By Patrick White originally published in Vermont Almanac.
It’s 3:30 a.m., and there isn’t much activity to be seen on the drive south along Route 7 through Charlotte, Ferrisburgh, and Vergennes. Approaching New Haven, something in the distance looks like a scaled-down city scene, with lights reaching way up in the air like a cluster of miniature skyscrapers. Getting closer, the skyscrapers become huge grain silos. Dairy farmers are notorious early risers, but the folks who supply their feed have them beat. Even in otherwise pitch blackness, the Phoenix Feeds & Nutrition plant is abuzz with activity. In fact, trucks delivering grain to farms on the far side of Boston left hours ago, in the middle of the night, to avoid rush hour traffic.
Up pulls Ryan Sleeper, an ironic name for someone whose days start so early. Today’s route will keep him relatively close to home; he’s delivering feed to farms in St. Albans and then Schuylerville, New York. Sleeper parks his car -an electric Chevy Bolt, recently purchased pre-owned after a deer broadsided his last car one early morning – in front of his somewhat more powerful work vehicle: a Western Star tractor trailer with 565 horsepower and 1,850 pound feet of torque. Car headlights showing the way, he hops out, climbs in the cab, and fires up the hulking truck to let it warm up. As the diesel rumbles to life, a fellow driver walks by and razzes him: “That EV of yours sure makes a lot of noise!”
After picking up his delivery manifest from the dispatch office, it’s time for a pre-trip inspection: a combination of looking (for anything loose, worn, disconnected) and listening (for any leaks in the hundreds of feet of air and hydraulic hoses snaking under the trailer; for the sound of tires that might be flat when he gives each one a whack). Everything checks out, and the grain trailer has already been filled by the night crew, so it’s time to hit the road. Phoenix has special excess weight permits, so this six-axle truck/trailer can legally haul 99,000 pounds; we’re very near that limit as we pull onto the road.

The Western Star is only six months old and already shows 60,000 miles on the odometer. From the passenger seat, two things stand out: the air-ride seats are supremely comfortable, and the long-handle shifter you picture being in an 18-wheeler is missing. “It’s an automatic,” says Sleeper. “I was a little worried when I got it that it would be gutless and slow, but it’s got some kick to it.” His previous truck was an 18-speed with a clutch, and he doesn’t miss it.
Sleeper has shifted a few gears in his own life. He has a degree in environmental science from UVM, specializing in aquatic ecology and watersheds, and previously worked for a consulting firm doing remediation work on contaminated sites around the country. He loved the outdoor work, but found that, increasingly, his time was spent supervising projects from behind a desk, or writing reports to be read by only a few people. “That seems to be the career arc in environmental consulting,” he says. After some soul-searching, he tried working as a data scientist at a small Burlington tech firm. He enjoyed the people and the income, but there was still too much time behind a desk. Still no sense that he was really accomplishing something tangible.
Sleeper, a thoughtful guy in his early 30s, hit an inflection point during Covid. “I decided to take six months off,” he recalls. During that time, he did a lot of research on becoming a truck driver. He learned that the trucking industry is largely controlled by “mega-carriers” – huge freight companies that have reputations for bad schedules, poor pay, and huge turnover among drivers. Not wanting that sort of arrangement, and not interested in driving long hauls around the country, Sleeper began pursuing his CDL through a private school in Milton. During that two-month process, he learned about an opportunity to be a driver for Phoenix. The company was based close to his home in Starksboro, and the idea of delivering critical feed to farms in the Northeast, and the company’s partial employee ownership model, both appealed to him. Phoenix hired him and as soon as he received his CDL, he hit the road for them.
The truck has the requisite CB radio, but these days much more time is spent gleaning information from the tablet computer mounted off the dash, which among other things gives him GPS route information and traffic data. And his phone is also mounted so he can listen to music and, more often, podcasts. “I think I just enjoy learning,” he says.
Sleeper’s work weeks average 60 hours. “I work more hours now, but it doesn’t feel like it,”he says, joking that the first four hours of each day, before the rest of the world wakes up, sometimes don’t feel like they’re happening at all.
