Picture the startling scene

It could be any truck stop or rest area, at about 11pm, on a warm late summer evening. A large and nearly naked man stands beneath his truck’s ajar passenger door. In his hand he holds a spout that trickles water from the droopy bag which hangs above. He moves it quickly over various parts of his head and body, trying for a decent initial soak. He turns the small lever on the plastic spout to the off position and reaches for his container of Nivea Men Shower Gel – the ‘Energy 24 Hour Fresh Effect’ kind – that sits at the edge of the open door. He squeezes a medium amount into one hand, puts the container down, pours some into the other hand, then speedily spreads it over his exposed body, legs and feet. Within a few minutes he reopens the spout and fastidiously washes away all the gel, making sure to leave no skin untreated. Once satisfied with his work, he looks around, twice, to confirm there’s no one watching. Why would they watch, he wonders. He clumsily pushes his free hand down into his quick-dry shorts and feverishly soaps then washes the parts that will forever be unknown to unfamiliar eyes. All before the water in the bag runs out.

Exposing Myself To Ridicule

This is me these days on the road, shoving modesty aside because there’s no reasonable alternative. I have found that dirtiness and stickiness have driven me to not caring what anyone thinks. It’s simply a means to an end: getting as clean as humanly possible ahead of a good night’s rest in the cab’s bunk, ahead of another day of delivering and picking up freight.

There’s no law that says someone can’t have a short late evening shower at a place of convenience. There’s certainly no such rule that applies to a truck stop or rest area. There are ostensibly no regulations regarding near nudity for the purpose of achieving a reasonable level of personal sanitation.

So, I risk exposing myself to on-lookers, most of whom are other truckers, many of whom are not what I call ‘clean freaks.’ From the outset of implementing my solution to the never-ending question ‘Where the hell will I shower tonight?’, I wondered if any of them would care, or even be appalled by the sight of me in my near glory. Perhaps some would laugh, though maybe not to my face. (I’m six-foot-five, 245 pounds.)

The wonder was assuaged slightly when a trucker stopped recently to talk while I showered. He said he liked my idea and asked where I bought the unit. His accent suggested he was Eastern European, and he was obviously not bothered by my level of undress.

The Handy Bag

I bought my shower bag online, of course. You can buy anything online these days and among the millions of available items is a sturdy Five-gallon PVC material solar camp shower. It cost a paltry sixty-five bucks in total.

I fill it up at home each week and then place it on the truck’s extended dash, on the passenger side, with the tube and spout hanging down onto the floormat in case of drippage. (There hasn’t been drippage so far.) It takes a few hours of sun beating down on it for the water inside to heat up to a reasonable temperature, utilizing the onboard solar panel. It may not have yet heated up to the promised 94 degrees Fahrenheit but it’s been warm enough for me in any outdoor temperature in excess of 65 Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius).

It’s no ‘power shower,’ for sure. But it dispenses water at a reasonable clip, it’s proven to be durable enough, it’s not so heavy that I can’t hang it, and … best of all, it’s handy.

The idea to buy it came to me suddenly this summer. Since I started trucking five years ago, I’ve tired of constantly searching for parking spots in trucks stops just so I could shower for five minutes. Add to that the COVID factor: in a lot of truck stops in the US, there’s been no way to enforce mandatory mask rules, and now there are no proof of vaccination requirements. I began trying to avoid truck stops for anything more than fueling and a few groceries.

I recalled that at my parents’ cottage – long since sold and now fondly remembered – my Mom had a makeshift camping shower hanging in the basement, next to the vintage wringer washing machine that her and Dad hauled from home. She said they pulled it out and used it sparingly, for situations when someone was too dirty to venture into the cottage bathroom shower. (Mom is a clean freak, like me.) Also, it had to be a warm enough day because the combination of outdoor showering and tepid shower warm is uninviting.

I did some research and found a few modern-day camping showers that might offer me salvation. I decided to purchase the inexpensive green solar shower bag with a long tube and a plastic spout. This little beauty was going to be my escape from always having to plan my route according to where I might clean myself.

A couple of months later, I’ve found that it’s worked pretty well. The real challenge is in trying to park somewhere that obscures the passenger side of the truck. The shoulder of a rest area entrance or exits works nicely. Also, parking there means it’s easier to pee without witnesses. (A winking smiley face emoji would work well here.)

