American Truckers Are Getting Squeezed

It’s not easy to stay awake at the wheel when you’re a long-haul trucker. A 1935 National Safety Council paper found that some truckers “used an onion to moisten dry eyelids”; others, to keep from nodding off, “would light a cigarette and sleep until it burned down and awakened them by scorching their fingers.” Jimmy Hoffa once cited the latter strategy in arguing for why truckers should organize with his union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which made its name on trucking. (The word “teamster” and the union’s logo featuring two horses come from the precolonial era’s horse-drawn buggy drivers who founded the union.)