One thing he particularly likes: every day is different. He often doesn’t know until the night before where he’s heading the next day. It could be in Vermont; it could be the Adirondacks; it could be Maine. Sometimes he leaves the log cabin that he and his wife, a scientist for the State of Vermont, have fixed up and finds himself a few hours later traveling through downtown Boston. “I actually don’t mind doing that every once in a while – it’s sort of a challenge,” he says of navigating the city traffic while driving a truck/ trailer that stretches more than 60 feet and stands more than 13 feet tall.
Another like: the farms. Sleeper estimates he’s been to almost 150 of them: “I used to keep track of that on a spreadsheet, but I’m behind on entering names – I was up to 20 about a year ago.” Sometimes, he’s alone to unload on the farm and take in the scenery; sometimes, he gets to chat with the farmer or a farm hand about the operation. One farm in Massachusetts always sends him away with some of their chocolate milk. One in Vermont often has some sweet corn for him.
Dislikes: traversing mountain roads when weighing nearly 50 tons. “The road up and down Killington is the worst,” he notes. “I can have it floored and near the peak I’m doing 20 miles an hour, and I’ve got cars backed up behind me. Going downhill when you weigh that much is even more stressful, and people don’t understand why I’m going so slow, but if l went faster, I’d lose my brakes.”
It’s still dark as we pull into the farm in St. Albans. Across the road from the cow barn is a cluster of grain silos; that’s where we’ll unload. Sleeper needs to back up to precisely the right spot for the huge auger shoot to end up directly over the top of the first silo. While doing so, he recalls a time in his earlier career when he and some scientist colleagues stopped to get gas in the company RAV 4 and were stymied trying to back up the small trailer they were towing. “I think they’re still laughing at us in the gas station,” he guesses. Today, in the dark, he hits the mark with the 40-foot grain trailer on his first try.
The trailer is divided into nine “pockets” that can each haul a different product. Today, eight are filled with Phoenix’s “Hi-Cow” feed (a high-protein mix), and one contains “Fresh-Cow” (for cows that have recently given birth). Phoenix’s nutritionists work with farms to come up with the right mixes for their herds, and each silo at the farm is labeled for a specific product.
The unloading process takes a couple hours. Sleeper, a recreational rock climber, scampers easily up and down the ladders leading to the tops f the silos, where he checks the levels to avoid over-filling them. He also listens to the auger on the truck, to be sure everything sounds right. Occasionally he climbs on top of the truck to inspect for clogs, “persuading” the material with the handle of a long broom when needed. “Feed with higher fat content is more likely to clog,” he explains. After each compartment empties, he sweeps it down with the broom. Though none are called for on this delivery, he sometimes unloads dozens of 5-pound bags of minerals or feed, which can be transported on a covered rack on one side of the trailer. Even with all the windshield time he racks up, Sleeper figures he’s getting much more activity now than he did at his desk job, a fact he appreciates.
After filling the first silo, he maneuvers the truck to fill another. At the same time, a farm tractor pulling a grain mixer arrives to pick up some of the material that Sleeper has just delivered. Nearby, a front-loader is taking huge scoops out of the farm’s massive silage pile; this will be mixed with the grain to feed the cows.
It’s daybreak as the last of the feed is emptied from the truck. Following some deliveries, Sleeper will backhaul corn from the farm to the Phoenix plant to be milled. Other times, he will stop along the way to pick up material, like salt, to bring back to the plant. Today, he’s heading straight back to reload for his next delivery.
As we pull out onto the road, the rising sun cuts through the mammoth windshield of the truck. “This is my favorite part of the job,” says Sleeper of the early morning views. He grew up in New Jersey before coming here for college and says he can’t imagine returning. We roll through the farmland of Franklin County before hitting I-89 and turning south. Cars are starting to fill up the roads, carrying drivers who are just starting their work days. “I feel like there must be a lot of people like me who ended up on a career path that just never sat quite right, “he muses. “I don’t think a lot of people know that there are good jobs like this – solid jobs – around Vermont.”
