ReportageOnce a month, Claude Avril, trucker’s son, trucker’s father, trucker himself, still drives his semi-trailer. At 76, he is the herald of a difficult profession, which is aging, struggling to recruit, but remains essential to the consumer society.
Behind the huge windshield, the ribbon of the A85, which dawn makes barely less dark, unfolds like the credits of a road movie. In the passenger compartment, the silhouette of the driver emerges little by little from the darkness as well. Straight back. Arms flat on the steering wheel. Look on the watch, from the top of a seat with pneumatic suspension perched two meters from the asphalt. In the right lane, the DAF XF 530 and its semi-trailer, stamped Transports Suzanne 49, are heading towards the horizon. It is 5:30 a.m. The Vivy toll (Maine-et-Loire) is just a memory. Direction the Var. Twenty-four tons of paving stones to be delivered. Then it will be Italy. To do what ? We’ll see. Freight often varies, although crazy who relies on it. Only certainty: four days of travel. But first, a coffee break in Bourges (Cher). At 76, Claude Avril has his little habits.
A few minutes before departure, he had cupped a personal license plate on the frontispiece of his chest bearing his nickname: “the Elder.” At the Gennes depot (Maine-et-Loire), just before the teams scatter in the night in a minuet of dipped beam lights and flashing lights, all the colleagues had come to greet him. “I am the oldest of the band”, he had whispered, touched by the affection of these big-voiced fellows. However, he had not interrupted his ritual: supplying the travel fridge with meals prepared by his wife, Annick, placing the duvet and the service pillow on the berth, installing the USB key with a view to musical entertainment – Reggiani, Sardou, Brel –, verification of regulatory paperwork, introduction of the professional card in the digital “snitch”. Engine !
“As soon as I take the wheel, I am thirty years youngerhe assures now that the journey is launched. I have been retired since I was 58. I like my house. But the truck is something else. » Every month, he accepts one or two long-distance missions. The most restrictive. Those of pure truck drivers. He adds : “At my age, I have to validate my driving license every year. So far, RAS. » Let’s say it rolls. It makes : “Honestly, do you see me at the nursing home, getting up at 7 a.m., on the balcony all day, with purple hair? » No, honestly, we don’t see it.
Especially since he no longer has a hair on the rock and his profile, highlighted by the orange glow of the dashboard, is reminiscent of that of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), by Francis Ford Coppola. Claude Avril recounts that in Marseilles a port employee announced his arrival as follows: “Let pass the ancestor of transport!” Watch out, it’s a fossil! » But “the Old” is not a case. Five of the fifty drivers of the Suzanne house are over 70 years old. Average age: 50 years old. We just hired a 58-year-old guy.
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