Emilio Aparisi has been driving a truck for 17 years. Based in Calasparra, he took root in this town for love and changed local television for the steering wheel. Through his sound diary, we will follow his route for eight days from Calasparra to Ely, in the United Kingdom. Thus, we will learn about the day-to-day life of this very difficult job and that it has proven essential to maintain the supply chain during the harshest months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Loaded with broccoli in Lorca, your path will take you through highways and roads, through service areas, lonely parking lots and cold industrial estates where, however, any meeting with other colleagues or drivers becomes an oasis to alleviate the loneliness of hours and hours of driving.
During all this time the truck is his place of work and his home. There they take their clothes, their food, their toiletries … It is their resting place and their refuge. “When we get to our town, the truckers say that we come to visit, because our home is the truck.”
Emilio Aparisi, at the wheel of the truck that has taken him from Calasparra to Ely, in the United Kingdom / Cadena SER
Trucks in caravan and rice with rabbit in the parking lot
The radio (and the podcast) do not stop keeping him company at this time, as do social networks, reading or chatting with the truckers who rest with him at each of the mandatory stops they have to make. Thus arise moments of connection in which, in addition to talking about politics, their working conditions or other current issues, they also organize themselves even to prepare a rice (from Calasparra, of course) with a rabbit in a parking lot in Arras, in France.
They are also organized to circulate in a caravan, to get on the ferry … Traffic jams, works, controls are the order of the day. Their routine is not alien to the dangers, not only of road safety, but also to the assaults and robberies to which they are exposed wherever they stop, but also by the mafias that are dedicated to introducing immigrants into their vehicles to reach others. countries.
It is hard work, yes, but he wants the image of the trucker to be very different from what it is today. They are normal people, with family and hobbies, involved in the things of their town. For example, Emilio is president of the Calasparra Fibromyalgia Association and is preparing a national meeting of these groups. “You have to be happy with the work we have and the opportunities that life gives us,” he reflects at the end of his trip diary.
Vehicle of Eurocruz, the company for which Emilio Aparisi works, embarking to cross the Eurotunnel / Eurocruz
The transport sector in the Region of Murcia
The export of fruit and vegetables to the European market is one of the economic pillars of the Region of Murcia. This has led to the concentration of a fleet in the autonomous community with 14,000 heavy vehicles, according to data from the FROET employers’ association. Of these, more than 10,000 are refrigerated semi-trailers that each week export products from the Murcian countryside to other countries.
FROET has also warned that, as is happening in other countries, the sector in Spain and the Region of Murcia is facing the problem of a lack of drivers. This is in addition to the tightening of some conditions for companies, which led the employers to announce a strike for December 20, 21 and 22, which was called off a few hours before starting.
Those that do maintain the call for a strike from the 23rd are the unions UGT, CC.OO. and USO, which with this protest demand that the collective agreement that affects workers in the sector be unblocked, which in the Murcian community has some 2,500 companies.
cadenaser.com
