0:07 I always thought the danger on the road came from obvious things. Cab robbery, fake cop scams, someone trying to break into the truck bed while I slept in some forgotten corner of I-10. I spent years crossing Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia prepared for that kind of threat. What I never considered was the idea that my truck could be used in crimes without anyone touching it. Without sabotage, without pursuit, without cargo theft, just presence, just volume, just shadow. My setup was a simple horse attached to a white 48-ft box tall enough to block a street camera, long enough to hide two small cars behind it, anonymous enough to blend in with dozens of others at any
0:53 major parade in the Southern United States. I liked just that. Being one of the crowd, driving, parking refueling eating sleeping and leaving without anyone remembering me. That week when it all started, I was hauling boxes of electrical supplies from Houston to smaller depots in Mississippi and Alabama. Dry cargo, clean invoices, nothing that would attract the attention of an armed robber. The biggest problem was the accumulated fatigue. Long shifts, interrupted sleep during busy rest stops, too much caffeine trying to cope. I was in that automatic trucker mode. Total attention to the road and zero curiosity about what was happening outside my rearview mirror. Our first stop was at a large rest area in Louisiana near Lafayette.
1:39 Trucks lined up, family cars, travel trailers, people rushing to and from the bathroom and coffee. I parked my trailer in a side spot with the back facing the tree fence. I went in, used the bathroom, bought a weak coffee and a packet of biscuits. On the way back, I only noticed fresh tire tracks on the ground behind the trailer as if some car had stopped there briefly. I didn't see anyone. I didn't see any cars leaving. I shrugged. Normal traffic. I followed I-10 to Mississippi. In Biloxi, I stopped at a busy gas station, the kind of place where trucks share space with SUVs gleaming with wax and old cars smelling of smoke. I parked near the side of the building, leaving the trailer at an angle that I
2:25 would later discover created a perfect shaded corridor. I spent a few minutes in the cab checking the route and delivery time. In the rearview mirror, I saw a dark sedan pull up behind the trailer, stay still for a few seconds and drive away. I didn't note the license plate. I didn't see a face. I didn't connect it to anything. Just another car adjusting its position in a crowded parking lot. I spent the night at a truck stop in Gulfport with bright lighting and constant noise. In the morning, I did my routine inspection. Tires, seals, locks, lights. Everything normal. No indication of an attempted break-in, nothing out of the ordinary. As I walked around the area, a light-colored SUV slowly passed behind the truck, slowed down, almost stopped,
3:13 waited for a car to leave the adjacent parking space, and disappeared out the side exit. Again, nothing that really warranted attention. But, unbeknownst to me, that kind of movement was starting to repeat itself in different parts of the map. The first real discomfort came in Mobile Alabama. I stopped in a shared parking lot between a restaurant and a small shopping center. It was late afternoon. The sun was low. Long shadows stretched across the asphalt. I parked so that the side of my parking space cast a wide shadow over half of the parking spots. I went inside to eat. While waiting for my food, I overheard the manager mentioning something about police officers requesting footage from the outside cameras earlier that day. I didn't connect it to my truck.
3:59 I thought it was something old, a parking dispute, some kind of accident. When I returned to the yard, I saw only one car slowly pulling out of a parking space very close to the back of my trailer. Engine running, driver looking in the mirror the whole time. The car entered the avenue and disappeared into the traffic. I started the truck, adjusted the seat, and continued my journey. The road swallows details like that every day. You learn to let them go. That night, however, lying in the cab bed at a gas station near Montgomery, the memory of that car kept running through my head along with images of two other vehicles stopping behind me at previous stops. It was in Montgomery that the pattern began to become clear. I stopped at a large gas station with separate areas for trucks and cars.
