An Interview with J.R. Elrod

I am J.R. Elrod. Thirty-year heavy-haul trucker, army veteran, and president of BAR Transportation LLC out of Mount Pleasant, Texas. I was raised on a farm. Served as a tank gunner on the M60A3 and the M1 Abrams. Found trucking by mistake after the army and never looked back. I have done most every job in the industry, from dragging a van around to hauling cars to one infamous five-day reefer run that is a story for another day.

I am married to Rebecca, my wife of thirty-four years and the woman who edits every word I write. We have raised three kids of our own and a few more who call me Dad anyway.

I am a learning hound. I learned to fly. I learned to turn my own wrenches. I learned the fraud in my industry, and I write about it on LinkedIn when something pisses me off enough to say so. I sleep about four hours a night, which gives me a lot of time to think and write things down.

Frozen Freight Iron Reach is my debut novel. Book two is on the way. Book three is coming after that. Book four is already in my head waiting for the crowbar.

I wrote this book to honor my BAR boys and to show the world that the 80,000-pound torpedo coming down the road is a real person trying to get home to his family or bring you the stuff you buy at Walmart.

I am not a polished writer. I am not trying to be. I write from my heart and from my truck driver head, and if that bothers you, I do not care.

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Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

So, I sit here at 3:30 a.m. the morning after I received your email. I read through your questions and am trying to phrase all this the right way in the hopes you see me. I think, “Wow, they gave me seven days. Lots of time to impress them with bullshit.”

Well, it is now 4:30 a.m. and I’ve made a decision. Not going to do it. Not going to, at the end of the day, lie to the people who asked me straightforward questions. So, buckle up, buttercup, for the best answers you have ever gotten to these questions.

The good Lord gave me a gift, and I am using that gift now. He gave me the gift of gab. I am not an educated man. I am not some author who wrote a book because it seemed like the thing to do. So, sit back, grab your coffee, and be ready to read. If this thing has a max character count, I promise you I will hit it. If it cuts me off, I will leave you in suspense.

This is the reason I wrote this book: I have been writing it in my head for over thirty years.
I found trucking by mistake after I left the army. I still say to this day I will find my forever job one day. But I have a lot of history in trucking. I have done most every job in it. I drug a van around for a few years. I was a car hauler for ten years. I even drug a reefer around for five days. That is a story in itself, funny as hell. When I started, I was given instruction by an old trucker who was in his late sixties. He taught me what it was really like to be a trucker. Another story for another time. From that day, I knew this would be my job forever.

Back then we had a great reputation. People respected the job we did. Fast forward to the early 2000s and guess what. We were depicted as drug-using, alcohol-drinking, coffee-drinking, and pretty much the stuff you get on your boots when you walk into a cattle field. I took it, because I loved my job. Hell, I was good at my job. Better than most, worse than some.

I opened my first company. Fell on my face pretty quickly. Did it again. Same result, just took longer. Met my lovely wife somewhere along the way. Had a daughter somewhere in there. Then I decided, “Let’s try again.” I am nothing if not persistent.

It went well. We did ok. Now to the current. We are doing ok in the horrible market these days. I have a group of guys I call the BAR boys. They are very good at their jobs and I tell them so, religiously. We do all sorts of things, and I need to tell you, I still drive. These guys feel respected and heard.

Now that you see my story, let’s get to the subject at hand. I wrote this book to honor my guys. Also, because I had to get this damn book out of my head. They are in it. I could have replaced them with made-up characters and it would have read the same. But then I would not be honoring the jobs my BAR boys do. We are one big dysfunctional family. One a preacher of sorts. One quiet as a church mouse unless you do him wrong. One that is the jester of the group. Then you have the tape that ties us all together. That is Bret. He keeps us on the straight and narrow.

Yes, my book is fiction. It had to be. Nobody wants to read trucking how-to books or the autobiography of a trucker. I want my book read, again, to honor my guys. Also to show the rest of this fucked up world just how true truckers are. Yes, we are brash at times. Yes, we are coffee drinkers. Yes, maybe we make mistakes. But I do not care what industry you are in. From the janitor all the way to the CEOs of the top companies in the world. Same thing.

