgame when it comes to negotiating on city roads.

“We know that truck drivers are the most despised community” says Dayanand. “People curse us for blocking traffic and taking up large parts of the road. But does anyone understand how we feel?” It is a wretched life, which includes long, lonely drives coupled with erratic sleeping hours and constantly up against bully cops looking to make a fast buck.

In fact, our truck is stopped by a handful of men in khakis soon after the toll booth on the expressway. Salunkhe is only too familiar with this routine and grins as he gets out of the truck to begin the exercise of arguing and negotiating. It looks as if the cops in Maharashtra take the cake when it comes to demanding moolah from truck drivers though this is perhaps the same rule across the country.

“It is a different picture down south where policemen are a lot more understanding and don’t demand as much,” says Dayanand. Like Salunkhe, he loves his job but admits that getting good truck drivers is next to impossible today. Most of the young lot come from Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal where joblessness is an issue and they are ready to do almost anything to make ends meet.

In the process, it is not as if they are particularly good drivers and this is where ‘driver masters’ like Salunkhe step into the picture, especially when it involves delivery of MAN trucks to customers. “Do you know that truck drivers are right down the wish list in the marriage market? Nobody wants his/her daughter to marry one,” he tells me with a laugh.

I feel small listening to this and think of the number of times I have cursed these drivers while getting stuck in Mumbai’s proverbial traffic jams. The journey with Salunkhe and Dayanand is a humbling experience where I appreciate the fact that this is a community of unsung heroes who carry the burden of the more privileged in our hierarchical-conscious society. As I wave goodbye after getting off, it hits me that the two will be on the roads for a good 5,000 km more.

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