The big change in the last 20 years is that trucks are no longer hard to drive, and you don't have to be a proper truck driver to operate one, as against drive it.
I started on the big stuff in the 70's, tail end of the old era with rough old motors that had no air assistance of anything, no power steering, crash boxes and we roped and sheeted our loads often after hand balling 20 tons onto a flat deck in the pouring rain.
There was also little money in it unless you were born into the right family to get one of the few dead mans shoes jobs going, to make good money you worked all hours God sent and lived like a tramp...hence the old term tramping.
Fewer and fewer old school proper lorry drivers left out there, many of the newer drivers didn't come up through the ranks or the hard way, they used their redundancy money to get an easy well paid job as they saw it, and in some cases had their training paid for by the state.
Many started driving trucks when it became easy, and don't have any pride in their job or their courteous treatment of other road users, and use the vehicle as a weapon in many cases to bully their way about.
Not all obviously and there's some decent people still doing the job, but a badly driven truck stands out a mile and we all get tarred with the same brush.
I suppose the standards of behaviour only reflect the standards of behaviour of car/bike/bus drivers and indeed pedestrians as thats what many present truck licence holders were but a few months previously, courtesy long gone and maybe seen as weakness by some, accidentally jostle someone in the street/pub where it would have been a mutual 'sorry' is now possibly a reason for someone to get violent, same on the road.
Car drivers courtesy is disappearing too, make room, put yourself out for several car drivers and the chances are the driver of the 5 series Beemer is the only one likely to acknowledge, yes i find BMW drivers to be among the most courteous on the road.
Situation, following a line of traffic t'other day behind a tractor, the tractor driver pulled into a clearing to allow us to go by, mine was the only toot of the hooter heard and mine the only hand i saw raised in thanks, reciprocated by the surprised chap.
Courtesy and manners cost nothing and has it's own rewards, i doubt we'll see it's resurgence, but the odd times encountered are a treat.
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