Mother Trucker: An Urban Couple Downshifts to Life on the Road

By: Shelley Hamel, David O. Hamel

Narrated by: Shelley Hamel

A true story of how a middle-aged married couple abandon lucrative white-collar professional careers to become long-haul truck drivers for Schneider National in Green Bay, Wisconsin. David Hamel, a mechanical engineer, and Shelley Hamel, past Director of Product Development for the American Girl doll company, decide to ditch their urban life and go to truck-driving school. For David, driving school was a piece of cake. For Shelley, it was murder. Nearly flunking out of truck driving school, Shelley successfully faces her twin demons of double-clutching and 10 nasty gears, and with her talented mechanical engineer husband, David, launches a three-year experiment in alternative living before retirement.

For all those people who long to quit their office jobs, team driving offers an escape not unlike full-time RVing, except you get paid to do it. This how-to guide examines life on the open road, the upside as well as the danger, with many day-to-day details of ways to maximize the freedom of exploration in this non-traditional life. Driving a semi with a 52’ trailer coast-to-coast gives you a view of America like no other, and this book brings you right into the sleeper cab with the Hamels to share stories, tips, and firsthand experience.

©2007 Shelley Hamel and David Hamel (P)2018 Shelley Hamel and David Hamel

Best book I ever read by mistake!

My friend recommended a book by the same name and I ordered this one by mistake. So glad I did. I loved it. Thank you for sharing your experiences and giving me deep insight. Especially now, truckers are some of America’s heroes. Your tenacity is inspiring.

Terrible Narration

It's like she was reading the transcript for the very first time. Would stop mid-sentence as if there was a period there, and then oops! keep going! Distracting to say the least.

Fantastic!

I loved this book! Shelley did a great job narrating, the book was very well organized, and the book expressed its points very clearly so that people who don't drive trucks can understand. I happen to be a truck driver myself, so I love to hear the experiences of others. I'm glad that I found this book! It was very entertaining from start to finish!

Most entertaining - great reader!

This is an amazing story of two determined people who, having decided to work together in an non-office environment for their last job pre-retirement, found truck driving to be the job that would provide adventure, travel and a new experience. A challenging new experience it turned out to be! Great reader, entertaining on many fronts and the inspiring story of a married couple who worked equally to make this new career a success.

Too Many Lists.

This book started out pretty good.
But then it was as if she felt she was back in training, was taking the test, and had to remember and list. E v e r y t h I n g. ..
O v e r a n d o v e r...

At one point I wanted to bash my head against the steering wheel when the list of food they required was recited, and it just went on and on.

This book should have been more about the road stories. Not a manual on how to pass your CDL.

Tedious

The book has some entertaining stories but most of it was excruciating repetitive tales. If they were trying to replicate the monotony of driving a truck for 10 hours a day then they succeeded with flying colors.

Get off of the road

Never should have been on the road putting other drivers at risk. Can’t even shift and pulling onto freeways? Scary. Pathetic.