We see thousands and thousands
of trucks go by in our lives. But do we really know what is
to be a truck driver? I pulled some strings and
I met Rafa. For me, there's no problem. An experienced
truck driver that agreed that I could live with him
this entire experience. Now you can see how hard a truck driver's life is
in Spain. You have no idea
of the complications we had to be able to stay for one day. He clearly won't come pick me up
here with the truck. In fact, we're about
two hours from his house. I think I've arrived
at Rafa's house. I think I'm here. Hello. I'm going now,
tomorrow I'll be back. It's a potato tortilla
and well... I already prepared a snack
for tomorrow morning. Well, as it's a trip kinda short he won't take a lot. But during the week, he can take stew,
put it in the microwave, heat it up. He takes some fruit and
milk for the coffee. Anyway, it's the same as in a house,
but he takes it in the truck. And you help him with that?
- Yes, I help him. Are you making coffee? What do you want, espresso, just coffee?
- Espresso. How much time did he take?
- Well, it was awful. The younger children, well... He can stay out all week. At the weekends he's already here,
but before... They brought me the fridge
from Almeria. With fruits and vegetables. And my discharge point
was in Norway. The market of Oslo. The worst was the winter. The winter was very, very hard,
especially for us. Look, my son
behind you... My son was three years old
and I haven't seen him grow up. My daughter is three years old
and I practically didn't see her. I lost all of her childhood. All of it.
I lost all of her childhood. I hope to enjoy it at least
with my grandchildren. Hey. You're angry, aren't you?
I'm taking you out. It's a call of work. Did you take my phone? Here we work out the... The load, the documents of delivery
and departure, everything. We're taking the last load
so we can start the trip. And as soon as we go,
we know we can get there by night. Or else, we can lack time
to arrive tomorrow. So, here is the moment. We are almost ready to leave. This is our truck,
it's Rafa's truck. He's arranging the discs that later
he's going to explain how they work. For about how many hours
are we going non stop? Four and a half. Four hours and a half non stopping
until the disc is over? After four hours and a half, we will
take a 45-minute break. And then we'll continue for
more four hours and a half. And we arrive at the destination. Something important that you have to keep
in mind in this job is that truck drivers
can't drive boundless. As they have some
driving times and resting times. These trucks are obliged
to carry tachographs. It's a kind of device that records any
movement of a vehicle once it's on. So there's the tachograph,
which is like the black box of a plane. It's this device up here. We have ten hours of driving. Daily? Daily, but only twice a week. The rest of the week, that would be
three... of the days
it would be nine hours daily. So we have two days of the week that we have to obligatory stop
for 11 uninterrupted hours And on the other days,
we stop for nine hours. In these nine hours of driving,
or ten, whatever we have, Every four hours and a half, we have to take
a 45-minute break. The problem is
when you arrive at a factory, that is said to be waiting for you,
actually, they never are. You're overwhelmed... You've struggled and you haven't eaten,
you arrive and they don't wait for you. The load isn't ready,
the reference is wrong... The factory has its own schedule
and at 5 pm or at noon or at 12 pm, it depends on the country, they go eat.
They close in the afternoon. They ask you to come in the next day
and you stay there in an industrial state. With no place to eat, to take
a shower, to use the restroom and this isn't registered anywhere. Sometimes they push you
to the weekend. Or you arrive on a Friday... And in some places they tell you
that they can't load. There're problems and
they can't do it until Monday. Imagine Saturday and Sunday, having to look
for a place to park the truck, look for for a truck stop... Where there's at least toilets.
Most restaurants close on weekends. It limits you to be in a truck stop. You have to keep driving
to meet your schedule. And the man in the office don't press
a button in the computer correctly. The reference you have to
load doesn't exist. There is no scruples in leaving
this truck anywhere. In an industrial state, in the middle of
a field, you tell me. This is badly registered. It should be treated more seriously. And if a vehicle arrives, they take
care of it so the driver can get to a restaurant where
there're showers, a monitored parking lot or in conditions
that someone can stay. There're several parking lots,
but not monitored. You have to pay and look for it.
No security. We don't have security. Have there been a lot of robberies? Yes. There's been a lot of
robberies. I... I was sleeping and I woke up with
the cabin light. When I opened my eyes there was someone,
I don't know how old they were. I didn't see their face. They had a mask and a machete. They took my gold chain that I was wearing, they took my watch and my computer
that I had in the truck. You're in your bed sleeping
and see a machete put here in your belly. And sure, it's scary to find
the door's lock broken. Actually, I was a little unprotected. Now with Covid, while people
were confined in their houses we were supplying farms
with food for the animals, supermarkets, gas stations,
raw materials for factories, foundries... Whatever was missing.
