Hot Wheels Hot Wheels India’s Long Distance Truck Drivers by Zach Canepari   70,000km of National Highway.  It's about endurance and back sweat.  Thirty-nine hours in a cramped smelly box that vibrates nonstop.  Loud music playing out of shit speakers.  A car horn that constantly blares and a sun that constantly beats a heat so intense it'll stop your breath. It's also about a desperate need to earn.  No education means no options.  Poverty means pain.  Either labour in a field, migrate to a city or drive in maddening circles. This photo-essay is about a country exploding with new things: new money, new ideas, new buildings, new cities, new roads, new powers, new everything.  Those new things are being carried and hauled from one end of the country to the other.  The hauliers are roguish and reckless.  They're both under qualified for such a responsibility and under appreciated for it's execution. Often it's about having a family 1276 kilometers to the north and not having seen them for 22 days.  Not remembering the smell of your wife and not remembering the last time you played with your children. It's totally and completely about the pressure.  Drive fast. Drive hard. Drive without sleep.  Drive on drugs.  Drive in a storm.  Drive drunk.  Done well and you make a pittance.  Done poorly and you get the boot. There are corrupt cops and bandits.  There is hard alcohol and late night alcohol and driving alcohol.  There are drugs to make you relax and drugs that help you endure.  There are ferocious accidents.  There are male sex workers and female sex workers and rumors of a donkey.   But behind all the risks and endurance there are these men.   These men that just stand at the edge with no stability and no support.   And they just stare at you.  You try to stare back but you eventually just look away... A truck is loaded with sand at the Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar in Norht Delhi. Opium, or Booki, is taken orally by the drivers in order to keep them awake during their long drives. A driver in his cab. A driver sits in his truck at the Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar in North Delhi. Trucks trying to move through the Subzi Mandi in North Delhi. A driver waits in his cab while his truck is loaded with vegetables at the Vegetable Mandi in North Delhi. A driver rubs his eyes during a brief stop on the National Highway heading from Delhi to Calcutta. Many drivers are forced to cover extensive distances in short periods and accidents are common because driver's fall asleep at the wheel. Locals in Allahabad wait for a local bus on the National Highway.  At night on the National Highway from Delhi to Calcutta the roads are filled with trucks. A woman washes dishes, using water from a broken water pipe, outside a cement factory in Bhubanesar. Santoshi is a sex worker in Icchapurum, on the Andra Pradesh and Orissa border.  She admits she doesn't know very much about HIV but all her clients have to wear a condom. A truck driver washes his truck at a Dhaba, or roadside restaurant/hotel.  Drivers usually spend more than half of every month on the road. Truck drivers wash themselves at a Dhaba.
All of our advertising is certified by Google and therefore may be viewed safely. The driver of a truck, carrying fresh eggs, crashed and rolled down a hill in Southern Orissa.  No one was injured in the crash.  Accidents are very common for the drivers and pose a considerable threat to citizens as well. A man breaks rocks at a factory in southern Orissa, which will later be ground and hauled away to make new roads. Truck drivers on the border of Andra Pradesh and Orissa, in Icchapuram. Crash. Loading a truck with sugar in Raipur. The Local Police in Raipur at the Transport Nagar in Raipur.  Because the truck drivers have to carry a large amount of cash with them they are often victimized by the Police and by bandits. Truck drivers and sex workers in the town of Joda.  Joda is located in Orissa and is part of India's Iron Ore Belt. Workers load a truck with manganite from a mine in Joda. Joda is located in Orissa and is part of India's Iron Ore Belt.
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