So, I sat down one day and just started writing. I did not tell anyone. I got the prologue and chapter one written and then I showed my wife. She read it and let’s just say she was surprised. See, I always told people I was just a dumb old truck driver. Boy did I have them fooled.

Some of the book is made up to a point. But I left Hollywood for Dwayne Johnson and Tom Cruise. That is their world. I made mine real. True life. And believe me, I made a few mistakes in my book. I was like every other indie writer, in a rush to get it to market because I knew it was good. After publishing, I read my book and noticed I left a lot of our job out of it. I have been told it is a great story by a lot of people I trust. I have also been told by truckers, “Hey, you dope, you left this out.” I agreed and apologized. Because I want it to be true and accurate. To help portray us in a better light and to show my readers that we are real people with real issues. That big 80,000 lb torpedo going down the road is a real person who, for the most part, is trying to get home to his family or bring you the stuff you buy at Walmart.

So, this is my story. Like it or not.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I was raised on a farm. Learned from an early age what real work is. My parents taught me to live by my word. Never let anyone tell you that you cannot do something. If you have to, go learn it and prove them wrong. Hard work hurts, but it is rewarding in the end. When you go and stand before God Almighty, you want to be able to say, “I did my best.” That is all anyone can ask of you.

Then it was off to the army. I was a gunner on an M60A3, 19E. Then a gunner on an M1 Tank, 19K. Learned a lot the hard way. I was a redneck in the valley of political correctness, and you have to do what we say. Shocker for me, as a farm boy who knew his job and always told other people how to do it. But I survived it. Not without a few lumps along the way. I still have contact with a lot of my brothers from my unit.

You know why I chose tanks? Because it was something I could not do out in the real world. And honestly, what farm boy could pass up firing a gun that big!

Now, what readers do not know about me. If they follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn this will not be a surprise. I am a learning hound. I love to learn new things. So, I learned to be a pilot. I learned to turn wrenches on my own trucks. I learned about all the fraud in my industry. I only sleep about four hours a night, so that gives me a lot of time to think and write things down.

I have one thing over a lot of this world. I do not need to sleep a lot, and I can survive. That comes from the farm, the army, and, yes, even trucking.

When I write on LinkedIn, people listen. Not because they want to, but because what I post is true. I do not try to teach them. I just point out in plain English what I think. I do not write real polished a lot of the time, because some subject just pisses me off and I tell the world about it.

I really hate social media, to be honest. But this is the way of the world these days. Gone are the days of sitting at the cafe and talking to real people face to face. Now it is likes, follows, and subscribers. Do I agree? Nope, not one bit. But I am adaptable. So, I adapted. And boom, here I am.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

I went through a lot of iterations to get it right. Frozen Trucking Story. Frozen Family. Frozen Road. What The Hell Were We Thinking. After talking it through with my wife and a few other people, we came up with Frozen Freight.

Honestly, the title was the least of my problems. Yes, it took a long time. Anyone who just throws a title on something and says, “That is good,” is not much of a writer, in my opinion. Which is one of many. Maybe someone reads this and gets mad and says something like, “I just knew.” Yeah, ok. You just knew. Keep telling yourself that. Because I just knew, too. After my story was written, after four rewrites and two edits, then I knew. It was in my head, just needed someone with a crowbar to pry it out.

Did it take forever? Well, hell yes, it did. In my head it did. But in truth it took about ten minutes of talking it through with my wife, and then it was right.

What part of publishing your book made it feel real for the first time?

Interviewers, listen up. This still does not feel real. It is just a dream in my head. Yes, I feel it. Yes, I know it is real. But honestly, it will feel real when I start getting more people who email me, or stop me in the street, or review my book somewhere and say, “Hey, I did not know that about trucking.” Or, like a few have said and it made my head not fit through my office door, “I felt like I was in the truck.” Or, “I think maybe I could jump in your truck and have some sense of what is going on in there.”

So, at the moment it still does not feel real. Maybe by the end of book two. Or maybe book three. Or maybe book four. Or maybe not at all.

I do not know. That is a question you will have to ask me later down the road. Then maybe I can answer honestly. We will see.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Hahaha. Every country song written. Loves lost. Wives that left. Wives that stayed even when it got rough. My dog ran away with my ex. My ex ran away with my best friend.

