Home
slideshows
miscellaneous
A 26-year-old socialist running for congress says he lived in his truck with his wife for a year while saving up money to run

A 26-year-old socialist running for congress says he lived in his truck with his wife for a year while saving up money to run

As an owner-operator, Collins owned his truck and operated as a small business.

The truck was a Freightliner Cascadia, which comes with a sleeper cab and a 40-inch by 80-inch bed.

Source: Cascadia

Collins, his wife, and their husky moved into the truck for the trip.

Collins and his wife are both licensed as truck drivers, so they would switch off to maximize driving time.

"My 'good trucking story' is something that repeats all over the country, all the time. A lot of people don't know this, but truck drivers' only workplace protections are 'hours of service,' so our days are limited to 14 hours on duty (with 11 hours driving max). I team-drove with my wife, meaning our day was 28 hours long for years," Collins told Law and Crime in December.

During that year, Collins told Business Insider that they spent time hiking in the different locales they visited.

They visited different cities across the country, including Washington, DC.

Along with being tourists, Collins told Business Insider "we tried to work in political events, tried to get in interviews," including an interview with the Young Turks in LA.

Ahri the husky made herself comfortable in the truck.

Collins has talked about how trucking informed his political beliefs.

He told Business Insider that he's not sure if he'd be able to go back to trucking if he doesn't win election.

"I think the experience of a lot of truck drivers is very similar to mine where the government has failed them at every turn," Collins told FleetOwner. "When it comes to needing a college education, almost every truck driver saw that as something where the government failed them. We have millions of truck drivers and almost all of them are people who couldn't afford to go to college or couldn't afford to go into other industries. So, truck driving was, for a lot of us, including me, the only other option aside from maybe the military."

Read more about Collins' campaign here.

I just left my 6-figure day job to become a full-time freelance writer. Here'…