The Big Idea: Ryan Lowell

Miles of open road, a Big Gulp, and literal tons of steel. A trucker’s life ain’t an easy one, as author Ryan Lowell knows from years of experience as a dispatcher. This experience gave him the ideas and know-how he needed to write his newest novel, Freight. RYAN LOWELL: I spent much of the 2010’s dispatching truckers and writing fiction. Dispatching was not a career path I’d chosen — I’d studied economics in college — but the characters in trucking were undeniably inspiring, and they love to tell stories about the places they’ve been and the crazy shit they’ve seen. Stolen freight is a common subject in the industry. You hear about it all the time. Every driver has a story about witnessing some shady situation at a warehouse or a truck stop. There are rarely cameras in trailer yards or rural lots, and one could easily hide a bag of cash or drugs or guns inside a pallet of cereal or stashed behind a load of furniture for transport across the country. I started thinking (and writing)…