The Truck Driver Who Became a Taxi Driver

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or: Everyone Used to Be Someone Else

It was one of those late evenings coming home from work, from when I was gainfully employed, working in an office. I usually went home late, later than most, after peak rush hour, because I’d negotiated with my employer that I could come in late in the mornings—because I dislike morning traffic and waking too early—and just adjust my work hours so I’d go home later instead.

Yeah, I’m that valuable to the company.

Well, I used to be, until I got exhausted and burnt out.¹

Anyway.

So one late evening going home in a taxi, it was past peak traffic, which meant the truck ban was lifted. A truck ban is these hours when large trucks—semis, the big fuckers—aren’t allowed to travel within the city. Between 7-10am and again 4-8pm. The city’s half-assed attempt at traffic management that mostly just moves the problem around like furniture in a studio apartment.

I was on my way home around 10pm when this huge truck appeared at an intersection, entering a main city road. One of those humongous trucks, like 14-wheelers, the kind that look like they belong in a different size category of reality entirely.

The driver—my taxi driver—he said, “Ma’am, we’ll back up a bit and let the truck go ahead because he needs to make a big turn.”

I said, “Of course, no problem. Those look like tin cans but they can squish us like a bug.”

That’s me bragging my mediocre knowledge of truck physics. My entire understanding of large vehicles summarized in one sentence that’s technically true but reveals nothing.

The driver agreed. “Exactly!”

Then he continued, and this is where it gets good in that quiet way that good things get when you’re not expecting them: “That at the back, that’s called a trailer. And the front with the driver cab, that’s the tractor. It pulls the trailer.”

And then he just… kept going. Talking about the truck’s load capacity. The clearance it needs to make that turn, especially on this highway, which is a 4-lane road with an island and buildings all around, not exactly designed for something that size to maneuver gracefully.

He talked about it the way someone talks about a craft they know intimately. Not showing off. Just… knowing.

So I asked him how come he knows all this.

And he tells me: he used to drive one of those.

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His route used to be Leyte to Cotabato. Back and forth. Delivering mostly agriculture produce.²

Leyte to Cotabato.

That’s not a commute. That’s a life. That’s days on the road, sleeping in the cab, eating at roadside carinderias, knowing every kilometer of highway, every dangerous curve, every place where the road gets bad during rainy season.

That’s years of muscle memory. Of knowing exactly how much space you need, how the weight shifts, how to navigate a 14-wheeler through intersections that weren’t built for anything bigger than a jeepney.

I asked why he’s a taxi driver now.

He said he was already a bit tired. And his old boss, the owner of the company, had passed away. And he didn’t feel like working there anymore.

That’s it.

That’s the story.

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Except it’s not, is it?

Because embedded in that simple explanation is this whole other thing about how people change lives. How expertise doesn’t disappear, it just… relocates. How you can spend years mastering something—driving a fucking 14-wheeler across provinces, knowing the exact physics of turning radius and load distribution—and then one day you’re in a taxi, backing up to let another driver make that turn, and all that knowledge is still there but it’s serving a different purpose now.

He was tired.

His boss died.

He didn’t feel like working there anymore.

Three sentences that contain multitudes. Grief, maybe. Burnout, definitely.³ The end of an era. The death of the person who maybe made that brutal job worth doing, or at least tolerable, or at least the devil you knew.

And so now he drives a taxi. Navigates city traffic instead of inter-provincial highways. Deals with passengers like me who think they understand trucks because they know they’re heavy.

But he still sees the trucks. Still knows them. Still backs up instinctively when one needs to turn because he remembers what it’s like to be the guy in that cab, trying to make a 14-wheeler do a graceful pivot in a space designed for sedans.

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I think about this a lot.

Not just this driver, but all of them. All the taxi drivers who used to be something else. Because they all did, didn’t they? Used to be something else. Used to have a different job, a different life, a different version of expertise that they carried into this new thing.

The driver who used to work in construction and notices when buildings are being put up wrong.

The driver who used to teach and still has that patient explaining voice when giving directions.

The driver who used to farm and talks about weather patterns like they’re reading a language the rest of us forgot.

Everyone used to be someone else.

Everyone carries their previous life around like phantom limbs, still functional, still there, just serving a different body now.

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And here’s the part that gets me—the mundane, tender part that sits in my chest funny—this driver didn’t have to tell me any of that. He could have just backed up, let the truck pass, driven on. Standard taxi driver moves, no narration required.

