US trucking industry transforming as Sikh drivers take the wheel
- As a shortage of US truck drivers grows, Sikh immigrants – many driven from India because of religious persecution – are increasingly taking up the job
- Highways are dotted with Indian-American businesses that cater to truckers, as well as restaurants and temples modelled after truck stops back in India
It is 7.20pm when Palwinder Singh rolls into Spicy Bite, one of the newest restaurants in the US state of New Mexico’s rural northwest. Locals in the town, Milan, population 3,321, have barely heard of it.
The building is small, single-storey, built of corrugated metal sheets. There are seats for 20. The only advertising is spray-painted on concrete roadblocks in English and Punjabi. Next door is a diner and fuel station; the county jail is across the road.
Singh – known as Pal on the road – orders creamy black lentils, chicken curry and roti, finishing it off with chai and cardamom rice pudding. After 13 hours on and off the road in his semi truck, he leans back in a booth as a Bollywood music video plays on TV.
“This is like home,” he says.
There are 3.5 million truckers in the United States. California has 138,000, the second most after Texas. Nearly half of those in California are immigrants, most from Mexico or Central America. But as retirement age nears for drivers – the average American trucker is 55 – and a shortage grows, Sikh immigrants and their children are increasingly taking up the job.
Estimates of the number of Sikh truckers vary. In California alone, tens of thousands of truckers trace their heritage to India. The state is home to half of the Sikhs in the US – members of a monotheistic faith with origins in 15th-century India whose followers are best recognised by the uncut hair and turbans many men wear. At Sikh temples in Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside, most worshippers are truck drivers and their families.