There seems to be an obsession with poultry in the trucking industry. No, I’m not talking about chicken fried steak, I’m talking about Chicken Trucks and Chicken Coops and all sorts of chicken-related terms in the trucker’s vocabulary.

The general public may not know it, but truckers talk a lot about turkey.

Anyone who has ever listened to CB radio knows that truckers have a language of their own. If a novice driver or tourist dares to step into truckers’ territory, he will quickly discover that he is not yet one of the herd. It’s what you say and how you say it that gives you away.

Truckers have their own way of speaking. It’s not diesel fuel, it’s go-go juice. It’s not a logbook, it’s a comic. It’s not a rest area, it’s a pickle park.

But the terms of transportation revolving around poultry will blow your feathers away.

A large attractive truck with lots of lights is called a chicken truck or a chicken cruiser. The yellow lights on the side of the truck are called chicken lights if there are a lot of them. A fast-moving truck convoy in the left lane of the highway is called a left-lane chicken train. A truck weigh station is called a chicken coop (when it’s closed, they’ll say Chicken loose on the scale, entry denied).

It doesn’t stop there.

The orange barrels in a construction zone are called Schneider’s eggs (Schneider Trucking has a similar orange color to the barrels). If drivers are warning others in the CB about a DOT inspection ahead, they’ll tell them to line up all their ducks. If something is good, it is good to suck the chickens. And, of course, there is no feeling quite like chickens on the move.

The Colonel would be proud.

All this chicken chatter goes back to the early days of trucks when chicken carriers had to…well…drag the beak to get the chickens from point A to point B before they died. These guys had top tier equipment and got their loads up fast. They had a reputation in the past and their legend still influences trucking today, although many are unaware that they are the source.

Today’s chicken trucks do not generally carry chickens. They transport beef, produce, furniture, cars, and other goods, but they hark back to a day when trucking was fast, cargo was light, and trucking jobs were the stuff of fantasy.