Word is that truckers got hit with higher taxes for 2018

[A HERETIC I AM]

51. The way I understand the genesis......

Last edited Mon Jun 15, 2020, 01:25 PM - Edit history (1)

Is that it was sort of a case of “familiarity breeds contempt “

Back in the late 70’s when the popularity of CB’s was booming among the general public, the “Breaker Channel - ch 19 - became overwhelmed with traffic, The rise in number of radios in use can be traced to the change in the national speed limit to 55 in 1973. Prior to that, Truck Drivers pretty much had the CB radio to themselves.

The term “Good Buddy” was fairly common parlance back then but with the new and overwhelming number of radio users, the term began to be co-opted by the “4 wheelers” to the point of annoyance.

Side note; The traffic on channel 19 got so heavy that in California, the drivers switched to channels 17 and 15 as their breaker channels in order to get away from the madness 19 had become.

Where and exactly why and by whom the change began is anyone’s guess, but the flash point was the movie “Convoy” as I said before. EVERYBODY in a car thought they were Kris Kristofferson driving a black Mack with a duck hood ornament! “Good Buddy” became so overused that a response from a trucker to a car driver asking for information (where the cops are, etc.) would end up being acrimonious. “Good Buddy? I ain’t your god damned good buddy, pal” etc. etc.

As a way of easily distinguishing between fellow truckers and the general public, the word took on the new meaning I’ve discussed.

Now...some points should be made;

Is it homophobic? Well, yeah, I suppose it is, although I agree with the point made by I think Morgan Freeman who said that it isn’t really a phobia - these people aren’t afraid of homosexuals, they’re just bigoted assholes.

But trucking is a male dominated industry and always has been and as such, has a “macho” image, of this there can be no doubt. Also, you don’t need an advanced degree to drive a truck so this isn’t the most well educated demographic in the country. A certain amount of ignorance and bigotry in this regard must be expected.

So having this large group of individuals, who now feel as if a slice of their space was being overrun by unwanted and unwelcome outsiders, begin to associate an annoying car driver calling them “Good Buddy”, in other words, being unduly familiar, to being gay was a very short step.

It just morphed into this connotation because its usage among truck drivers tailed off dramatically and as such, anyone using that term was immediately identifiable as outside the group.

Does that make sense?

Again, it is now and has been for years, a slur, a pejorative, an insult. Having someone who is not a trucker, say “10-4, good buddy” is taken by truckers as basically saying “Ok, you faggot”. That’s just its meaning these days and that’s not going to change. As I said in one of my other responses, if you don’t believe me, just go to a large truck stop on a night it’s packed to the gills, get on a CB and ask “Are there any Good Buddy’s here tonight?”

You will quickly see I’m not making any of this up.

ONE LAST THING;

It might seem strange to some, and clearly to the person I had the exchange with earlier, why I would get so defensive or worked up over what many obviously see as a harmless phrase.

Here’s why;

Because it comes from a really stupid place, was overused to the point of annoyance and now means something else. The fact that people still use it as if it doesn’t mean what it means, indicates they got their information on the culture of trucking from a horribly badly written movie that ridiculously exaggerated what truckers do and how they conduct themselves, that came out in 1978, and those people seemed to stop learning about the culture right there and then!! It’s fucking stupid and people need to learn it’s stupid, and it means something else now. Like I said, no one reading this would likely call an African American person “Colored” yet that term was very commonly used by white people when they talked about black people about the time the CB boom started.

Words evolve. This term means something else now, and people should stop using it as if it didn’t.

I hope what I have written helps clear up any misunderstanding.

I apologize for the delay in responding, but I am on a trip right now, and my co-driver and I just switched 25 minutes ago.

So...time for bed for me..