4:45 I parked in the heavy-duty section, lining up my truck with three others. On the car side, there was constant movement. I was sitting in the cab drinking coffee and fiddling with my phone when I noticed a man walking too fast near the back of my trailer. He was looking behind the truck, to the sides, at the parking lot, as if searching for someone or something. He even took two steps toward the shadow cast by my trailer, stopped, took a deep breath, stepped back, and returned to his own vehicle. He stood there for a few seconds inside the vehicle, motionless, then drove off through the main exit at low speed. That stuck in my mind. There was nothing clearly criminal, but there was tension. The way he looked behind my truck as if
5:30 he expected to find something there bothered me. Hours later, still at the same gas station, I saw two police cars pull in, drive slowly past the pumps, go to the convenience store, and park. The officers spoke with employees, looked at the truck yard, examined a monitor behind the counter, and left. I watched everything from inside the cab with a strange feeling that it was vaguely connected to what had happened earlier. The confirmation came a few days later in Columbus, Georgia. I had made a delivery to a smaller warehouse, and due to a delay in the release of documents, I had to wait in a parking lot that the city used as a truck support area. There were cameras on the poles, those public safety cameras that everyone forgets are there until the day someone needs the footage. A local inspector asked me to park near
6:16 a yellow marking on the ground and wait. That's what I did. I pulled the brake, closed the partial curtain of the cab, and started answering messages on my phone. About 20 minutes later, the same inspector appeared at the side of the booth and asked me to accompany him to the office. Inside, there was a monitor showing images of the parking lot, including the area where my truck was. He rewound the video from a few minutes before my arrival, then fast-forwarded to the moment when I was already parked. The camera showed the white trailer occupying a good part of the scene with its rear facing a car park. At a certain point in the recording, a sedan approached, entered the field of vision, slowed down until it was right behind my truck, and stopped at a point where the roof of the vehicle disappeared under the shadow of the
7:02 parking space. A few seconds later, another car appeared from the side, approaching only partially, so that only part of its bodywork appeared in the image. The two vehicles remained stopped for less than half a minute. One of them left first, to the right. The other waited a few seconds, maneuvered, and went in the opposite direction. From the camera's point of view, it wasn't possible to see what happened within the shadow cast by my trailer. The inspector commented that the police had requested those images because they suspected a license plate swap or the delivery of some object between vehicles right there, using my truck as a visual barrier. I stared at the monitor trying to remember if I'd seen any cars approaching while I was in the cab. Nothing came to mind. To me, the parking lot had been just
7:48 background noise. Engine sounds, tires on gravel, doors slamming, nothing specific. But there, frozen in the images, my truck was the centerpiece of a scene I hadn't noticed. Not as the protagonist, but as a wall. From then on, I became obsessively focused on everything that happened behind the trailer. At a stop near Atlanta, I noticed a white sedan that entered the parking lot too quickly, braked when it saw me, corrected its direction, and positioned itself exactly behind the trailer at a point where a light pole and a security camera were blocked by my structure. The car stayed there for less than 10 seconds. It then drove away slowly as if nothing had happened. In Macon, a dark SUV repeated a similar
8:34 behavior, aligning its rear with the end of the parking space and taking advantage of the side shadow to stay out of the field of vision of those in the convenience store looking out the window. "It could all still be a coincidence," I repeated to myself mentally. Full parking lots, distracted people, poorly executed maneuvers, indecisive drivers. But coincidences began to accumulate in an unsettling way. Different vehicles, different license plates, different times, in different cities, using the same type of approach, stopping for a few seconds behind my truck, staying within a blind spot for cameras and curious eyes, and leaving before anything could be registered as strange. The climax of this happened in Birmingham Alabama. I arrived at a large truck stop in the
9:20 early evening, already exhausted, wanting only to shower, eat something hot, and sleep. Right at the entrance, I saw police cars parked near the main building. It wasn't a traffic stop, it was something more concentrated. Employees seemed tense. There was an unusual movement of people looking at computer screens behind the counter. Even so, I parked where they instructed, aligned the vehicle in the marked spot, pulled the brake, and turned off the engine. I was organizing papers in the cab when two men identified themselves as investigators and asked me to accompany them. I was taken to a small room where several monitors displayed images from cameras in different locations, parking lots, rest areas, gas station yards. In at least four separate recordings, my truck appeared as a common element.
10:07 In one photo, taken in Biloxi, my trailer formed a perfect barrier between the gas station and the avenue while two cars maneuvered behind me, invisible to the main flow of traffic. In another, in Columbus, the scene that the inspector had already shown me, with the two vehicles using my shadow as a curtain. In a third, recorded on a stretch of I-65, a car accelerated to align itself with the side of my box at the exact moment when another vehicle behind seemed to be trying to keep its distance. A few seconds of alignment and then the car that was next to me abruptly changed lanes and exited onto the access ramp, leaving the other alone on the highway. Investigators explained that they had been monitoring a gang for months that used large trucks as mobile components in criminal operations.
