Church Home on 18 Wheels

Chaplain Gary Nussbaum bellies up to the lunch counter at a truck-stop restaurant and orders a cup of coffee, ready to strike up conversation. “Where ya’ headed?” is the usual opener, followed by “What’re ya’ haulin’?”

“Just picked up 50 bushel of four-wheeler parts in the Dirty, headed for Shakey Town,” a trucker answers through a blue cloud of cigarette smoke. (Translation: I’m carrying 50,000 pounds of auto parts from Cleveland to San Francisco.)

The chaplain, an ex-trucker and staff member of Transport for Christ (TFC), nods and slips easily into the southwestern twang characteristic of truckers whether they hail from Bangor, Baton Rouge, or Barstow. “Guess you’ll be takin’ I-80 across,” he drawls. “But I don’t envy you crossin’ the Donner this time of year.”

Steering the conversation, Ohioan Nussbaum adds, “There’s a truck stop on 80 just west of the Quad Cities that serves the best apple dumplings in the world. If you stop in, say hi to Chaplain Bob there. He’s a good friend of mine.”

Others at the counter are drawn into the conversation, with topics that might range from axle ratios and electronic governors to the best route through Boston in rush hour. As he pushes his coffee cup away and stands to leave, Nussbaum says, “If any of you drivers want to talk about anything special, I’d be happy to jawbone with you in the chapel office.”

Chapel office? Truck stops once were known mostly for their potholed parking lots, smelly “one-holer” restrooms, and hamburgers dripping with enough grease to keep a fifth wheel lubricated all the way from Waycross to Wichita.

By comparison, today’s truck stops, like the one Nussbaum stakes out, are turnpike Taj Mahals. The larger of the breed boast enough asphalted acreage to accommodate 300 tractor-trailer rigs. The rest rooms are spick-and-span, and the restaurant menus include waist-watcher specials. Only the coffee remains unchanged—thick enough to stick to the teeth and strong enough to keep a driver’s eyes open for 500 miles.

Most of the thousand or so full-service truck plazas across the nation also boast general-merchandise stores, delicatessens, barber shops, and beauty salons. Several house chiropractic clinics and exercise rooms.

They are worlds unto themselves, serving drivers of the big trucks that can’t squeeze into parking lots of the local discount store or gas station. And especially not into the parking lot of the First Evangelical Christian church on Sunday morning.

The Smell Of No. 1 Diesel

Even if he could park, it’s not likely that many churches would eagerly greet the average long-haul driver: his blue jeans and faded Jim Beam T-shirt may reek of diesel fumes and stale cigarette smoke. Other circumstances also contrive to make many of the nation’s 3 million long-haul truckers unchurched and unreached. Tight delivery schedules—made ever tighter by cut-throat competition—preclude long stopovers. Sundays at home are few and far between for most, and nonexistent for several hundred husband-and-wife teams who live in their trucks year round.

“With all the ‘shalt nots’ they face, it’s not surprising that many truckers have very poor self-esteem,” says Bruce Prestidge, a trucker’s son and executive director of TFC, where Nussbaum works. “They don’t mix easily with people outside their circle. To reach them, you have to smell like No. 1 diesel.” And a majority of TFC’s chaplains are ex-truckers who speak fluently the languages of “long haul” and “lonely.”

“Next to lighthouse keeping, truck driving has to be one of the loneliest jobs in the world,” says Nussbaum, who spent a dozen years behind the steering wheel of an 18-wheeler. “You’re confined in a shaky, noisy, smelly cubicle for hours, staring at an endless white line, wishing you were someplace else. Anyplace else.”

For Nussbaum, that “someplace else” is another tractor-trailer rig. But this one isn’t going anywhere. It is permanently parked outside the main entrance of a large truck stop that attracts traffic from two intersecting interstates near Lodi, Ohio. Three-quarters of the 45-foot trailer has been converted into a minichurch—complete with pews, pulpit, and hymnals. A combination office-kitchen-bunk room, where the on-duty chaplain lives, occupies the rest of the space in the nose of the trailer.

“We crank up the tractor every month or so just to make sure it still runs,” Nussbaum admits. “But it’s really only there as window dressing, because we discovered long ago that drivers shied away from coming in if the chapel trailer was standing alone.”

Like the truck stop itself, the chapel is open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Nussbaum shares the duties with another ex-trucker-cum-chaplain, augmented by a trio of volunteers from nearby towns who fill in the off-duty gaps for both men.

“Hurting truckers can’t be put off to accommodate nine-to-five office hours,” says Nussbaum. “Not long ago, one of them burst through the door late in the evening as I was praying with a couple truckers. He shouted, ‘I’ve just driven 600 miles to give my life to Christ. Could somebody pray with me—now?’ ”

Services are scheduled throughout the day on Sunday. Half an hour ahead of time, Nussbaum hurries from truck to truck in the parking lot, urging idling drivers to attend. Usually six or seven respond—mostly Christians. After they sing a hymn or two, the balding, bespectacled chaplain reads from Scripture and gives a short talk.

It’s not a sermon. It doesn’t have three points and a poem. Charles Spurgeon would shudder as the King’s English gets slightly bent out of shape. But the message of God’s love for the lonely comes through the “truckerese.”

Bad News For “Lot Lizards”

During the week, Nussbaum and his counterparts at six other TFC truck-stop chapels spend part of their time conducting one-on-one Bible-study and prayer sessions with Christian drivers.

“For many of them, this is their church home,” says the blue-jeaned chaplain. “It doesn’t have a steeple or a pipe organ, and the smell of liver and onions drifts in from the kitchen exhaust fan around the corner. But this is where they found Christ and this is where they regularly worship.”

Counseling also has top priority, with domestic problems heading the list. While their husbands are a thousand miles away, neglected wives may stray into the arms of a stay-at-home neighbor. “They get fed up trying to be both mother and father,” says Nussbaum. “A long-distance phone call from their ‘main man’ doesn’t make up for facing alone the dozens of little crises and decisions that come up all the time.”

In such cases, Nussbaum acts as a go-between and tries to effect reconciliation by telephone. He may also intercede with the driver’s dispatcher to route the anguished trucker back home. “I tell them, ‘With so much on his mind, this guy’s a menace to everybody on the road. He’s going to spread your truck all over the landscape and maybe kill a few people in the process unless you get him home. Fast!’ ”

Prestidge will have five more truck-stop chapels up and running by the end of the year. And given the recent surge in interest by truck-stop owners, TFC’S goal of setting up 100 by the end of the decade may not be unrealistic. If achieved, it will put a chapel within 250 miles—a half-day’s truck run—from anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.

That’s not likely to make the “lot lizards” and drug peddlers very happy. Despite tight security, they still infiltrate even the most reputable truck stops to sell their bodies and their bags of dope. The presence of a chapel makes them nervous.

“The prostitutes seem particularly offended by the lighted cross on the chapel trailer,” notes Prestidge. “We know of several who have refused to work the same side of the street with us. So our chaplains’ wives are spearheading efforts to get the light of the cross out of their eyes—and into their hearts.”

By Jack Thiessen, editor of Truckers News and Truckstop World.

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