A true-to-life memoir of a Chinese immigrant truck driver in Los Angeles — long-haul runs from LA to New York, new rules ending his CDL work, pickup deliveries, Uber Black shifts, and the search for a place to leave his story.
(Life Story – Los Angeles, California)
This life story was first written by me in Chinese.
It is published here with permission, and this English version was produced using a translation tool with light editing. If some sentences sound a bit unusual, that is probably my second language, not the machine.
My name is Li Wei, but on the road most people just call me Lee.
I am a Chinese immigrant living around Los Angeles, California. For many years I was a long-haul truck driver, running heavy trucks back and forth across the United States. Now I no longer drive big rigs. I drive a pickup for local freight and a black car for Uber.
This is not a success story.
It’s just the way my life has gone so far.
1. Before the Freeways
I was born in a small city in China in the 1980s.
Nothing special about it: gray apartment buildings, crowded buses, long lines in front of the hospital, the usual.
My parents worked regular jobs. We were not poor like in the movies, but we were never comfortable either. If I wanted a new pair of shoes, I waited for Chinese New Year. If I wanted meat in my noodles, I watched the price of pork like people here watch the price of gas.
After high school I did a bit of everything:
small factory, restaurant kitchen, delivery on a motorcycle. I was always tired and always short on money. When some relatives started talking about going to America, I laughed at first. It sounded like a TV drama.
Then, for a mix of reasons—family, chance, and that simple idea that “maybe there is something better somewhere else”—I ended up on a plane to Los Angeles.
My English at that time was “hello”, “ok”, and “sorry”.
That was about it.
2. How I Became a Long-Haul Truck Driver
In Los Angeles, my first jobs were exactly what you’d expect for a new Chinese immigrant with bad English:
dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant, helper in a small warehouse in City of Industry, some random cash jobs moving boxes.
The first time I noticed American big trucks was on the 710 and 110 freeways near the ports. They looked like moving walls of steel, long lines of containers coming out of Long Beach and Los Angeles ports. I remember thinking:“If I could drive one of those, maybe I could finally make more than just survival money.”
Later I met a Cantonese driver. He told me he was making around seven thousand dollars a month as a team driver running long-haul freight between Los Angeles and the East Coast.
Seven thousand.
For me, at that time, it sounded insane.
He said, “If you get your CDL and don’t cause trouble, you’ll at least have a chance.”
So I studied for the commercial license. The English on the test was hard for me. I copied questions, looked up words one by one, asked friends to read with me. Somehow I passed.
Not long after that, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a big truck for the first time, heading out of Ontario with a full trailer behind us. The destination: somewhere near New York.
We ran team, two drivers sharing one truck. One drove, one slept. We swapped at truck stops, in rest areas, on the side of the road when we had to. We could do a round trip Los Angeles – New York – Los Angeles in about five days if everything went well.
The money came in fast.
So did the miles.
While many Latino drivers worked at the ports in Long Beach and got to go home every night, most of us Chinese drivers took the long routes: cross-country runs, back-to-back loads, weeks where “home” was just the name on a mailbox I didn’t see.
People see the paycheck and say,
“Wow, you truckers are rich.”
They don’t see the part where you wake up at 3 a.m. in a frozen parking lot, brush your teeth with a bottle of water, and start another eleven-hour shift.
3. A Friend’s Accident
On the road you see a lot of things you don’t talk about.
One of my closest friends in trucking was another Chinese driver, a few years older than me. He taught me how to handle the Grapevine on I-5 with a full load in bad weather, how to read the wind on I-40, how to plan fuel stops so you don’t get stuck with an empty tank in the wrong place.
Then one night he had an accident.
He was coming back from the East, somewhere around the middle of the country. Too many long days, too many short sleeps. Just one blink, one small mistake. The truck drifted, another truck hit him, and everything broke at once.
He survived.“If one day it’s me who doesn’t come back, what will be left?
A truck number? A line in some report?”
But from the waist down he can’t move anymore.
When I visited him in the hospital, he tried to make jokes like before, but finally he said:“Lee, you know what is the worst?
I have to plan in advance just to go to the bathroom.”
That sentence hit me harder than any sudden brake on the highway.
On the way back to the yard, I sat in the cab for a long time without starting the engine.
I kept asking myself:
4. The Rules Change
For a long time I thought I would just keep driving until I had enough money to buy my own used truck, and then someday rent it out to other drivers. That’s kind of the basic dream for a lot of long-haul guys: one truck, then two, maybe no more highways for yourself.
But then the rules changed.
In recent years, companies and insurance got stricter.
To keep driving big trucks legally and be hired by most carriers, you basically need a green card or citizenship.
