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

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

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

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

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

A large, attractive rig with lots of lights is called a chicken truck or rooster cruiser. The yellow lights on the side of the truck are called chicken lights if there are a lot of them. A convoy of fast moving trucks 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 Scale, Entry Denied).

It doesn’t stop there.

Orange barrels in a construction zone are called Schneider eggs (Schneider Trucking is an orange color similar to barrels). If drivers warn others at the CB about a DOT inspection later, they will tell them to line up all their ducks. If something is good, it is good to lick your chickens. And, of course, there is no sensation like a mobilization of chickens.

The colonel would be proud.

All this chicken talk goes back to the early days of trucking when chicken haulers had to … well … drag their beak to get chickens from point A to point B before they died. These guys had top-notch equipment and carried their loads quickly. They had a reputation in the past and their legend still influences road transport today, although many don’t know they are the source.

Today’s chicken trucks generally don’t haul chickens. They carry beef, produce, furniture, cars, and other types of cargo, but they recall a time when trucking was fast, light transportation, and trucking jobs were a fantasy.