10:54 This involved swapping license plates, delivering drugs or money between vehicles, and preparing getaways in monitored areas. They didn't target a specific truck driver. I left that room liberated, but different. I continued driving the same highways with the same common cargo, only now knowing that at any stop, my truck could become a wall, a shadow, or a shield for people who don't even know my name. The crime was never against me. I was just a tool that didn't know it was being used. If you're enjoying these chilling stories, don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel. Turn on notifications so you don't miss any more terrifying tales to come. Now, get ready for another journey down dark and
11:39 mysterious roads. I was driving along I-20 on a humid morning between Shreveport, Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi, when I had the first clear feeling that something was wrong. Not with the truck, not with the engine, not with the road, with the people. More precisely, with what they seemed to know about me. For years, I've driven practically the same route. I leave Dallas, Texas, cross Louisiana, pass through Mississippi, sometimes go down to Alabama, and finish many loads near Atlanta, Georgia. Regular dry cargo, nothing that attracts attention. My truck is a white Freightliner Cascadia, sleeper cab, no stickers, no name on the windshield. I've always preferred to be just another
12:24 one in the line of semi trucks. My routine isn't anything extraordinary, either. I almost always fill up at the same gas stations, have coffee at the same diners, use the same loading docks, and warehouse reception areas. They're places full of people coming and going, drivers arriving and disappearing, attendants changing shifts, security guards distracted by their cell phones. The rule of the road is simple. Everyone sees everyone else for a few seconds and then forgets them. That's why the cashier's comment that morning caught me off guard. I had stopped at a gas station near Monroe just for coffee and to use the restroom. I grabbed a paper cup, filled it with dark coffee from the machine and went to the counter. The cashier scanned the barcode almost without looking at me, and then commented that I would probably mix that
13:11 coffee with unsweetened powdered cream, and top it off with some hot chocolate from the machine next to it, the way I always did when I stopped there. She described exactly how I've been making coffee for years, a way I never discussed with anyone. At the time, I clung to the easiest explanation. Maybe I'd stopped there more times than I remembered. Maybe she had a good memory. Maybe I'd let slip some comment. The word coincidence fit well enough for me to pay, go back to the truck, and let the discomfort dissolve along with the coffee. A few days later in Mississippi, the feeling returned with a different hue. I stopped at a market attached to a small gas station near the highway exit. It was night, a light rain, the parking lot almost empty.
13:57 I grabbed some water and a package of dried meat. At the checkout, the clerk was a skinny boy who seemed more interested in his cell phone than in me. When he saw the truck key in my hand, he commented that the diesel consumption must have improved since I had changed the air filter, especially on the uphill stretches before Vicksburg. I had changed the filter myself in Dallas, in a garage. I hadn't told anyone. Even so, that kid talked as if he'd been monitoring my maintenance. Again, I looked for an acceptable explanation. Maybe there was some kind of marker on the service slip. Maybe the loyalty programs recorded the maintenance. Maybe I'd complained about high fuel consumption at another service stop and the story had spread. I still wanted to believe that was it. In the following days, smaller comments
14:44 began to surface. A dock worker in Alabama mentioned that I always preferred to park in the row closest to the fence, away from the pumps. At another gas station in Louisiana, a cashier commented that he almost never saw me using the showers during peak hours. Small, isolated observations made by people I had never met. None of them alarming on its own. Together, they gave the impression that someone was piecing together a portrait of me from the edges. The point at which this stopped working came on a sweltering night near Augusta, Georgia. I had stopped at a large gas station complex full of neon lights, a 24-hour restaurant, rows of trucks, and pay showers. I did my usual routine, bathroom, quick
15:30 face wash, wrapped sandwich, and soda. In the checkout line, nobody seemed to be paying attention to anyone else. When it was my turn, the middle-aged cashier, her glasses slipping down her nose, scanned the barcode and told her the price. Then, with complete nonchalance, she commented that I must be tired because it was always on those particularly hectic nights that I would only eat half my sandwich, put the rest in the cabin's refrigerator, and sit on the bed for a few minutes staring at the wall with almost all the lights off before finally lying down. That broke through any defenses I still had. Every night after ending the day, locking the cab, and checking the locks, I eat something quick, turn off almost all the interior lights, and sit for a few minutes staring at the
16:16 sidewall, listening to the muffled sound of the other trucks, waiting for my mind to slow down. Only then do I lie down. I've never talked about this. From the outside, if someone passed by, they would see at most a dark rectangle, some diffuse movement, nothing that justified such a precise description. I returned to the truck with the sandwich cooling in my hand. I sat in the driver's seat, engine off, dashboard lights off, listening to compressors, motors, air brakes. For the first time, I couldn't fit it into the box of coincidences. It was too intimate, too specific, said by someone who had never seen me before. After that night, I stopped treating everything as an isolated detail.
