That East Coast run can take this Texas driver away from his 4 and 6-year-old daughters for as long as five weeks at a time. When the harvest begins, he heads to Florida to pick up, and as the season moves north, so does Blankenship, following the crop up through Maryland, Delaware, and into Pennsylvania. But that can take him a thousand miles from home. Nowadays, he tends to haul fresh produce like green beans. Because if an animal gets trampled, 'you're going to pay for half of whatever you lose,' says Blankenship. It also requires knowing how to handle animals, he says, and understanding, for example, what might make cattle skittish and result in injury along the drive. He says moving livestock is some of the hardest trucking work – and not just because of 'the crazy shipping hours' or the risk of tipping over with a top-heavy, double-decker 'bull wagon' carrying 25,000 pounds on each floor. He grew up in a cattle family and started off hauling animals destined for steaks and burgers.

These days, even the most orthodox locavores depend on farmers who depend on truckers to bring them seeds, tools, and machinery.Ĭody Blankenship, owner of 4BTrucking, who operates out of Waco, Texas. The model dates back to the 1930s, he says, when farmers would haul their own product. Many of the drivers who haul produce and livestock across the country every day are small-scale owner-operators, says Dills. In most cases, it's been in the back of a trailer, driven for some distance by one of America's truckers,' says Todd Dills, senior editor of. 'When you sit down to eat at the table, give a little thought to how this food got to your house. Yet the workers who make up one of the largest groups in the American food system rarely get a mention: truckers. Chefs may now be celebrities, farmers our food heroes, and small-batch producers worthy of culinary canonization.

Eat Feed Autumn Winter by Anne Bramley