One freezing day in 2014, Allie was gazing out the passenger-side window of the truck when she noticed it had started snowing. As the snowflakes began their downward drift, the low winter sun waltzed between the passing trees. The scene was so beautiful, she thought if she could just share the moment with others, she could show them why trucking is a great calling, in spite of everything.

Not long after, she posted a video of herself sitting in the cab of her truck, nervously mugging for the camera in a white t-shirt and glasses. “I’m in New York, like waaaaay upstate,” she told her yet-to-materialize followers in a goofy singsong. She explained that she would be posting videos from the road, and she invited her audience to tell her if they turned out to be “crap.” “Or if you like it!” she added more cheerily. “If you think these are neat. If you like my voice and how terrible it sounds.”

“We’ll go from here, we’ll see how these work,” she said, waving to the camera and signing off.

They worked surprisingly well. After that day, Allie uploaded hundreds more videos to her YouTube channel, sharing tips, driver’s-side views, and insights into the trucking life. The videos became Allie’s larger purpose, a way of helping other new drivers navigate the same challenges she was living and working through. At one point, she reached more than sixty thousand subscribers.

Allie discovered there were quite a few other “little girls”—and Latino guys, and Asian women, and so forth—who want to drive the biggest thing on the lot. Young drivers, or those thinking about joining the industry, wrote to thank her for her honest, whimsical look inside the industry. (“Great video…girl has a lot of great information,” read one YouTube comment.)

One young female driver wrote her to say she was about to start riding with a trainer, and she was feeling nervous. “What is it like to share a truck with a perfect stranger?” the woman asked.

“Make sure you ask questions,” Allie said in her response video. “And remember, this too shall pass.”

Ayinde

A young man named Ayinde Alleyne devised another interesting strategy to cope with his fierce little sting of otherness: he changed the way he thought—and subsequently talked—about it.

Ayinde grew up in a two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx, in the Parkchester neighborhood. His father worked six days a week as an auto mechanic, and his mother was a homemaker, a teacher, and later a secretary. The income of his parents, immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago, never exceeded $30,000 a year.