The truck driver's watch: time and the working lives of long haul truck drivers in southern Africa

Abstract

The optimal use of time has shaped the organisation of productive activity in capitalist societies. This objective has similarly shaped labour in the truck transport industry. Drawing on mobile ethnographic fieldwork conducted amongst long haul truck drivers in southern Africa, I explore the unique ways in which time is folded into and dictates the greatest part of their lives on the road. While these drivers face a myriad of time-consuming contingencies, they are constantly trying to move between different places in the quickest possible time. In the absence of well-enforced regulations restricting their daily time on the road, they are willing to stretch the limits of their bodies in order to turn every available minute into distance and, therefore, into profit for their employers. This time-discipline is not only externally imposed upon them, but also assumed and internalised to such an extent that they come to pride themselves on their own time-thrift. By drawing inspiration from Burawoy's notion of work as a game, I suggest that we could make sense of truck drivers’ willingness to work as hard as they do by thinking of their work in terms of a quest.

Keywords:

• mobile ethnography
• Southern Africa
• time
• truck drivers
• work
• work as quest