The Mysterious Tractor-Trailer

In this weeks reading of The Road, the man and the boy come across a tractor-trailer on a bridge. This tractor is blocking their journey south. It seems as the tractor had been there for years. Does this mean no one else had taken this bridge considering its blocking the entire span of the passageway? The two sleep the night in the truck, not realizing what is embedded inside. Dried and shrunken human bodies rotting in this abandoned tractor. What happened to these people? What caused their death?

 This truck may have been a form of shelter that was used as a safe-house from the treacherous conditions of the disaster that wiped everything out. It may have seemed better to stay and die inside the tractor than to go out into the open air. Was it because the air was full of radiation or some other type of harmful toxin that they stayed inside the truck instead of leaving? Another possibility is that the large truck was used to store bodies. Was someone bringing dead bodies to this tractor, so they could dry and be eaten at a later time? Is there even anyone left in the U.S or the planet Earth? Is this truck a dangerous place to be at for the man and the boy? What significance does this tractor-trailer have to the story?

This mysterious tractor rises many questions about what actually happened to the world before everyone disappeared and everything died.