But we arrived in closed truck stops. The restrooms were
cleaned once a day. And 300 people used it.
You couldn't get in. The showers were closed,
the restaurants were closed. We couldn't even buy a loaf of bread. Working like this, in fact, is not worth it. They say it's lacking drivers, yes, sure. We were born in this,
we live with this. We've been 37 years and a half
sitting here. Almost 38 years. So we keep doing this. But I try so my son doesn't
have to live like this. It's not worthy working like this. A fun fact: we carry 38 thousand pounds of Haribos,
colored gummy bears. Freaking 38 pounds of
gummy bears. We're about one mile and a half
from the France border. According to Rafa, sometimes they stop us,
sometimes they don't. They're already familiar with
the labels of the truck. Basically, they know all we carry.
So many times it's not done any inspection, I guess.
- Yes, you have to take off the canvas. You have to take it off and they go up. This can take you a long time, no?
- Sometimes it takes 45 minutes. This is the border and,
as you can see, we officially enter France in 490 feet. There it is, the sign of France. We have to watch
the roads to see what we do. This route is more difficult,
they always stop someone. We'll keep some distance. They stopped this one.
This one from Lithuania. They ask for documents and inspection. They usually ask this. This is here. This is the international
shipping document. Okay.
- It's what they ask you. Here you write where you're coming from,
where you're going to, whose the load is, how many pounds of load,
if it's heated, if it's not heated, if the load is dangerous, the time of delivery, everything. Here you specify everything. We just left the road. We're going in
this street that takes us to a restaurant. That is beside the sea. Here we can eat a nice fish, a good meat. So you can't say that
we don't eat well in France. This is daily with trucks.
- Huh? This is daily. The others park pretty bad.
We have to make the turn. So we're going to eat dinner. If you've never gotten in a truck,
this one is... Very high.
I still don't reach the ground. Look the top tip
of the door. Ah, it's possible.
- Yes. Turn around, when you get there,
you go in reverse and you'll get in. Here we're good. And the recording?
- We still have time. The difference with someone we talk,
we chat and hang out. Then we go home and tomorrow
we eat breakfast and greet some of them. How is everything? How is the girl? It's obvious we're going to sleep
in the cabin, but luckily this truck has a bunk bed that. Usually the trucks, I guess, have
this bed below and the one above I suppose they don't.
Yes, they don't. You put your foot here and go up. So you can sleep here
whenever you want. I'll sleep up here and
Rafa will sleep down there. We'll sleep a little and at 6:30 am, 7 am, we leave.
So we'll wake up a little earlier to get a coffee here in the same
restaurant-bar where we had dinner. And we're going to make our deliver.
We have a delivery at 10 am. Obviously, we always have to
arrive a little earlier, thinking ahead. Our idea is to arrive around 9 am, 9:30 am. It's a quarter past six in the morning. Well, we have to get up and
go to work, right. Yes, let's take a coffee. To start the day.
- We still have things to do today. I thought that I would sleep
a lot worse, but... I slept, which is a lot already. Let's go together. So we have breakfast. It's not about having a big truck and having to eat inside of it. People talk a lot about having
a better truck than the other person. To me, there were some people that looked at me better
when I used one like this. Fun fact: to keep it clean, because
the parking lot is full of sand, we leave the shoes in the last
step and close the doors. Go back to the highway in French?
La route... <i>Retourner à la route</i>. <i>Retourner à la route</i>. We're about 80 miles from
our destination, where we have to leave our gummy bears. Approximately, it would be about
two hours, it doesn't take two hours. Just the sun is rising.
- About 12 pm of noon here, we could take the other load,
if there isn't any anomaly. Does it usually have anomalies?
- Yes, it does. We hope that everything happens
how it's supposed to. I hope there's nothing unexpected. I'd like to say that for the short time
I've spent with other drivers I'm glad to see there's much support
among them. At the end, being a truck driver is a job
that know all of the world But also it doesn't know much. At the end, we can say that without
this job, the world wouldn't function. We wouldn't have
the things we have. You can see the highway is always full of trucks that are carrying of everything. All we have needed to be
transported from a place to another. For that, a driver is needed. You have to know that you have to
buy a truck in this job. And to buy a truck... It's almost like to buy a house. On average, it can cost almost a
hundred thousand euros plus... And what we take with us... We're talking about the cabin.
The cabin costs a hundred thousand euros. Good and bad. A little snack.
- Sure. When you're hungry,
split it. Just don't eat it all
or I won't eat too. I'll eat one half. Hey, do you know something? I don't put tomatoes. You have to cut it at home.
