Together Apart explores the social ties that shape truck drivers’ lives on the road. Constant movement keeps them connected to many places, yet fully present in none. At times, life on the road brings drivers together, creating bonds that last a lifetime. But often, relationships with family, friends, and partners are maintained through phone calls, messages, and brief check-ins - intimate moments stretched across distance and time.

Alongside these mediated connections, some drivers form close bonds with animal companions who share the cab with them. These relationships introduce a different mode of togetherness, grounded in daily care, routine, and physical presence. While drivers provide food, safety, and attention, they also receive companionship, emotional support, and a sense of continuity in an otherwise fragmented life.

This theme reflects how drivers create home and remain emotionally close to it while being physically absent, sustaining connection through screens, voices, and routines of contact, while also cultivating forms of care that travel with them. Together Apart reveals a form of togetherness emerging from chance encounters, those defined not by proximity alone, but by effort, responsibility, and mutual dependence, by drivers, their families and friends waiting at home, and the companions who accompany them on the road.

Sarah and Dale met in 1994, but their story started long before. Back in 1992, at a truck festival, Sarah stood happy and proud outside her gleaming truck. She didn’t notice then, but in the background of the photograph parked up without fanfare, was Dale’s truck. Two years before they spoke a word to each other, they were already sharing the same space. Back then, women drivers were rare, and Sarah learned quickly who to trust. She stuck close to two other women drivers, Laura, known as “Lola,” and “Diesel Kate”. Sarah herself was “Hippy Chick”. They weren’t always on the same run, but when their paths did cross, it was like family, huddled in the back of trailers in Madrid with the BBQ sizzling, sharing dinner, swapping stories in lay-bys, and always keeping an eye out for one another. 

Dale’s own love of trucks began when he was seven, riding on the parcel shelf of his dad’s brand-new Bedford TK. Holidays were spent in the cab, rattling along to market towns and dockyards. By 21, he too had his HGV licence, and at 29, his first truck, the same model Sarah drove. Dale remembers waving to her from his cab on the A34: “Keep going, girl!”

Looking back, their story isn’t just about miles driven. It’s about two people whose lives ran alongside each other for years, like ships in the night, until one day, they found themselves parked in the same place, and this time, neither of them drove away.

Text and photo credit: Melanie Pollard

“He leaves on a Monday morning anywhere between 3am and 6am. I try and go back to sleep but it can be difficult… Early afternoons to early evenings are worst when I feel most alone. It’s usually when he is busy and can’t call or text. Once he’s stopped for the night we are able talk. We have been known to watch tv together, Richard Osman’s house of games was a good one. We’d sync so his phone played at the same time as my tv, he’d listen to my sound and we would play together… He comes home either late Friday anywhere between 7pm and 11pm or Saturday morning anywhere between 9am and 1pm. 

And as soon as he is here he is gone again. I am longing for the time when we can afford for him to go back to day driving. He was happier, I was happier, we ate better, did more together. This current job is a case of existing while dreaming of better days ahead”

The life of a trucking “widow” by Selena May, Steve’s wife

Photo credit: Holly Revell

Nick Goddard

Frankie Watts

Tony Broomhall

Photo credit: Holly Revell

“The job itself can be very isolating. I'm currently a ‘night trunker’, I drive up and down the country at night getting goods to distribution centres for onward delivery on smaller vehicles in the morning. I might only talk to a couple of people over the whole shift. To pass the time I usually listen to podcasts or music or talk to a colleague on the phone (hands free of course). We usually discuss who's got ‘the cream’ or who's been ‘stitched up’ with a very long night of work. In comparison to previous driving jobs I've done it gives a reasonable balance of time at home and time at work, I get to see my wife and children and I'm home every day”

Tim Rodgers

Photo credit: Holly Revell

  • Frankie Watts

    Photo credit: Holly Revell

  • Nick Goddard

    Photo credit: Holly Revell

  • Tim Rodgers

    Photo credit: Holly Revell

  • Tony Broomhall

    Photo credit: Holly Revell

  • Dale and Sarah Gray

    Photo credit: Melanie Pollard