Truckers live in an alternative dimension, at least so I conclude when trying to figure out how to meet up with the convoy of trucks coming into to DC to protest high diesel fuel prices on Monday. JB, aka Mike Schaffner, one of the organizers of the action, calls early in the morning to suggest various highway intersections, and I have to explain there’s no way a pedestrian can be just standing on one the super-highways around DC. We eventually settle on a spot in a desolate area of southeastern DC, but even so, I probably couldn’t have made the connection without the genes of a grandfather who rode the rails. When I hear the honking, low and steady, and see the first trucks rising out from an underpass, I scramble up to a narrow walkway along their route and start waving frantically. Everyone waves back nicely, and about the fifth truck actually stops. It’s JB and I leap aboard.

JB and I have become friends-by-phone in the weeks since I blogged about the first truckers’ protests in the beginning of April, but all I knew about him as a physical presence is that he always wears a black cowboy hat. Its brim is turned down, locating him in Larry McMurtry’s rather than John Wayne’s West, and his eyes twinkle deeply when he smiles, which is pretty much all the time. Everything seems to delight him: Being in DC for the first time, having 250 trucks behind him, the friendliness of the tourists on the street as we inch our way toward the Mall.

Since he hasn’t been home in Texas since January 1, this — the “bobtail” of a truck based in New Jersey – is JB’s world. There’s a neatly made bed behind our seats and a laptop that can swivel into view while he’s driving, as well, of course, as a GPS, a cell phone and CB radio. From this little control room, which is also a workplace and a living space, JB has helped assemble the hundreds of truckers and their families who are with us now. It’s a life stripped bare: He ordinarily eats only one meal a day (nothing fried or from a buffet), sleeps rarely (just an hour and half last night), and drinks no coffee (“it leads to stops”) but admits to an occasional Red Bull.

We circle the Mall, slowly, triumphantly, twice. It’s hard to talk over the honking and the excited CB chatter, but JB wants to know if I’ve ever been at a demonstration in DC before.

We are to park the trucks at the RFK Stadium and walk from there to the Capitol, giving us about a half an hour to mill around on foot in the parking lot first. There’s a bobtail with “Truckin for Jesus” painted on it and, under that, “Truckers and Citizens United.” There are Operation Desert Freedom caps and a POW/MIA flag, as well signs indicting oil companies and “Wall Street speculators.” I chat with members of the mostly African-American contingent of DC dump truck drivers and with Belinda Raymond, a trucker’s wife from Maine, who tells me that people in her area raised $9000 to send a convoy of trucks down here, with the Knights of Columbus accounting for $2500 of that. Whole families have come, and I see a boy carrying a sign saying “What about My Future?”

But things look up when we get the Capitol, thanks largely to Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who arranges for the truckers to stage a press conference inside the Russell Building lobby and out of the rain. Three truckers — two white and one black — speak about their dwindling livelihoods and the need for immediate government action to push down fuel prices. I can’t fight my way through the media to hear much of what they’re saying, but one speaker mentions foreclosures. This is a wide-ranging cry from the strangled middle class — or working class or whatever you want to call it — and all I can think is: Where are the Democrats? Why aren’t they are pouring out of their offices to show support for the truckers? And wouldn’t have been wonderful if Obama had shown up? Because he’s not going to make it unless he learns to channel the frustration of people like JB, Melissa and Mike.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of “Nickel and Dimed.”