Every September, National Truck Driver Appreciation Week (this year running September 13–19) gives the industry a chance to do something it doesn’t do nearly often enough. We get to stop and say thank you. It’s easy to reduce professional drivers to an obstacle in our way on the interstate, a delivery window, or a blip on a tracking app. It’s much harder to sit with what the job actually costs the person behind the wheel, and what the person behind the wheel does for us and our families.

That’s exactly what Doug Marcello does in “Just a Trucker,” a short spoken-word film Alabama Trucking News produced with Marcello this year, and today we’re honored to share it publicly for the first time. Marcello, a shareholder at Saxton & Stump, is a contributing author for Alabama Trucking News, where his writing typically takes on the legal and regulatory side of the industry.

But “Just a Trucker” is a different kind of contribution entirely: a poem he wrote and narrates himself, set against quiet, real footage of life on the road (a fuel pump in the rain, a flatbed being tarped down in the wind, a driver eating alone at a diner counter at 2 a.m.).

Line by line, Doug builds a portrait of a man who is invisible to almost everyone he shares the highway with (“the car” that passes him, forgets him, never gives him a second thought), and then peels back that invisibility to reveal everything underneath it: missed birthdays, a daughter’s home run watched by an empty seat, a son forgetting his lines onstage while looking for a father who is three states away on I-80. None of it is dramatized. It doesn’t have to be. It’s simply what the job is, for thousands of drivers, every single day.

That contrast, the world’s indifference and the driver’s quiet, constant sacrifice, is the whole point of the poem, and it’s the whole point of Truck Driver Appreciation Week. The men and women hauling freight across Alabama and the rest of the country aren’t asking for parades. Most of them, like the trucker in Doug’s poem, would probably rather just get the load there on time and go unnoticed doing it. But “unnoticed” and “unappreciated” don’t have to be the same thing, and this week is a good excuse to close that gap, with a thank-you, a horn tap of solidarity, or just five minutes to actually watch and read something like this.

Marcello set out to write about the driver nobody sees, and we’re proud to help him put it in front of an audience. Below is the full text of “Just a Trucker,” reproduced in its entirety.

Just a Trucker

by Doug Marcello

The car passed him on the interstate today. Its driver forgot about him before the next exit. No reason to recall. Nothing memorable. He was… just a trucker.

Just a trucker who has been behind the wheel since 2 a.m. And while the car driver slept in a neighborhood that was dark and quiet and dreaming, he was already three states into it. Pushing through the black, keeping his eyes open so theirs could stay closed.

Just a trucker who stood at a fuel pump in January rain, 200 miles back. Diesel smell in his jacket, fingers numb, because the load doesn’t wait for weather, the clock doesn’t stop for comfort.

Just a trucker who missed the birthday and the anniversary and the ballgame when his daughter hit her first home run, and the school play, where his son forgot his lines and looked for him in the crowd for reassurance. But he was on I-80, making sure someone else’s kids had what they wanted under the tree.

Just a trucker who climbed on the flatbed and the wind of March and rustled a tarp over the load and rechecked the securement to protect the load, and more importantly, the families that shared the highway with them.

Just a trucker who cranked the dolly legs in the mud at 4 a.m. at a dock with no lights in a part of town. Nobody drives through by choice. No audience, no acknowledgment. Just the work done right.

Just a trucker who eats alone at a counter. Sleeps where he works, lives in his office, clocks out in his bunk, and wakes up to do it again in the same seat, to provide for his family and so others can have what they need and what they want.

The backbone of everything they have. Everything they ordered, everything they take for granted, delivered by the person they passed on that highway and forgot about before they reach their next exit.

And who does all this?

Just a trucker.

Only a trucker.

Thank you, Doug Marcello, for putting words to what so many drivers live every day, and thank you to every driver across Alabama who is three states into it right now while the rest of us are asleep. Happy National Truck Driver Appreciation Week.