But he chose to share it. Chose to explain. Chose to let me into this small moment of his expertise, his past life, his accumulated knowledge about trailers and tractors and the specific geometry of large vehicles navigating small spaces.

He chose to be seen, even just for a second, as someone who knows things. Someone who used to do something hard and specialized and is now doing something different but still carries that original skill set around like a well-worn tool he no longer uses daily but hasn’t thrown away.

Because you don’t throw away years of knowing something just because you’re tired. Just because your boss died. Just because you didn’t feel like working there anymore.

You just… find new places to put it. New contexts where it matters, even if it’s just explaining to a passenger why backing up for a truck is the right move.

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I wonder sometimes about his boss. The one who died. Whether they were friends, or just employer-employee in that way where you spend so much time together that the relationship becomes its own weird category. Whether the boss rode along sometimes, or whether it was just understood that this driver could handle the Leyte-to-Cotabato run, could be trusted with the cargo and the schedule and all those kilometers in between.

I wonder if the boss’s death was sudden or slow. If there was time to say goodbye or if it was one of those things where you show up to work one day and everything’s different and wrong and you realize you can’t do this anymore, not without the person who made it make sense.

I wonder if “tired” means physically exhausted from years of driving, or soul-tired from grief, or just tired the way I was tired when I finally admitted I couldn’t keep doing the thing I was supposedly valuable at.⁴

I wonder if he misses it. The trucks. The road. The specific satisfaction of delivering a load successfully, of knowing you moved something important from one place to another, of being the person who could handle the big rig when other people couldn’t.

I wonder if driving a taxi feels small now, or if it feels like relief. Or both. Or neither. Or something we don’t have a word for—the feeling of trading one kind of hard work for a different kind, and not being sure if it’s better or just different.

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But I didn’t ask any of that.

Because you don’t interrogate someone’s past when they’re giving you just the outline. You take what they offer and you hold it gently and you say “thank you for telling me” with your attention, even if not with words.

So I just listened. Watched the truck make its turn—slowly, carefully, exactly the way my driver said it would need to. Watched how he timed our backup perfectly, gave exactly the right amount of space.

All that expertise, still there. Still accurate. Still useful.

Just in a different context now.

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That’s it. That’s the story.

A truck driver who became a taxi driver because he was tired and his boss died and he didn’t feel like working there anymore. Who still knows everything about trailers and tractors and load capacity and turning radius. Who still backs up instinctively when a big rig needs space. Who still sees the road the way someone sees it after years of driving something massive through provinces most people only know as names on a map.

No supernatural element. No dramatic revelation. No moral about resilience or second acts or the American Dream (wrong country anyway).

Just a man who used to do one hard thing and now does a different hard thing, carrying his previous life’s knowledge with him like cargo he’ll never fully unload.

Everyone used to be someone else.

And sometimes, in the back of a taxi at 10pm when the truck ban lifts and the big rigs come out, you get to glimpse who someone used to be. Get to see the shape of their expertise, still visible, like a ghost image that never fully faded.

I’m grateful for these glimpses. These small moments of people’s histories, shared casually, without fanfare, just because the moment called for it.

This is what I mean about taxicab theology. It’s not always about the spectacular. Sometimes it’s just about the profound ordinariness of human lives, the way we all carry our pasts into our presents, the way expertise doesn’t disappear just because the context changes.

Sometimes it’s just a driver who knows about trucks, telling a passenger why we need to back up and let one pass.

And somehow, that’s enough. That’s everything.

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P.S. I think about my own burnout sometimes—the way I negotiated flex hours because I was “valuable,” the way I worked late to avoid morning traffic but really I was avoiding mornings altogether, the slow erosion of “this is fine” until it very much wasn’t. The way I, too, eventually got tired and didn’t feel like working there anymore. Different job, same sentence structure. Same quiet exit from something that used to work until it didn’t.

P.P.S. His boss dying though. That hits different. Because it’s not just burnout, it’s loss. It’s the person who maybe made the hard thing bearable suddenly being gone, and with them, the whole structure that made staying make sense. I hope he’s okay. I hope taxi driving is easier, or at least less lonely. I hope he still sees those trucks and feels something good, some connection to who he used to be, rather than just grief for what ended.

P.P.P.S. Everyone used to be someone else. Everyone’s carrying knowledge from previous lives that they deploy in small moments, casually, like it’s nothing. But it’s not nothing. It’s the accumulated weight of experience, still valuable, still real, even if the context changed. Even if they’re tired. Even if the boss died. Even if they don’t work there anymore. The knowing remains.