A pot to pee in: Truck drivers get a break from Cornwall company
Amid all the outpouring of gratitude for frontline workers, there is one group that Christyn Veinotte feels isn’t getting as much attention as it deserves.
“It’s a really scary time to be a nurse or a doctor, but I think it’s a really hard time to be a truck driver, too.”
She works as a service adviser at Cornwall Truck Maintenance. The company has just started handing out care packages to its customers — long-haul truckers who have been having a hard time finding food and bathrooms during the pandemic.
Among the healthy snacks, gloves and hand sanitizer in the box is an unusual gift: a portable urinal.
“With places being closed down now, it’s hard to make a pee stop,” said manager Cherry-Ann Dupres (above, left). “They tend to use a water bottle.”
Dupres and her husband, the owner of Cornwall Truck Maintenance, said that even though it’s expensive to give away what is essentially medical equipment for free, they wanted to support customers who are keeping their business going during the pandemic.
“When you have more, you do more,” said Dupres. “Given that we’re still getting some sort of revenue flow through the business … we just wanted to give back, because without them we wouldn’t be open right now.”
Veinotte says the truckers are very grateful for the portable urinals.
“They often end up having to go in whatever they have at their disposal in their truck,” she said. “The first time I gave it out I was a little bit nervous. But the guy said, ‘This is such a fantastic idea.'”
Truckers are telling Veinotte about how they have to stay away from their family members for months on end for fear of infecting them with the virus, and having no one to talk to because their usual pit stops are closed.
“I literally was so naive to how hard it is for them on the road,” she said. “I had no idea.”
