It’s 7:20 p.m. when he rolls into Spicy Bite, one of the newest restaurants here in rural northwest New Mexico.Locals in Milan, a town of 3,321, have barely heard of it
The building is small, single-story, built of corrugated metal
sheets. There are seats for 20. The only advertising is spray-painted on
concrete roadblocks in English and Punjabi. Next door is a diner and
gas station; the county jail is across the road.
Palwinder
Singh orders creamy black lentils, chicken curry and roti, finishing it
off with chai and cardamom rice pudding. After 13 hours on and off the
road in his semi truck, he leans back in a booth as a Bollywood music
video plays on TV.
“This is like home,” says Pal, the name he uses on the road (said like “Paul”).
There
are 3.5 million truckers in the United States. California has 138,000,
the second-most after Texas. Nearly half of those in California are
immigrants, most from Mexico or Central America. But as drivers age
toward retirement — the average American trucker is 55 — and a shortage
grows, Sikh immigrants and their kids are increasingly taking up the
job.
Estimates
of the number of Sikh truckers vary. In California alone, tens of
thousands of truckers trace their heritage to India. The state is home
to half of the Sikhs in the U.S. — members of a
monotheistic faith with origins in 15th century India whose followers
are best recognized by the uncut hair and turbans many men wear. At Sikh
temples in Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside, the majority
of worshipers are truck drivers and their families.
Over
the last decade, Indian Americans have launched trucking schools, truck
companies, truck washes, trucker temples and no-frills Indian
restaurants modeled after truck stops back home, where Sikhs from the
state of Punjab dominate the industry.
“You used to
see a guy with a turban and you would get excited,” says Pal, who is in
his 15th year of trucking. “Today, you go to some stops and can convince
yourself you are in India.”
Three interstates — the
I-5, I-80 and I-10 — are dotted with Indian-American-owned businesses
catering to truckers. They start to appear as you drive east from Los
Angeles, Reno and Phoenix, and often have the words “Bombay,” “Indian”
or “Punjabi” on their storefront signs. But many, with names like Jay
Bros (in Overton, Neb.) and Antelope Truck Stop Pronghorn (in Burns,
Wyo.) are anonymous dots on a map unless you’re one of the many Sikhs
who have memorized them as a road map to America.
Across the street from Spicy Bite, dozens of arriving drivers
form a temporary village of 18-wheelers in a vast parking lot by the
interstate. Most are white. Nearly all are men. More are older than
younger.
But every now and then there are Sikhs like
Pal, with long salt-and-pepper beards, colorful turbans and thick Indian
accents. They head straight toward Spicy Bite.
Lines
can form out the door at the restaurant, which opened two years ago
outside the Petro Stopping Center, a longtime mainstay for truckers
headed east.
Pal makes a point to stop by the restaurant — even just for a “hello” — when he sleeps next door. The Sikh greeting is “Sat sri akaal.”
It means “God is truth.” In trucking, where turnover is high, business
uncertain and risk of accidents ever present, each day can feel like a
leap of faith and an opportunity to give thanks.
Punjabi
Americans first appeared on the U.S. trucking scene in the 1980s after
an anti-Sikh massacre in India left thousands dead around New Delhi,
prompting many Sikhs to flee. More recently, Sikhs have migrated to
Central America and applied for asylum at the Mexico border, citing
persecution for their religion in India; some have also become truckers.
Estimates of the overall U.S. Sikh population vary, placing the
community’s size between 200,000 and 500,000.
In
recent years, corporations have pleaded for new truckers. Walmart kicked
up salaries to attract drivers. Last year, the government announced a
pilot program to lower the age for driving trucks from 21 to 18 for
those with truck-driving training in the military. According to the
American Trucking Assn., the trucker shortage could reach 100,000 within
years.
“Punjabis are filling the gap,” says Raman
Dhillon, a former driver who last year founded the North American
Punjabi Trucking Assn. The Fresno-based group advises drivers on
regulations, offers insurance and tire discounts, and runs a magazine:
Punjabi Trucking.