- Sure. It's very cool.
Of course I don't put tomato. Too expensive, isn't it? The logistics base is all this
in the right side. Here is marked what we have to do,
the vest, everything. Now, we basically have to wait because we arrived one hour early,
as predicted. Also with a little bit of hope
that sometimes they can unload you before
if there's time. But there're a lot of trucks
in front of us. We're booked at 10 am.
We have one hour left. They gave us this little gadget. It reminds me the tipical
gadget of restaurants. It's basically the same. When this vibrates, it means we can go in to
unload our load. Our 17 tons of gummy bears that
all these trucks basically carry the same. Hello. Hey, a question. I need to make a change,
but I can't make Jaume pick up the phone. It doesn't have signal or
he's unloading. Send him a message, please.
So he doesn't go to Rossi. That's what he has.
I need to make a change. Yes, it's me.
I'm the one here. Is it you that is here? Ok.
And Jaume? Jaume is vaccinating for Covid today. Ok. So I was right to call you. Ok, so don't go to Rossi.
You go to Marseilles. Oh, damn.
Fine. There've been a cancellation
and I got without load. I need to change it. Yeah and I'm stood up. I'm with the boy
recording the video and I'm stood up. Now I have three hours of driving,
to Marseilles more four and a half. Meanwhile, I carry the second. Where's the second? On the coast. Well. Bad. The coast takes two hours
to load the second. If you can't do anything. There's nothing I can do. Change of plans. Because we have to go to Marseilles
to load and... We wait for two hours
to start the job. It seems the gadget bliped. We're here since 9 am. And what time is it now?
- It's 11 am. Right now it's 12:26 pm. We haven't started to unload yet. It's delaying so much. Not only this, but also
they booked us another destination. So it's very likely that neither we can go back home today
nor we can cross Spain. Actually, right now we should be about three hours and a half
to finish the job. You lose all these hours, obsviously.
You can't move. Almost nobody cares
about a truck driver's life. They leave them stooding
for hours and hours before loading,
before unloading. It seems like we already unloaded here
and we can leave. We still don't know to where
we have to go now. But I can tell you that we won't meet
the schedule we had thought. There're a few delays in
our arrival to Marseilles. Yeah. The day looks bad, eh? Today it's bad. Right now, a truck just entered
to be weighted. Then it goes to the factory that
you're seeing right now to load. To load with flour. They'll simply throw pounds and pounds,
tons and tons of flour. I stimate about 20,
20 and something tons of flour. Then we take it
to Girona. We'll eat something. Do you want some?
- Yes. I'll eat the potato tortilla. Let's heat it. It should be said that we're taking a break
while other truck is being loaded. We already have 51 thousand pounds
of flour. Loaded here in the trailer,
but it's 4:43 pm. Doing the math... We won't arrive at Rafa's house. They delayed us a lot. So you have an idea. Because of 20 minutes,
because of doing all this changes, of delaying so much to unload,
Rafa can't sleep at home. On a Friday.
Because of 20 minutes, of the tachograph
and because we left at 9 am. Because at 10 am
you can't drive the truck. It's not because you already
drove the ten hours you could drive. I should stop with eight hours and a half
of work. This is the life we have
here in the truck. We depend on one minute,
on five minutes... Open, open
because I won't stop. We have four hours and 25 minutes
right now. We have five minutes to leave the road, pass through the next toll,
enter the area, park and take off the card
because it starts to rain. This is working against the clock. Stressed... Disturbed... This is... Because of four inepts that
don't do their work in conditions. We have been set aside like this... To at least be able to rest. There aren't two minutes left of life,
but I keep living. It's here, man... What?
What's wrong? I needed to get here. If not, how do I end up? I only have one minute left to park,
otherwise I'll stay here. I can't move. We arrived with one minute spare
at the parking lot. If you surpass this time of driving,
this simply... It gets registered and
when the police stop you, it stands out in the register
and they fine you. We arrived with one minute
in a parking lot that is full. So, of course, right now we're in front of
the hurdle that is closed. And there's nothing we can do. I don't understand.
It's like a paradox. And now what do you do? You can't move the truck.
It's illegal. Also you can't go in here
because it's full. Anyway, in theory I won't
stay the night here. Now I'm looking for another truck driver. If he has time. It's Rafa's friend,
but I don't know how we're going to do. This is him. Hello. Truck driver!
- Pau. It's bad to say goodbye like this,
but... Rafa has 47 years in the highway. 10 hours of daily driving. He didn't see his children grow up. A truck driver receives
approximatelly 1.400€ monthly. Follow me on Instagram.
