Truckers Spill the Truth: What Wyoming Drivers Keep Getting Wrong

The original story by Jake Nichols for Cowboy State Daily.

You’re cruising along that long, empty stretch of Interstate 80 — somewhere between Rock Springs and Rawlins — where the landscape is flat, the antelope don’t care you exist, and the cruise control is your best friend. You’re humming along at 88 in an 80, closing in on two semis up ahead.

Just as you slide into the left lane to pass, the first semi suddenly swings out in front of you — sloooowly creeping past the one ahead of it.

Cue the swearing. Cue the brake slam. Cue the spouse waking up and giving you that look.

So… do truckers do this on purpose?

Short answer: usually, no. Long answer: buckle up.

That frustrating moment where a semi cuts into the passing lane right before you get there? Former heavy-haul driver and longtime Bar Nunn trucker Dan Sabrosky says it’s not about messing with you — it’s about physics and company speed limiters.

“Most big-company trucks are governed at 65-66 mph,” Sabrosky explained. “You’ll have one truck capped at 60-62 trying to pass another one stuck at 58-60. That pass can take a while. What you don’t see is he’s been trying to make that pass for the last 20 miles.”

Translation: you’re annoyed now, but that driver has been annoyed longer.

And it’s not just car drivers getting irritated. Truckers get mad at each other, too.

“The courteous thing is for the slower driver to back off a little,” Sabrosky said. “But sometimes guys get stubborn about turning off cruise control.”

Even Sabrosky admits that when he’s not in a truck, the slow-motion semi passing game annoys him too.

“I just want to get from Point A to Point B like everyone else.”

Truckers call cars “four-wheelers” and RVs “roller skates,” and one of the biggest battlegrounds between them is the truck stop.

Most truck stops — Flying J, Love’s, Pilot, TA — are built for semis on strict schedules. But cars and RVs love them too for cheap fuel, food, and restrooms. That’s where the chaos begins.

Long-haul driver Zayy Bullard has seen it all, including a car driver using the truck-only fuel lane to put air in her tires.

“That lane is for us — we’re on the clock,” Bullard said. “Cars have their own place to get air.”

Truckers run on strict “14-hour clocks” monitored by electronic logging devices (ELDs). Time wasted in the fuel bay means time they can’t get back — and potentially miles they won’t make.

And it’s not just cars making truckers crazy. Sabrosky says some new truckers “camp at the pump” — fuel up, then wander inside to shop or eat while blocking everyone behind them.

Then there are the RVs.

“One thing I see a lot is RVs in trucker-only spots,” Bullard said. “Some even park diagonally across two or three spaces so no one parks next to them. Those people know what they’re doing.”

Even other truckers sometimes stir up trouble — like “bobtails” (trucks without trailers) taking full-size spots when bobtail spaces are available.

Most truckers insist the biggest issues happen on the road, not in the parking lot.

Top pet peeves?

• Slow merging (“The on-ramp is for speeding up, not sightseeing.”);
• Lane changing with no awareness;
• Tailgating a vehicle that weighs 80,000 pounds;
• Cutting off a semi, then slamming on the brakes.

“The challenges of trucking are that four-wheelers just don’t understand the dynamics,” Sabrosky said. “It takes us forever to get up to speed and even longer to slow down.”

Bullard agrees:

“I don’t always get over for mergers. I’m not required to. It’s courteous, but if you enter at 35 mph, you’re putting both of us in danger.”

Sabrosky — who drove through the 1970s to 2010s — says the industry has changed a lot.

“Back then, trucking was a vocation. We looked out for each other,” he said.

But deregulation opened the doors to anyone with a CDL. Now, he says, you’ve got drivers with barely six weeks of training — sometimes from halfway around the world — thrown straight onto American highways.

He shared one story:

A Middle Eastern driver pulled up behind him in Arizona and asked for directions — to Tucson.

“You don’t have a map or GPS?” Sabrosky asked.

“No,” the man said. “I was only told to go to Albuquerque and take a right.”

Truckers know they get a bad rap. They also know some of the complaints are fair. But they want drivers to remember one thing:

“It’s easy to make truckers a target,” Sabrosky said. “But everything in your life involves a truck getting it there.”

Your groceries. Your couch. Your Amazon packages. Your car. The materials that built your house.

They all arrived because a truck got them to you — even if it slowed you down on I-80 along the way.