Hannah Oswalt
You invite last-minute guests over to your house for dinner. You don’t have enough food, so you head over to the grocery store to get what you need, go home, and prepare a nice meal for your guests. Problem solved.
But what would happen if you went to the grocery store and nothing was there? No meat or potatoes for your guests? Could you go out in your backyard, slaughter your protein of choice, take your vegetables out of the ground, and go back inside to prepare your meal? If you aren’t one of those people who provides their own food, how do you obtain the things you use every day?
Outside of farmers, producers, and packaging plant employees, there’s another important component to the process that is often overlooked: the truck driver—the person who delivers all of those things you use on a daily basis so you have the ease of ordering online or going to the store at your leisure.
Robert Barish, 62, with John Christner Trucking, is this week’s hero. He’s been a truck driver for about 12 years, 7 ½ of them with JCT. Prior to that, he drove for JB Hunt. Barish is usually transporting refrigerated and frozen meats and food, and travels with his handy sidekick, his dog, Zoey.
When asked for his favorite thing about driving, he said, “I like being able to get out there and make my own decisions. Everything changes every day. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been out there, things always change.”
One of Barish’s favorite quotes is, “Kadima,” which is a Hebrew word that means “forward.” “That’s my new model—just move forward, doesn’t matter what, just keep going. Eventually, everything ends up okay.”
That’s not to say that being a truck driver doesn’t present difficulties. “How I’m treated on a day-to-day basis—it’s not as good as it used to be,” Barish says. He said he interacts with a lot of grumpy people. “You deal with traffic all day long, and that’s kind of stressful sometimes, and people get in their head sometimes from long hours of driving and they’ve got things going on that nobody knows about. It’s hard sometimes to not take it personal [sic].”
To overcome getting stuck in his own head and to combat the stresses of driving, he shared, “I listen to classical music, sometimes I’ll just go for a long walk, I do a lot of reading. I do anything to stop thinking about what’s going on with me.” Sometimes, “I just relax. I take the dog for a walk and play frisbee. She loves to play all the time, so that has really helped me.”
Another stressor of the profession is the time spent away from home and loved ones. When Barish was over the road, he spent 3 to 3 ½ months straight away from home, and now that he’s regional, he’s still gone for about a week at a time.
Barish says his favorite thing about John Christner is that, “They listen to their drivers, they take their inputs. They keep us running and keep us paid well, they try to pace as much as they can and keep the business moving and running and that’s a hard balance to make, they can really do a good job here with that.”
Cheryl Owens, Orientation Manager, and also head of Trucker Appreciation Week at JCT, shared a few words about Barish. “He does a great job for us, he’s been with us a long time and we appreciate everything he does. He wouldn’t hesitate to do anything for us and we really appreciate him.”
Barish is humble when told how much he is appreciated, and brought attention to other important jobs in the supply chain. “There’s a whole food chain, if it wasn’t for the farmers growing crops, if it wasn’t for the processing plants in packaging companies, drivers wouldn’t have anything to offer, it’s the whole thing.”
The next time you see a trucker on the road, remember that you wouldn’t have anything you have without their part in the supply chain, and don’t forget Trucker Appreciation Week, September 13th through 18th!
