Top Ten Songs for the Road

Delivery work can be a tiresome job at times, and truckers can sometimes feel a little despondent when they’ve got a long road ahead of them, particularly on their way home. Here is a list of the top 10 songs to ease the burden of the return load.....this list is dedicated to truckers everywhere.

#10 Prisoner of the Highway

This song by Mark Wills will inspire any weary trucker on the road doing delivery work. At the start of any trip the amount of driving hours lying ahead can be a little daunting. And the words of Mark Wills empathise with fellow truckers: ‘I've got thirteen hours to make my destination.’ So chin up, truckers, you’ll get there in the end.

#9 Roll Truck Roll

Terry Allen writes a song about working for haulage companies, and Roll Truck Roll captures the spirit of trucking. It also has an element of reality, where the lyrics touch on the importance of keeping a job to support a family: I work for a trucking company / And my forearms big as beef / If it wasn’t for the highway / My family’d be on relief.

#8 Six Days on the Road

Steve Earle’s trucking song Six Days on the Road is a little more intense than the others. Featuring a somewhat rebellious haulage worker, the song focuses on getting home after a six day trip, and the trucker can’t be bothered to complete his log book in the process. The trucker driver in question describes his use of drugs to keep awake on long journeys.

#7 Keep on Truckin’

This trucking love song by Eddie Kendricks uses delivery work as a metaphor. The driver in the song seems to be driving to his love, and he is going to ‘Keep on truckin’, diesel-powered straight to you’. The catchy chorus ’Keep on truckin’ on’ is a good sing-along song for truckers on the road.

#6 Big Ol’ Truck

Another trucking love-song, this time about a female trucker. Toby Keith describes the girl he fancies in his song Big Ol’ Truck, where he describes his trucking heart-throb, singing ‘Yeah I'm in love with the girl in the four-wheel drive.’ It’s an interesting edition to our trucking song list, featuring a female haulage worker this time.

#5 Truck Driving Son of Gun

Red Sovine’s trucker engages in debauchery while on the road for his haulage work. This trucker sings about the fact that he is a ‘kiss stealin' a wheelin' deelin' a truck drivin' son of a gun. In the song he is on his way home with his return load, and he has six more towns (and six more women) to get through before he reaches his home, where he has his steady girlfriend waiting for him.

#4 Will There be Big Rigs in Heaven?

Buck Owens takes trucking songs to a new level, where he describes a haulage worker’s heaven – ‘no more pot-holes, no more scales / no more smokeys on my tail.’ In the fantasy, haulage work is simple with hot showers for every morning on the road, and angelic waitresses at the roadside cafes.

#3 Trucker Man

John Reach sympathises with truckers all over the world in Trucker Man. Describing a trucker on his way home with his return load, he sings ‘Trying to get home just as fast as he can / Those red-eye runs are taking their toll.’

#2 Looking at the World Through a Windshield

Son Volt gives this trucking song a bitter edge, singing ‘I’m gonna write my name in diesel smoke / And let all those behind me choke.’ But the trucker driver in this song is also given a human element, and the song is about how the world passes a haulage worker by through the windshield, even though he has his wife and children waiting for him at home.

#1 Big Wheels in the Moonlight

At number one, the ultimate trucking song is Dan Seal’s Big Wheels in the Moonlight. This song features a man who wishes he was a trucker, and every night stands on the roadside to watch the delivery workers truck on by. Despite his wife, children and steady job, he dreams of a trucker life; ‘Sometimes I close my eyes / And see big wheels in the moonlight.’