Ron and I did some proper trucking the other day, driving 1,200km from Faulkton South Dakota up to Hallock Minnesota and back again. Ron took us up there, traveling east out of Faulkton, following the Minnesotan state-line north through North Dakota before crossing into Minnesota 20 miles short of the Canadian border and into the town of Hallock. I brought us home with nothing in tow.

Our cargo looked a bit pathetic. We needed to deliver a grain cart trailer belonging to another harvest crew but we were also hauling a four-wheel buggy that Greg had sold to a guy up north. The upshot was that we used a huge trailer to move a tiny vehicle and it looked a bit dicky. We got a few sideways looks.

Load aside, it was great for me to get away from the back-roads and onto the bigger highways and interstates. In one respect, the novelty of driving a truck has worn off; it is how I have earned a living for the last six months. However, every now and then, as I’m easing the 18-wheeler out onto the blacktop, snapping through gears or cruising at 65mph, I have a flashback to this time last year when all I was driving was a mouse and a keyboard.

These moments often occur when another truck driver waves at me. Part of me feels underqualified to wave back. For a start, it took me a while to personalise my truckie’s wave. The formula involves a little bit of wave and a little bit of point (toward the direction you're traveling). My wave is a sideways hand flick that starts with five fingers but ends with a pistol point. It's good because it doesn't require too much distance from the steering wheel and, given that it's a small gesture, I don't feel too bad if the other party doesn't reciprocate. Some drivers will slowly raise their whole arm, kind of like they're dismissing a batsman in a game of cricket.

Anyway, technique aside, the wave acknowledges that we have something in common - we drive trucks - and there exists a mutual respect. However I do sometimes feel that my cab misrepresents me, most of all the fact that I am very much a rookie driver.

Yet herein lies something that I love about truck driving: each cab tells a different story. Coming over here, to me truck drivers were dudes that you’d flinch at a little bit when crossing paths at the fuel bowser; hard men in little shorts and blue singlets with tats on their forearms. In the US, they could not be a more diverse bunch of people. For a start, I can correct my gender specific sentences; you come across a lot of women driving trucks. Trev from Dobbins’ crew told me of a woman he saw leaning against her rig who, he thought, would have been in her 80s. I’ve seen huge drivers, tiny drivers, tough guys, geeky looking drivers, mullets, clean-cut drivers, black, white, Latino drivers, drivers with poodles; the spectrum is broad. For many, their truck is all that they own; they live in it, often with a partner and an animal or two, and travel wherever their cargo takes them.

Every now and then I like to have a bit of fun the little detour in my career path. Passing through Aberdeen on our way back to Faulkton I wanted to express that feeling of two-worlds-colliding, so I took the truck to do some shopping at the mall. I insisted on parking amongst the cars, as close as I could get to shops, and stopped for a photo out the front of WalMart on the way out.