Like trucking itself, where the threat of automation and the
long hours away from home have made it hard to recruit drivers, the
Punjabi trucking life isn’t always an easy sell. Three years ago, a
group of Sikh truckers
in California won a settlement from a national shipping company after
saying it discriminated against their faith. The drivers, who followed
Sikh traditions by wrapping their uncut hair in turbans, said bosses
asked them to remove the turbans before providing hair and urine samples
for pre-employment drug tests despite being told of the religious
observance. The same year, police charged a man with vandalizing a semi truck at a Sikh temple in Buena Park. He’d scribbled the word “ISIS.”
Still,
Hindi- and Punjabi-language newspapers in the Eastern U.S. regularly
run ads promising better wages, a more relaxed lifestyle and warm
weather as a trucker out West. Talk to any group of Sikh drivers and
you’ll find former cabbies, liquor store workers or convenience store
cashiers who made the switch.
“Thirty
years ago, it was hard to get into trucking because there were so few
people like us in the business who could help you,” says Rashpal
Dhindsa, a former trucker who runs Fontana-based Dhindsa Group of
Companies, one of the oldest Sikh-owned U.S. trucking companies. When
Pal first started, Dhindsa — now a close friend but then an acquaintance
— gave him a $1,000 loan to cover training classes.
It’s
6:36 a.m. the next day when the Petro Stopping Center switches from
quiet darkness to rumbling engines. Pal flips on the headlights of his
truck, a silver ’16 Volvo with a 500-horsepower engine. Inside the rig,
he heats aloo gobi — spiced potatoes and cauliflower — that his
wife prepared back home. He checks the thermostat to make sure his
trailer isn’t too warm. He takes out a book wrapped in a blue cotton
cloth that’s tucked by his driver’s seat, sits on a bed-turned-couch and
reads a prayer in Punjabi for safety on the journey: There is only one God. Truth is His name…. You always protect us.
He pulls east onto the highway as the sun rises.
Truckers either drive in pairs or solo like Pal. Either way, it’s a quiet, lonely world.
Still,
Pal sees more of America in a week than some people will in their
lives. Rolling California hills, spiky desert rock formations, the
snow-dusted evergreens of northern Arizona, the fuzzy cacti in New
Mexico and, in Albuquerque, hot air balloons rising over an orange sky.
There’s also the seemingly endless fast food and Tex-Mex of Amarillo and
the 19-story cross of Groom, Texas. There’s the traffic in Missouri.
After hours of solitude on the road, it excites him.
Pal’s
not strict on dogma or doctrine, and he’s more spiritual than
religious. Trucking has shown him that people are more similar than
different no matter where you go. The best of all religions, he says,
tend to teach the same thing — kindness to others, accepting whatever
comes your way and appreciation for what’s in front of you on the road.
“When I’m driving,” Pal says, “I see God through his creation.”
His
favorite sights are the farms. You spot them in Central California
while picking up pallets of potatoes and berries, or in Illinois and
Indiana while driving through the corn and soybean fields.
They remind him of home, the rural outskirts of Patiala, India.
Nobody
in his family drove trucks. Still, to Pal, he’s continuing tradition.
His father farmed potatoes, cauliflower, rice and tomatoes. As a child,
Pal would ride tractors for fun with Dad. Today, instead of growing
food, Pal transports it.
He wasn’t always a trucker.
After immigrating in 2001 with his younger brother, he settled in Canoga
Park and worked nights at 7-Eleven. After he was robbed at gunpoint, a
friend suggested trucking. Better pay, flexible hours — and less
dangerous.
Three years later, he started driving a rig he didn’t own while
getting paid per mile. Today, he has his own company, two trucks between
himself and his brother — also a driver — and bids on shipments
directly with suppliers. Nationally, the average pay for a trucker is
just above $43,000. Pal makes more than twice that.
He
uses the money to pay for the house he shares with his wife, Harjeet
Kaur, 4-year-old son, brother and sister-in-law, nieces and parents.
Kaur threads eyebrows at a salon and video chats with him during lunch
breaks. Every week before he leaves, she packs a duffel bag of his
ironed clothes and stacked containers of food for the road.
“I
love it,” Pal says about driving. “But there are always two sides of
the coin, head and tail. If you love it, then you have to sacrifice
everything. I have to stay away from home. But the thing is, this job
pays me good.”
The truck is fully equipped.
From the road, you can see only driver and passenger seats. But behind
them is a sleeper cab with a bed that’s 6-foot-7 by 3-foot-2.