17:02 At subsequent stops, I slowed my pace, spending a few minutes observing the counter before going in. I saw attendants commenting on frequent drivers, laughing at quirks, showing pictures of trucks on their cell phones. There was nothing explicitly threatening about it. It was just people killing time on the night shift, but now I knew that, on some level, I was part of the repertoire. Still, I insisted on believing I was exaggerating until the day of the notebook. I was finishing another full loop of Dallas-Atlanta-Dallas when I needed to stop at a gas station I almost never used, off a secondary interstate near a small town. It was early evening, with more small cars than trucks. I paid for a shower, used a private stall, and let the hot water try to lift some
17:47 of the weight off my shoulders. On the way back, I stopped at the coffee machine and filled another paper cup. An employee restocking the snacks on the shelves glanced quickly at the truck key in my hand and commented, as if thinking aloud, that he found it curious that there were still drivers who wrote down in a little black notebook the exact number of miles driven every night before going to bed. The black notebook is the only thing I truly hide. It's kept in an internal compartment behind a divider. Every night after the day ends, I take it out, write down the mileage, the distance traveled, some detail about the weather or the load, close it, and put it away. I never leave this notebook in plain sight when someone is around. It's not a movie-worthy secret. It's just my way of keeping track amidst so
18:33 much repetition. But it's mine, and nobody should know about it. At that moment, there was no more room for systems, service notes, or perfectly angled cameras. The comment was too direct, too much like the last thing I considered private inside the truck. I didn't respond. I grabbed my coffee, sat at a corner table, and watched. The employee continued working, chatting with a colleague, fiddling with his cell phone. Nothing about him seemed aggressive. Nothing suggested an intention to scare me. For him, it was just another curious detail about a truck driver with a notebook. A few days later, near the end of my route, I stopped at one of my oldest gas stations in the Dallas area. It was a place I'd known since the beginning of my career,
19:19 although the faces behind the counter had changed several times. I went in to pay for fuel and grab a coffee. The cashier was new, full of energy for the time of day. He struck up a conversation about traffic on I-20, mentioned that Mississippi had been experiencing heavy rain that week, and said, smiling, that the guys at the chain were always swapping notes about the quirks of truckers on fixed routes. He mentioned a group chat where short stories, photos of trucks, and comments circulated about who always ordered the same thing, who always parked the same way, and who still wrote everything down by hand in a notebook. He said this laughing, as if he were talking about something harmless. Then he mentioned that I was easy to identify because I repeated the same mannerisms in different states.
20:07 There was no dramatic revelation. It was just a comment thrown into the middle of a conversation, as if he were describing some game. But for me, that closed the loop. Suddenly, everything that had been happening made sense in an uncomfortably logical way. There was no stalker. There wasn't someone following me for thousands of miles. There wasn't a single mind piecing together the puzzle. There were dozens of people in gas stations, markets, docks, and reception areas in different states picking up small fragments of me and passing them on. A clerk in Louisiana talks about the coffee blend. A boy in Mississippi comments on the air filter. A cashier in Georgia describes my bedtime ritual. An employee somewhere in
20:52 Texas comments on the black notebook. This information travels in loose conversations, shift audios, photos of trucks in closed groups. When it comes back to me, it seems like proof that someone is watching me. In practice, it's the result of too many people observing from afar for too many seconds. I returned to the truck feeling the smaller cabin. Now, I saw the road as a series of small stages where pieces of myself had been seen, commented on, and reused to fill the void of long shifts. I parked a little further away as I always do. I closed the curtains, adjusted the temperature, let the engine cool down. I sat on the cab bed and tried to repeat my ritual of staring at the wall until my mind went blank.
