9 out of 10 goods arrive by sea, usually via a truck loaded with something that you and I have bought in a store or ordered via e-commerce. But who is it that ensures that your goods are delivered from X to Y? Maybe it is one of the tens of thousands of professional drivers who pass through the Port of Trelleborg every year. Here you will meet one of the people behind the steering wheel, one of the Port of Trelleborg’s truck driver ambassadors, Igor from Serbia, whom we took the opportunity to catch up with for a chat before he goes home to celebrate Christmas.
Igor invites into his truck. It is a cold and windy December day outside, but up in the driver’s cab it is warm, nice and cozy. Igor is in the Port of Trelleborg about 2-3 times a month. In 2008 he started working as a truck driver. In Serbia he went to school for 11 years and when he was 18 years old he started working at a construction company where he drove a forklift. But he wanted to see new places and work more internationally, so he chose to become a professional truck driver, even though the main reason was a significantly higher salary.
Igor works for Pavle Transport. He works for two weeks straight and then he has 3-4 days off. He really likes working for Pavle Transport, “it’s like a friend”, both the boss, the colleagues and the company. Sometimes there is a lot of waiting time, then he usually calls his family, reads, talks and meets colleagues and rests.
Igor comes from Serbia, a country in south-eastern Europe with around 7 million inhabitants, but also a country that has been affected by war and Igor himself has had tragic experiences from two wars up close in the 1990s. At home in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, Igor has a wife and four children. The oldest child is 18 years old and the youngest is only 15 months old. Right now, Igor’s wife is at home with the youngest child, but then she will return to her work as a preschool teacher. Igor says that the hardest thing about being a truck driver is when he is away from his family so much. He usually calls them on Whatsapp as often as he can when he is away and with the oldest children it still works well to communicate that way, but not as easy with a 15-month-old baby, who is also growing and developing at a furious pace.
As for Sweden, Igor thinks that Sweden is a fantastic country, everyone is kind and “just right,” neither too loud nor mean to each other.
Igor recommends younger people who don’t know what they want to work on to try the truck driver profession. You get to see new countries, cities, encounter different cultures and meet lots of new people.
Igor has a dream of one day starting a fastfood restaurant with Serbian hamburgers (pljeskavica) together with his oldest son and friends.
