34: Luis A Soto

Truck Driver, System Freight

Luis A. Soto is a truck driver for System Freight, though during most of the pandemic he drove for Ryder. Currently, he hauls cardboard, hardware, and materials for home renovations, working about 12 to 14 hours every day. He lives with his wife and his three younger children, who are 18, 12, and 5. His oldest lives in New York with Luis’s mother. Both Luis and his wife, who works in sanitation at Reading Hospital, worked through the pandemic. Luis’s had to adjust to a lot of changes at work during the pandemic. He used to load and unload his truck himself but due to sanitation concerns, he was no longer able to go into any of the warehouses or even to touch any of the freight he was hauling. These restrictions placed a lot of strain on the work chain, especially since Luis can no longer make sure that the freight is balanced well inside his truck. 

Luis’s family also struggled a lot during the pandemic. It was difficult for him and his wife to not be able to just come home and hug their children right away, like they normally would, instead they had to go shower and wash their clothes first. It felt so awful to tell the kids that they couldn’t hug them right away after they had been waiting all day to see each other. Luis is incredibly conscious of the effect the pandemic had on his children because he knows that things that seem inconsequential to adults can be the whole world to a kid. It was hard to explain to the younger ones why they couldn’t do certain things anymore, and why they must wear masks and wash their hands so often. His kids also love going into school, so it was hard for them to deal with the hybrid online and in-person schedule. That was a hard adjustment for Luis and his wife too. She had to cut back on her hours to be at home with the younger kids while they were at school online, that responsibility also falling to their 18-year-old sometimes as well. Luis had to change his entire work schedule around so that his family could adapt to the change. It has been hard, but he and his wife have been finding ways to make life easier for the kids and to help them release the energy they used to put into the activities that are important to them.  like giving them more liberties with screen time or letting them make a mess in the house. They’re so sad to see their kids missing out on things that they care about, but at the same time, they are afraid of the risks inherent to letting them go back. 

Luis’s family also suffered a great tragedy during the pandemic. His grandmother who lived in Puerto Rico passed away from COVID, and it had a huge impact on Luis. His mother also contracted COVID, but she was able to recover. He has a lot of worries about the situation in Puerto Rico, especially after people going there for spring break vacations caused COVID rates to spike and the island to go into another lockdown. Luis dearly hopes things there will improve and is extremely relieved to have finally gotten his first does of the vaccination at the time of the interview.