21:39 But this time, the wall seemed to stare back. I thought about the eyes that had already passed over me between Texas, Louisiana Mississippi Alabama and Georgia. About the number of phrases about me that must be circulating in employee groups, mixed with inside jokes and inventory complaints. I grabbed my black notebook, jotted down the day's miles, the distance traveled, the fact that I'd refueled at the old gas station. Before putting it away, I added a line that had nothing to do with fuel consumption, weather, or schedule. I wrote that I wasn't being chased by anyone, but that the road wasn't exactly an empty place anymore. It was a corridor of fragmented attention, where fleeting glances added together managed to mimic the feeling of
22:25 being truly pursued. I closed the notebook, put it in the compartment, turned off the lights, and lay down. I knew that somewhere between Texas and Georgia, someone would still comment on some quirk of mine as if they'd known me for years. I also knew that for whoever was on the other side of the counter, it would just be another curiosity about yet another trucker. For me, the threat had changed form. It didn't come from the road, nor from the booth, nor from a fixed face in the crowd. It came from the excess of human attention, accidental and real, scattered in pieces so small that no one felt responsible for anything. But added together, these pieces were large enough to transform a man who only wanted to remain anonymous into a
23:10 character in a silent current that crosses states without ever needing to leave his seat behind the counter. I never worried about what happened under my truck. I always thought the danger came from ahead, from a poorly calculated turn, a small car weaving too much, an old truck with no brakes going downhill. The rest, especially the space between the chassis and the asphalt, was just a void that I avoided scraping on speed bumps. My name is Mark Collins, long-haul truck driver. I haul dry cargo between Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, sometimes even as far as Florida when the freight pays well. Boxes, pallets, merchandise that nobody notices. I deliver to logistics warehouses,
23:56 supermarket loading docks, hidden storage facilities at the end of industrial streets. My routine has always been simple. Drive, refuel, eat whatever, find a parking spot, sleep poorly, and repeat the next day. The first crack in this normalcy appeared in Tallahassee, Florida. I had unloaded at a small warehouse, and the next load wasn't until the following day. I stopped at a large truck stop, one of those chain ones with a convenience store packed with ultra-processed food and cheap souvenirs. I parked at the back of the lot, turned off the engine, and passed out in the cab as soon as I rested my head on the floor. In the morning, I did what I always do. I got out on the passenger side and started the inspection. Tire rim airline tank.
24:42 When I got close to the rear wheel, I noticed a pile of trash leaning against the chassis. Crushed snack wrappers, candy wrappers, some cigarette butts, and a plastic bottle cut in half. I didn't remember any of that from the night before. I mentally classified it as trash from an employee or another truck driver, and threw it all in the nearest trash can. A few days later, while driving through Alabama, I stopped to sleep behind a roadside restaurant that accepted trucks in its yard. I ate a tasteless hamburger, drank a lukewarm soda, and went to the cab. I woke up as dawn was breaking, got out, and went to check the truck. Near the same wheel on the same side, there was fresh trash. A torn chocolate wrapper, two extinguished cigarette butts with the same kind of dent at the end, and this time a handprint on the
25:29 floor. Right where nobody puts their hand unless they're leaning on something to get up. It wasn't an old brand. The dust was still displaced. The outlines of my fingers were visible. I stood there for a few seconds looking at it, trying to categorize it as normal. I thought it might be a mechanic who had worked on it in the middle of the night, or a curious employee, but I hadn't seen anyone nearby. I cleaned it up, threw the trash away, and continued on as if nothing had happened. I would have forgotten those episodes if the signs hadn't started following me to different states. At a rest stop in Georgia, I parked between two trucks near the line of trees that surrounded the yard. There was the constant sound of the interstate in the background, and a few crickets trying to compete.
