There's an Evil Kenivel taking pictures at the 38.". "The bear cave is empty tonight so watch out.". Can you guess what I am talking about?? Unless you are a truck driver chances are you probably can not. It is quite difficult to catch on to Trucker Language it if you are not over the road every day. They are regular expressions truck drivers use to talk and that allow them to identify themselves among the rest.
Variations of common words in language are very common among different social groups: politicians, professors, mechanics, artists, they all manage a different vocabulary. This implies the feeling of belonging to something, your own space. This speech is commonly known as slang.
Truck drivers slang in particular is wide, humorous and somehow sarcastic. For example, when referring to police officers, they talk about evil kenivel, bear, smokey, boy scouts. Most of the time, they relate animal with animal features. If they happen to talk about a female police officer, they talk about the city kitty or the mamma bear. A bear in the air is an overhead head patrol. The zoo is the highway patrol headquarters. The buttermilk is a beer.
They can also handle their jargon with a dramatic tone full of tragedy. A suicide jockey is a driver whose job is hauling very dangerous loads, such as gasoline, explosives, caustic chemicals, or nuclear materials. The penalty box is the impoundment area, usually located at the rear of a truck weight station; its where the truck gets inspected, rejected, selected, and/or detected. A juvenile delinquent is someone pretending to be a truck driver.
Whenever a trucker asks Wheres your 20? they are just asking for location. The idiot box is obviously, the T.V. set. Moreover, if you hear something like Look at the seat covers in that westbound roller skate, they are talking about some attractive women they just saw. A willy weaver is a drunk driver, Tijuana taxi a well marked police car and roller skate a small car. And these are just a few examples of all the amount of words and phrases used in the truck driving world.
So, next time someone tells you "Lets go out for some fresh buttermilk" you can put on your coat and walk straight to the nearest bar!