Temporary work permits became a problem.
No company wanted the risk.
One day my dispatcher called me and said:“Lee, after you finish this trip, you can’t drive for us anymore.
It’s not about you. It’s about documents and policy.”
I was somewhere out near Tennessee when I got that call.
Outside the window were just fields and sky, like always. Inside the cab, it felt like someone had suddenly turned off the future.
I finished the run, brought the truck back to Southern California, cleaned out my things from the sleeper, and watched someone else drive it away.
Just like that, ten years of long-haul trucking turned into a closed chapter.
5. Starting Over with a Pickup
After I stopped driving big rigs, I still had bills to pay. The rent wasn’t going to pay itself just because the government and companies changed the rules.
I owned an old pickup truck, nothing fancy, not new at all, but still strong enough.
So I started doing what I could with it:
- local delivery runs for small warehouses
- moving furniture for people who found me through Chinese groups
- light freight between Ontario, City of Industry, and the San Gabriel Valley
A pickup doesn’t need a commercial driver’s license.
I can still “haul freight”, but the loads are smaller, the fuel cost per job is higher, and the profit is much thinner.
Some days the phone rings and I keep moving.
Some days it stays quiet and I sit in the truck scrolling my phone, wondering what the next step in life is supposed to be.
People who remember my old days sometimes ask:“Weren’t you doing long-haul trucking to New York? Why are you just driving a pickup now?”
I just say:“Times change. I change with them.”
It’s easier than explaining immigration categories and insurance requirements in my broken English.
6. Driving a Black Car in Los Angeles
Because pickup work is unstable, I needed something else.
A friend suggested I try Uber Black.
He said:“You know the roads already. Chinese drivers in L.A. can do well with black car service. At least you sleep in a bed at home, not a sleeper cab.”
So I took another risk.
I traded my old car and took a loan on a black luxury sedan that meets the requirements for Uber Black in Los Angeles.
Now my days (and nights) look different:
- Early morning airport runs to LAX, picking up people with small suitcases and big headphones.
- Late-night rides from clubs in Hollywood back to hotels downtown.
- Quiet trips for business people staring at laptops in the back seat.
- Occasional drunk riders who sing too loudly and forget to tip.
I wear better clothes now than I did in the truck yard, but the feeling is similar: long hours, watching the mirror, reading traffic, guessing what other drivers will do before they do it.
The difference is that when I turn off the app, I can actually go home and sleep in my own bed.
It’s not easy money.
Fuel is expensive. Insurance is expensive. The car payment doesn’t care if business is slow. But at least I’m not racing a forty-ton truck down an icy hill at three in the morning anymore.
7. Finding a Place to Leave a Trace
For a long time, this whole story only existed in my head.
I’m not someone who shares much.
I don’t post my life online.
Even when I video-chat with family back in China, I mostly say “I’m fine, don’t worry,” and then ask what they ate for dinner.
One day, between rides, I parked in a quiet corner of a lot near West L.A.. I was waiting for the next Uber request and scrolling on my phone. I came across a post where people were discussing this website—a nonprofit project to save ordinary people’s memories, including in Chinese.
Someone wrote:“If you die suddenly, is there any place in this world that proves you were here?”
That line hit me in the chest.“Maybe I should write something too.
Not a big book. Just enough that if one day I disappear on some freeway, there’s at least one page somewhere with my name on it.”
I clicked the link and saw a site that wasn’t trying to sell anything.
Just stories.
Life stories from different places.
Some in English, some in Chinese, some translated.
I sat there in the driver’s seat, engine off, and thought:
That’s why I’m here, typing this.
8. Why I’m Writing This
I am not a hero, not a victim, and not a success case in any book.
I’m just one of the thousands of Chinese immigrant drivers in Los Angeles who:
- used to run long-haul trucking between Los Angeles and New York
- lost that job when the rules around status and CDL work got tighter
- switched to pickup delivery and then Uber Black
- and is still trying to make an honest living, day after day
I don’t know what will happen next.
Maybe one day I will save enough to buy a used truck and rent it out, letting younger drivers take over the highways. Maybe I will move into something completely different. Or maybe I will just keep driving people and small loads around Los Angeles until my body tells me it’s time to stop.
What I do know is this:
Tonight I’ll probably be on the 405 or 105, headlights in my face, someone in the back seat checking their flight status, the radio playing some song I don’t recognize. I’ll drop them off, say “Have a good trip,” and then my app will ping, telling me where to go next.
If you have read this far, then for a little while, my miles and my hours were not completely invisible.
That’s enough for me right now.
— Li Wei (李伟)
Former long-haul truck driver, now pickup hauler and Uber Black driver
Based in Los Angeles, California
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