26:15 I slept poorly, as almost always. When I got out in the morning, I went straight to the spot that had already become bothersome. Underneath the tank, there was a cut bottle, food scraps, cigarette butts identical to those I had already seen, and a piece of cardboard spread out like an improvised rug. Shoe prints were concentrated there, in an area where no one can easily walk upright. I bent down further observing the sole. It was very similar to the one I had seen in Alabama. Simple design, more wear on the outer part of the heel. By itself, this coincidence wouldn't mean much. Added to the repetition of trash, position, and type of cigarette, it formed something I could no longer ignore. Still, a stubborn part of my head insisted on explaining everything as bad luck and
27:02 careless people always throwing trash in the same place. At a truck stop in Mississippi, I decided to test reality. I arrived with the last vestiges of light in the sky, and before going upstairs to sleep, I took a complete walk around the truck paying particular attention to under the chassis. There was only general yard grime, old oil stains, a disposable cup far from the wheel. Nothing concentrated on the spot that haunted me. I etched that image into my memory. I went upstairs, locked the door, pulled the curtain, and lay down. I woke up a few times to the usual noises. The engine starting, the truck maneuvering, someone laughing too loudly for the time of day. On one of those occasions, I felt a
27:49 slight rocking motion, different from the movement caused by the crosswind. It felt like an internal contained displacement, like the weight of someone adjusting themselves right beneath me. When the light began to filter through the gap in the curtain, I got out. I went straight to the passenger side, bent down, and looked. The spot I had seen clean the night before now displayed a familiar scene. Cigarette butts from the same cigarette, a crumpled wrapper, a hastily folded grimy piece of cloth, and a smudged but clearly recent handprint. The trail was there. I had just taken too long to follow it. At that moment, the idea of coincidence died. Someone was taking advantage of my long stops to use the space under my truck as shelter.
28:34 They would arrive after I lay down, settle in, leave the same tracks, and disappear before I woke up. They hadn't opened the cab door, hadn't touched the cargo, hadn't moved anything that was mine. They were only using the space, the silence, and my inattention. Instead of running to the gas station manager, I did what drivers used to solving things on their own do. I created my own test. At a gas station near Abilene, Texas, I parked on the side of the road where the lighting was dimmer and there was less traffic. Before [clears throat] getting in, I grabbed a random piece of paper, folded it in four, and placed it under the passenger door step in a spot only someone crawling would see it. I took a picture with my phone showing the paper and part of the chassis, and then I got in.
29:20 The next morning, I got out almost without looking around. I bent down in the same spot. The paper wasn't where I'd left it. It was a few centimeters further in, crumpled, pressed into the mud under the clear mark of a sneaker sole. Next to it, a new crumpled package, a cigarette butt, and a recent scratch of dirt on the metal. The hypothesis became fact. Someone had been living for hours under my truck. Even so, I still hadn't seen his face. That only happened on a nearly deserted night in New Mexico. I was coming from San Antonio heading to a small town near Gallup. It was past midnight when I decided to stop at a simple roadside gas station, one of those with few pumps and a tiny convenience store.
30:05 The parking lot was almost empty. A sedan near the entrance, a pickup truck further away, and a great darkness between one lamp post and another. I filled up the tank, paid, bought some stale coffee and a packet of biscuits to stave off hunger. I parked on the side of the gas station under a tired yellow light. Before getting in, I quickly looked under the truck. Just compacted dust, no recent marks. Reflexively, I grabbed my cell phone and took a picture of the gap between the axle and the ground. I climbed up, locked everything, closed the curtain, and let myself sink into the mattress. I woke up in the middle of the night without knowing why. I lay there, eyes open in the dark, listening. The wind scraped against the metal. Some
30:50 machine made an intermittent noise inside the building. A vehicle passed by on the highway in the distance. Between these sounds, another one appeared much closer. A slight dragging of fabric against metal, followed by a careful adjustment, as if trying to get comfortable without drawing attention. The truck swayed slightly, but I felt it. It wasn't the wind. It wasn't someone climbing the cab ladder. It was weight distributed beneath me. I considered getting out immediately, but I remained motionless. Part of me was afraid of the scene I would find. Another part wanted to understand how far it would go if I didn't intervene. I started sleeping again in short intervals until I noticed the light beginning to penetrate the curtain. Before the alarm went off, I sat up,
31:36 took a deep breath, and opened a crack. The patio was still almost empty. I went downstairs, closed the door with the same noise as always, walked a few steps in the opposite direction, turned back around, and quickly bent down with my cell phone in hand. The flashlight's beam cut through the remaining darkness beneath the truck. First, I recognized the familiar scene. A cut bottle, fresh trash, cardboard spread out as a base. Then, I saw something new. A thin, crumpled blanket occupying the center of that small space, and a small backpack leaning against the axle. Further inside, almost glued to the stringer, was the body. Thin, hunched over, dark coat, cap pulled down. Faces like that go unnoticed at bus
32:22 stations, shelters, soup lines. There, squeezed between the chassis and the ground, it was impossible not to notice. His eyes were wide open. There was fear, but also habit. It wasn't the first time that person had been caught in a similar situation. There was no word, no plea for help, no attempt at intimidation. In a swift movement, the person pulled the backpack against their chest, crawled backward with trained agility, exited through the back of the truck, and stood up, already walking. The coat hung low. The cap remained low. The backpack seemed glued to the body. The pace was quick, but not running. They walked towards the darkness behind the gas station, and in a few seconds,
33:08 disappeared. I remained crouched down, unsure whether to stand up or call someone. The obvious scenarios ran through my head. Calling the police, notifying the employee, reporting it to the police. Nothing seemed to make sense. The person hadn't touched me, the cargo, or the cab. They had simply used the most forgotten space in my truck to exist for a few more hours. When I looked back under the chassis, the blanket was still there, thrown aside. Near the wheel, something small reflected the light from the flashlight. I picked it up. It was a thin, black notebook with worn edges. It must have slipped out of the backpack in the rush of the escape. I opened it right there, resting my hand on the cold metal of the tank.
