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When businesses shut down, truckers lost work, risked their health to keep America open
May 22, 2020 2 mins, 20 secs
– James Rodgers settles a little deeper into his comfy seat, his steel-toed boot planted firmly on the accelerator as his Freightliner truck roars at 75 mph across Interstate 80.

"There's nothing like that view out of the windshield," he says, looking out the bug-spattered glass.

Rodgers, the owner of a small trucking firm, is one of the 3.5 million truck drivers helping keep America running during the coronavirus outbreak that has already sickened one of his drivers and has kept him from returning home for more than two months straight.

Rodgers says he wishes he had more convenient access to testing, so he could know whether he and his other drivers have already been exposed.

But even as truckers risk their lives to deliver goods to America, their livelihood is threatened by the pandemic. The trucking industry hauls a staggering two-thirds of all freight in the country, moving 10 billion tons of food, toiletries, online purchases and construction materials.

Analysts at fleet management platform Keep Truckin say there's already been a 25% drop in the number of trucks on the road each day since March, and a 20% drop in the number of miles driven, and federal statistics show at least 88,000 truckers lost their jobs in April as businesses shuttered.

He counts himself lucky that he's in a better financial position than most truckers: After he broke his back and was discharged from the Army, he was given his Freightliner by the St.

Truckers like Rodgers say what they could qualify for was immediately snapped up by bigger trucking companies, even as President Donald Trump has praised truckers as "foot soldiers" carrying the nation to "victory" against the virus.

There's no question that driver will soon be eating something delivered on a semi-trailer just like the one Rodgers is driving.

"There's nothing that people touch that wasn't on a truck," Rodgers says, a note of frustration in his voice.

After crossing the city, Rodgers parks at a truck stop for the night.

While other drivers are getting take-out food or having it delivered to their trucks, Rodgers' experience with his sick driver was enough to teach him that being careful is warranted.

He was just awful," Rodgers says.

Rodgers says more comprehensive testing for truckers, along with better access to safety gear like gloves, masks and sanitizer would help him feel better about the future?

He hopes the American public remembers drivers like him: Men and women helping to keep the country running

To get the food from the farm to our tables, they continue to work – sometimes without the protections we’re told are crucial to guard against the coronavirus – to pick the oranges, slaughter the pigs, truck the goods and cook the food, so America can continue to eat.  

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