Truckdriver Tom

Tom drives a big rig. He gets an order and picks it up. As he drives across the country, past construction sites and on roads being repaired, he joins other vehicles, big and small. Wherever he goes?through towns and cities, on busy highways, over bridges and mountains?he sees all kinds of trucks that are also carrying important goods to people. In scenes both panoramic and detailed, Monica Wellington has painted over sixty different vehicles in her signature bright colors. In this addition to her nonfiction series for the very youngest about people and jobs, she invites readers?especially boys?for a ride on the open road.

When Truckdriver Tom has to collect a special package from the station, all sorts of things happen on the way! Will he make it to the station on time, and what is in the mystery parcel?

Long-haul trucks have been described as sweatshops on wheels. The typical long-haul trucker works the equivalent of two full-time jobs, often for little more than minimum wage. But it wasn’t always this way. Trucking used to be one of the best working-class jobs in the United States. The Big Rig explains how this massive degradation in the quality of work has occurred, and how companies achieve a compliant and dedicated workforce despite it. Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews and years of extensive observation, including six months training and working as a long-haul trucker, Viscelli explains in detail how labor is recruited, trained, and used in the industry. He then shows how inexperienced workers are convinced to lease a truck and to work as independent contractors. He explains how deregulation and collective action by employers transformed trucking’s labor markets--once dominated by the largest and most powerful union in US history--into an important example of the costs of contemporary labor markets for workers and the general public.

Driving is a fact of life. We are all spending more and more time on the road, and traffic is an issue we face everyday. This book will make you think about it in a whole new light. We have always had a passion for cars and driving. Now Traffic offers us an exceptionally rich understanding of that passion. Vanderbilt explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our attempts to engineer safety and even identifies the most common mistakes drivers make in parking lots. Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the quotidian activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological and technical factors that explain how traffic works.

McPhee, in prose distinguished by its warm humor, keen insight, and rich sense of human character, looks at the people who drive trucks, captain ships, pilot towboats, drive coal trains, and carry lobsters through the air: people who work in freight transportation.

In Truck Drivers, beginning readers will learn about the work truck drivers do to move goods around the country. Vibrant, full-color photos and carefully leveled text will engage young readers as they discover where truck drivers work and how they spend their days.

Illustrations and simple rhyming text tell the story of a big truck that gets stuck under a bridge.