THIS WAS NEVER MY PLAN
Before there was a truck, there was simply the road. Good music, a few solid hours behind the wheel and a few hundred kilometres ahead of me could do me more good than many a day of rest. I drove, I sang, I sorted out my thoughts and for a while I disconnected from everything I had left behind. The road gave me a sense of freedom. One day, I thought that maybe I would get all the driving licence categories someday. Not because I dreamed of working behind the wheel of a truck. Not because I wanted to change my life. Simply for myself. For the satisfaction. For fun. The plan was simple: get the licences, enjoy the sense of achievement and put my driving licence away in a drawer. It sounded perfectly reasonable. Except that life, as it later turned out, had completely different plans for that drawer…
AN IDEA THAT HAD TO WAIT
For a long time, this idea stayed somewhere in the back of my mind. It came back from time to time, but it was never important enough for me to rearrange my other plans around it. The reason was very simple — money. Getting a truck driving licence was not a cheap whim, and I could always find something more sensible to spend that money on. Especially since, at that point, I did not connect those qualifications with any career change. They were supposed to be just for me. So I waited. With no specific date, no pressure and no plan for when I would actually do it.
Then one day I came across information about a project funded by the European Union, which offered free training for a category C driving licence. At that moment, I had only one thought:
"This is my chance."
THIS TIME, THERE WERE NO EXCUSES
Since the biggest obstacle until then had been the cost, and suddenly that obstacle was being removed for me, it was hard to find a sensible reason to tell myself “maybe someday” yet again. I applied for the project and was accepted without much trouble. Interestingly, it was a little easier for women to get into the programme at the time. One of its goals was to increase the number of women in transport, so each group was supposed to include at least one female participant. There were not many women interested, so in practice that worked in my favour. As a result, I ended up in a group of eleven people and I was the only woman. I was working in IT at the time, so being in a strongly male-dominated environment was already something I knew quite well and it did not make much of an impression on me. But the fact that I was actually starting a truck-driving course? That was something completely new. At last, I could make another one of my dreams come true.
IN THEORY, EVERYTHING MADE SENSE
From the very beginning, theory was the part of the course where I felt really comfortable. Everything seemed logical, well organised and simply interesting to me. I like to know how things work, so instead of learning regulations or rules by heart, I tried to understand them. I remember that during one of the classes, the instructor said to the guys:“Gentlemen, stick with this lady. She knows everything.”It was quite funny because I was the only woman on the course, and yet when it came to theory, I often stood out from the rest of the group. I have to admit that it made me really happy at the time. Not because I wanted to prove anything to anyone, but because I could see that I was genuinely doing well in a completely new subject. Especially since I had no previous experience with trucks. I did not know them from a professional perspective, I did not grow up around transport, and I had no practical experience behind me. At that stage, everything was going really well. And I think that was exactly why my first driving lesson was going to surprise me so much.
AND SUDDENLY I FORGOT HOW TO DRIVE
I was incredibly excited about my first driving lesson. At last, I was going to sit behind the wheel of a real truck and see what it was actually like in practice. I got in, looked around the cab and for a moment I had only one thought in my head: “Wow. I’m really doing this!”And then something absurd happened. Suddenly, I forgot how to drive. I mixed up the pedals, started doing things I would never normally do as a car driver, and for a moment I had no idea what was happening to me. All the confidence I had built up during the theory lessons simply disappeared. The instructor looked at me as if he had just started wondering whether someone had accidentally put me on the wrong list of participants. At one point, the expression on his face said it all. I didn’t want to let it throw me off, though. If I didn’t believe I could do this, I wouldn’t be here,” - I said. After that first lesson, I was really disappointed. Not because of anything the instructor had said, but because I had expected much more from myself. The first day had not gone the way I had imagined…
LESS STRESS, MORE CONTROL
Fortunately, my first driving lesson did not turn out to be a sign of disaster. With each lesson, the stress became smaller and I started to understand better how the truck reacted and what it required from me. Slowly, I stopped fighting with the vehicle and started working with it instead. Starting off, turning, manoeuvring and judging its size became easier and easier. What had seemed huge and slightly unfamiliar at first started to become more predictable. I began to understand that a truck was not simply a large car, but a completely different vehicle with its own dynamics, its own limitations and its own rhythm. Once I started to feel that, driving stopped being a constant struggle. Interestingly, it also helped a lot that I had a different instructor almost every time. Each of them taught a little differently, focused on different things and added another piece to the puzzle. At first, I saw this as a disadvantage. Later, I began to treat it as an advantage. The more different tips I received, the faster I began to understand what really worked for me. Somewhere along the way, that initial feeling of chaos disappeared. Control started to take its place.
And on my very last driving lesson, I ended up with the same instructor I had started the course with. The one who had looked at me with obvious doubt during my first lesson. This time, he watched me drive, turn and manoeuvre, and after a while he asked: “When did you learn how to do all this?” I smiled. Because I knew the answer was simple — I just didn’t give up.
DRAWER? I WASN’T SO SURE ANYMORE
Driving a truck simply started to appeal to me. The more time I spent behind the wheel, the more I wanted to get back into the cab and keep trying. I already knew that if I managed to get my licence, I did not want it to end with just a piece of plastic lying somewhere in a drawer. That did not mean, however, that I suddenly planned to change my whole life and become a full-time truck driver. Nothing like that. In my head, it looked much calmer: a short route from time to time, maybe some occasional work, a few hours or a day behind the wheel — more for pleasure than as a new way of life. The drawer was no longer the obvious ending to this story. First, though, I still had to pass the exam. And that, as it later turned out, deserved a story of its own…
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