See, in trucking we live all those songs. But we also live God Bless the USA and Support Your Veterans. Because, again, we live it, day in and day out. We love. We lose love. Our dogs run off. We sit around and joke.

So many ways we as truck drivers mirror a lot of songs out there. But you have to pick which song you are like. Hell, everyone on the great big blue marble has to do that.

A good writer, much like a good songwriter, has to pick what they think is the best subject that people are going to feel like they live. So go find your subject and just make all of us feel it.

What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?

What I hope sticks…

I hope they read my book and they see a truck on the road and they are less scared. Listen, folks, there is a lot of negative shit out there these days on trucking. Some of it you should pay attention to. Some of it is just the media doing their blood, guts, and gore bit.

I try and leave the politics and other stuff to the idiots who try to explain away the real issues and point out the stuff that makes everyone go, “Oh my God.” I talk about stuff like respect your drivers. Treat them like they are humans. Not subhumans. Or again, the stuff you get on the bottom of your shoe at a dog park.

Because, folks, we deserve to be respected. If we stop our jobs tomorrow and decide we have had enough of everyone vilifying us, do you know what you get? Do you really? Think about this a minute. Before I give you the true answer, I will wait…

You have nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Bupkis. A big goose egg.

Do you think the groceries at your local market get there magically? Some of you do. Do you think your brand-new Mercedes gets to the lot by someone driving it there? Nope. Wrong. Do you think the medicine that you go to Walgreens gets there by a train? Nope.
We bring it, folks. We spend sometimes weeks and months away from our families and what friends we have left, to make sure you can get your latte from Starbucks every morning. And that you can go to the shoe store and buy those new Jordans.

So, I am going to end this by saying what I want is a little respect for us. That is why I wrote this book. I want people to stop being afraid when they see us standing in front of them at a truck stop when they are paying for your gas, soda, and candy bar. After all, we are real people and we want to do this f*****-up job.

Ok, end of sermon.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Well, folks, now we get to the real gut punch.

Rewarding? People seeing us in a new light.

Meaningful? Shit. I really do not know this answer yet. I am not going to try and make it up either. So, let’s just move on and we can visit this later when I figure it out for myself.

What creative projects are you currently working on?

Well, folks, listen to this! When I wrote book one, Frozen Freight Iron Reach, I honestly thought, “Well, I got one in me, let’s do it.” But after writing it through, and really digging down deep in my nether regions, and then thinking again and praying about it and talking with the people in my life that matter to me, I decided to do a series, so there will be a book two. I hope to have it out by August 27.

Book three, if I can keep up this pace, will hopefully be out for Christmas. Book four, well, let us just say sometime next year for the moment.

See, I have a day job and this ain’t it. This is my hobby of sorts. It lets me tell my story as I use a pickaxe to dig it out of my coffee-filled brain. It is there. Believe me, with everything I have in my head, some of it you want no part of. Hell, I do not want any part of it! But it is me. This is where I draw from when I am at my lowest and need a little pick-me-up. Or maybe when someone else needs a laugh.

I will still work in my trucking company, BAR Transportation. I will still write articles on LinkedIn. I will still connect with my readers on my Facebook page, JR Elrod Author. I will still sit here late one night and decide, “Hey, my author website needs something better because no one is finding it or staying long enough to read who I am or who my guys are!” That is bartransport.net/frozenfreight.

I will work twice a week at the Animal Protection League in Longview, TX. I will still help Janne Owens with her driver website, wethetruckers.com, because she is like me and believes in helping the drivers. Go to the website and check it out! She has the right respect for the drivers. I found her site by accident, and now I am working with her on some ideas to improve her site.

Now yes, I plugged all my sites. And yes, I am shameless for this…NOT!! You asked, and I said.

Now remember, at the beginning I told you about the gift of gab? I did not lie. I promise. Now you can see that! I tell everyone, “Be sure before you ask me a question, you think long and hard how much time you have. Because you should double it.” In closing, I think this is how it goes, just one more item to tie up here. GO BUY MY BOOK!

As always, END OF TRANSMISSION.

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