Fine Art and Intricate Science

By now, you may have gotten the impression that showering while on the road as a truck driver can be a fine art and even an intricate science. It’s far more complicated than you might imagine. It’s a tale of hygiene, opportunity and willingness to veer well off your route. It’s a quandary with few possible solutions.

Every trucker has a different idea about showering. Some say a truck stop shower once every couple of days is fine, and a ‘wet wipe shower’ takes care of the other days. I say ‘f@#k that idea.’ It’s disgusting. The places we stop to deliver and pick up freight are far too dusty and dirty. Add in the inescapable aroma combo of diesel fuel and oil. I don’t like the idea of sleeping in my clean bunk with any of it on me. Plus, I sweat a lot. There – now you know.

I’m strictly in the ‘shower every day’ camp. I believe that we can – and should – treat ourselves with the same basic human decency granted to (nearly) every citizen in the modern Western world.

But … those damn showers are hardly ever nearby. In many cases, the closest decent one is dozens of miles away. If you’re driving in a populated area – anywhere near Atlanta, for example – you’d better get there before 4:00 or you probably won’t get a parking spot.

Unless you drive one of those extended American cabs with a small bathroom and kitchenette, you don’t have easy access to the ability to shower, or cook, wash dishes, do laundry, or do nearly anything that you take for granted as ‘easy’ within the confines of your warm, comfy home.

The Typical Shower Solutions

At some point during your day of trucking, you decide that ‘tonight’s the night I get a ‘clean hot shower,’ as the Pilot-Flying J franchise likes to advertise on their internal speaker system. You begin a search on your GPS for the nearest truck stop. It may be one you’ve been to before, perhaps many times. Once you’re there, you know you can get a good soaking.

If it’s an unfamiliar truck stop, you hope for the best: a clean and newer private shower room where the faucet rains down consistently hot water with decent intensity.

Either solution has its barriers: What if that truck stop takes you way off your route and takes you many miles from your next day’s destination? What if that truck stop is super busy and you can’t find the aforementioned available parking spot? What if that truck stop has a disgusting magot-filled dilapidated old building? What if you don’t know that it’s a disgusting magot-filled old building until you get there and park, and you’re out of driving time and can’t drive to a less disgusting truck stop with less magots?

What if the unknown truck stop’s showers are old, so dirty that you’re afraid to enter without flip flops, or the shower barely manage to trickle a few warm drops of water down your belly? It’s hard to believe but all these scenarios are in play for the average trucker.

The last barrier, or irritance, is that you must pay for your shower. The price is 12-15 American dollars at most of the chain truck stops and less at independent places. They all let you shower for free if you buy a certain amount of fuel, typically two hundred bucks worth. At the Pilot/Flying J franchise, if you purchase fuel there regularly, you get what’s known as ‘shower power.’ It means you have unlimited showers for the week. But if you miss a week of fueling up – possibly because you went on vacation (God forbid!) – that ‘power’ disappears until you refuel.

Other solutions are to just not have a shower, to wait for tomorrow for a shower, to luxuriate in the wet wipe ‘shower,’ or to have a really quick one while you’re pulled forward in a fuel aisle after you fueled. That solution risks you pissing off the guy who’s fueling behind you and is finished long before you return to move your truck out of the way.

Running Water, Like Gold

As you can see, for truckers, there’s big value in water. Or maybe that’s just me and my insatiable need to be clean and hygienic every single damn day. It’s bad enough that handwashing is a complicated predicament, ever dependent on (at best) a functioning warehouse bathroom sink with soap or (at worst, and more likely) hand sanitizer and wet wipes.

Every single time I get home for the weekend, I’m thankful for the convenience of running water: as much of it as I could ever want or need. I don’t have to pay extra for it. I don’t wonder if it’s from a quality source. I don’t or worry that the sink, faucet or shower stall isn’t sufficiently clean. And I don’t have to walk the length of a dirty and noisy warehouse floor to get to it. It’s a boon that I would have never previously considered, back in the olden ‘before trucking’ days. Back then, I showered like a water junkie, with no consideration for water’s feelings. It was glorious.