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Starting : whoop 'n' ride : why people choose trucking, and how they prepare -- Rolling : sailboat races : the web of regulations that shape the work of trucking -- Stopping : getting loaded : customers, shippers, receivers -- Rolling : drag and fly : race, racism, and trucking -- Stopping : Jesus, take the wheel : road accidents, PTSD, and fear -- Rolling : grabbing gears : the appeal of constant motion, especially to gay, black, and trans drivers -- Stopping : the pickle park : truck stops and rest areas -- Rolling : draggin' ass : persistence and endurance are working-class values -- Stopping : what's your twenty? : Locating the queer trucker's body

Long-haul trucking is linked to almost every industry in America, yet somehow the working-class drivers behind big rigs remain largely hidden from public view. Gritty, inspiring, and often devastating oral histories of gay, transsexual, and minority truck drivers allow award-winning author Anne Balay to shed new light on the harsh realities of truckers' lives behind the wheel. A licensed commercial truck driver herself, Balay discovers that, for people routinely subjected to prejudice, hatred, and violence in their hometowns and in the job market, trucking can provide an opportunity for safety, welcome isolation, and a chance to be themselves - even as the low-wage work is fraught with tightening regulations, constant surveillance, danger, and exploitation. The narratives of minority and queer truckers underscore the working-class struggle to earn a living while preserving one's safety, dignity, and selfhood.

Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers.

Abstract
Consent and sexuality are shaped by the class and labor contexts in which they emerge. This article imagines how these various overlapping categories operate by turning to particular stories of working-class resistance. How do truck drivers, adjunct professors, steelworkers, and others navigate their jobs and their genders as each produces and shapes the other? Dangerous and insecure labor contexts enable ways of inhabiting a body that are queer and perverse and transformative.

AbstractBig rig work culture includes a growing population of transwomen, many of whom call themselves T-girls. Working within a dense network of company and legal rules, and reaching for the autonomy and isolation associated with the open road, these truckers find stigma, resistance, and self-respect. Many identify with the cowboy ideal of trucking and with the truck itself to both fit into, and rebel against, the changing workforce dynamics of surveillance and technology. Ethnographic data suggest that sex is one form that rebellion takes.