Pal
likes to connect the TV sitting atop a mini-fridge to his phone to
stream music videos when he’s alone. His favorite songs are by Sharry
Maan, an Indian singer who topped charts two years ago with “Transportiye.”
It tells the story of a Sikh American trucker who longs for his wife
while on the road. At night, the table folds down to become a bed. Pal
is just missing a bathroom and his family.
The life of a Sikh trucker is one of contrasts. On one
hand, you see the diversity of America. You encounter new immigrants
from around the world working the same job as people who have been
truckers for decades. All transport the food, paper and plastic that
make the country run. But you also see the relics of the past and the
reminders of how you, as a Sikh in 2019, still don’t entirely fit in.
It’s
9:40 a.m. on Saturday when Pal pulls into Bowlin’s Flying C Ranch rest
center in Encino, N.M., an hour past Albuquerque and two from Texas.
Here, you can buy a $19,999 stuffed buffalo, Baja jackets and fake
Native American moccasins made in China in a vast tourist stop attached
to a Dairy Queen and an Exxon. “God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood
plays in the background.
It reminds Pal of
the time he was paying his bill at another gas station. A man suddenly
shouted at customers to “get out, he’s going to blow up this place!” “I
will not fight you,” Pal calmly replied. The man left. Those kinds of
instances are rare, but Pal always senses their danger. Some of the most
violent attacks on Sikhs this century have been at the hands of people
who mistook them for Muslims or Arabs, including the case of a
turban-wearing Sikh man in Arizona who was shot dead by a gunman four
days after the Sept. 11 attacks.
‘You used see a guy with a turban and you would get excited. Today, you go to some stops and can convince yourself you are India.’Palwinder Singh
For
Pal, suspicious glances are more common. So are the truckers who think
he’s new to the business or doesn't speak English. None of it fazes him.
“Everybody
relates to us through Osama bin Laden because we look the same,” he
says, driving across the plains toward the Texas Panhandle. “Or they
think because my English sounds different that I am not smart. I know
who I am.”
Every day, he wears a silver
bracelet that symbolizes a handcuff. “Remember, you are handcuffed to
God. Remind yourself to not do bad things,” Pal says. It reminds him to
be kind in the face of ignorance and hatred.
At
a Subway in Amarillo a few hours later, he grabs his go-to lunch when
he’s taking a break from Indian food: a chicken sandwich on white bread
with pepper jack, lettuce, tomato and onion. At home, the family is
vegetarian. Pal relishes chances on the road to indulge in meat. He used
to depend solely on his wife’s cooking. Today, he has other options.
It’s a luxury to switch from homemade meals to Punjabi restaurants to
fast food.
Trucking has helped Pal find his faith. When he moved to the
U.S., he used to shave, drink beer and not care much about religion. But
as he got bored on the road, he started listening to religious sermons.
Twelve years ago, he began to again grow his hair and quit alcohol;
drinking it is against the faith’s traditions. Today, he schedules
shipments around the temple calendar so he can attend Sikh celebrations
with his family.
“I
don’t mind questions about my religion. But when people say to me, ‘Why
do you not cut your hair?’ they are asking the wrong question,” Pal
says. “The real question is, why do they cut their hair? God made us this way.”
It’s
4:59 p.m. when he arrives in Sayre, Okla., at Truck Stop 40. A yellow
Punjabi-language billboard advertises it as the I-40 starts to bend
north in a rural region two hours from Oklahoma City.
mong the oldest Sikh truck stops, it has a 24-hour
vegetarian restaurant, convenience store, gas station and a housing
trailer that functions as a temple — all spread over several acres.
Pal
has been coming here for more than decade, since it was a mechanic shop
run by a Sikh former trucker who settled on the plot for its cheap
land. When he has time, Pal lingers for a meal. But he’s in a rush to
get to Joplin, Mo., for the night so he can make his drop-off the next
day.
He grabs a chai and heads to the
temple. Resting on a small pillow upon the altar is the Guru Granth
Sahib, the Sikh holy book. An audiotape plays prayers on a loop. A print
of Guru Nanak, the faith’s founder, hangs on the wall.
Pal
prostrates and leaves a few dollar bills on the floor as a donation for
upkeep. He prays for God to protect the temple, his family and himself
on the 891 miles that remain until he hits the Indianapolis suburbs.
“This feels like a long drive,” Pal says. “But it’s just a small part of the journey of life.”
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