33:55 The pages were filled from cover to cover with small, cramped lettering. They weren't reports, they were lists. Dates, times, city names, highway codes, gas station locations, rest areas, markets with large parking lots. Next to them, short comments. Good shelter. Camera at the entrance. Very noisy all night. Little activity at dawn. Among the notes, descriptions of trucks emerged. White Volvo dry van, driver sleeps soundly. Red refrigerated Freightliner, leaves before 3:00 a.m. Black Peterbilt with torn tarp, little sway. In some passages, I recognized my own truck without difficulty. White cab with a scratch on the passenger side, blue logo on the trailer
34:40 door, always sleeps more than 6 hours when stopping after 2:00 a.m. Next to it, written in the same dry handwriting, safe haven, frequently returns via the south. Flipping through that notebook, the magnitude of the situation became clear. It wasn't just a few bad weeks. It was months, maybe years, of a routine built upon the routines of truck drivers like me. No plan to steal cargo, nothing about breaking into a cab. What was there was a map of shadows, points on the road where the constant noise and general indifference allowed someone to disappear for a few hours unnoticed. I put the notebook in the cabin and drove the rest of the day with the radio only as background noise. I could call that person a criminal,
35:25 reduce everything to trespassing, and move on with my life. I had an argument for that, but it was impossible not to see something else behind it. A way of surviving, clinging to the road infrastructure, borrowing the roofs of other people's trucks without touching anything but the ground and the metal. After that night in New Mexico, every truck stop took on a new meaning. Rows of trucks began to resemble rows of small, temporary homes, not only for those sleeping in the cab, but for those hiding underneath. In any crowded truck yard, it's easy to imagine how many thin blankets, small backpacks, and similar notebooks might be lying in the unseen shadows of metal. I still keep that notebook in a compartment that almost no one opens. Sometimes I stop at a gas station I
36:11 recognize by name, take out the notebook, and find the corresponding entry on a faded page. The place is still there. The trucking routine remains similar, but the person who wrote it must have moved on, looking for another safe haven, another white horse that sleeps more than 6 hours when it stops after 2:00. The worst part isn't discovering that someone slept under my truck. It's realizing that this probably happened dozens of times before I connected the dots. That while I swore I was alone, there was a body huddled just inches from the ground, listening to the same wind, feeling the same swaying, calculating the next stop based on my watch. Today, every time I park for a long stop in a quieter place, I look under the truck. Not just for safety, but because now I
36:57 know that space isn't as empty as it seems. If the ground is clean, I follow my ritual, climb up, and try to sleep. If I find fresh trash, familiar cigarette butts, neatly placed cardboard, I know the road continues to do what it always did, hide entire lives in the exact places no one pays attention. I continue carrying anonymous cargo from one point to another, racking up miles and wearing out tires. Somewhere out there, perhaps the same person, perhaps another living the same way, continues to scribble descriptions of trucks like mine in an old notebook, using our rest breaks to exist unseen. And that's the part of the road that doesn't fit into statistics or manuals. The certainty that the loneliness we feel in the cab is never as absolute as it seems.
