He calls her "Sweetpea," she calls him "Crowbar," and when they talk, it's mostly by CB. Dinner may be 300 miles up the road and bed an air mattress on the bottom of a van parked in a roadside rest area, but it's a life Don and Laverne Jarvis love.

     The Torrance couple have spent the last 20 years of their marriage on the road, hitting every state and the majority of U.S. cities at one time or another. "You name it; we've been there," says Don Jarvis, a jowly Indiana corn farmer turned transport driver.

     The Jarvises are among an uncounted legion of independent drivers who get paid -- and paid well -- to travel.

     They deliver an eclectic range of untransportable vehicles -- school buses, recreational vehicles, tow trucks, vans, ambulances, shuttle buses, beverage trucks and the like -- to points throughout the United States and Canada.

     "It's the great sleeper travel lifestyle of North America," says Craig Chilton, a New Jersey teacher turned itinerant driver -- and author of How To Get Paid $50,000 a Year To Travel.

     Chilton, who's driven nearly 1.5 million miles over the last 13 years, says he made $52,000 most of those years, but he wanted to keep the published figure within an easily attainable range.

     "I couldn't begin to touch that teaching," he says. "Besides, it's been a lot more fun and doesn't offer any of the hassles."

     The job involves picking up a vehicle from one point (usually the manufacturer) and delivering it to another point (usually a dealer, distributor or new owner).

     Ideally, a driver arranges to pick up another vehicle near his destination and gets paid going both ways, but some drivers choose to fly home.

     "A dispatcher [in Virginia] offered to send me to California on 10 straight trips one time, so I drove [outbound in around for days, each time] and flew back, because I knew I could make $1,000 a run," Chilton says.

     There is no special driver's license required for transporting vehicles, no experience requirements and no age restrictions. In fact, nearly one-third of the drivers are over 65, according to Chilton.

     Because drivers work on a contract-by-contract basis, they control the amount of time they're on the road.

     "You can work full time or part time, with an eye toward making lots of money or just covering travel expenses," Chilton says.

     "In California there are so many [companies for which to work, and dealers to which to deliver] you can earn an extra $200 to $300 a week just on weekends."

     The Jarvises, who are on the road about 200 days out of the year, say they make $30,000 to $35,000 after deducting expenses such as insurance, air fare, gas, food, lodging and CB equipment.

     The Jarvises figure they'll stick with it as long as they can. "The money's good, we're in good health, and we like the freedom of setting our own hours and being our own boss," Don says.

     And they've enjoyed it all -- well, almost all.

     "We always said we should keep a diary of all the things that happened to us, but we never got around to it," Laverne says.

     Take the time they got separated in a construction zone outside of Houston, with Laverne running on fumes and just $2 to her name. It took a friendly truck driver with a CB and the Highway Patrol 10 hours to get them back together.

     That was the incident that prompted them to buy their own CBs.

     Then there was the time Don dropped her off in a park in Washington, D.C., with all their belongings while he picked up their next assignment and a bag lady dropped by and asked Laverne if she was moving in or out.

     And the time they both ran out of gas on the Florida turnpike at the same time.

     The Jarvises, who drive exclusively for National Coach of Gardena, say they have no favorite part of the country, but they do have a least favorite.

     "I don't especially like the Deep South, especially when it's hot and humid," Don says. "The love bugs swarm all over the buses, and they love to eat paint. We have to stop and get them washed a couple times a day or they'd strip 'em."

     Do they get bored spending so much time behind the wheel?

     "Oh, sometimes," Don says. "But then we plug our CBs into the cigarette lighter and talk to each other."

     Laverne also likes to sing and do a little communicating with the Almighty.

     "When you're alone out there and beginning to relax, when you're away from the city traffic and cruising along the highway, it's a good time to catch up on your prayer life," she says.

     Chilton, who sometimes drives 1,000 to 1,200 miles at a stretch, swears he's never bored.

     "For a person who loves to drive, to travel, to explore, there's really no downside to this," he says. "A Greyhound bus driver once asked me how I psyched myself up for a trip. I didn't know what he was talking about. If anything, I have to psych myself up for being off the road."

     But every once in a while he does forsake the main highway for previously unseen vistas -- what he calls "the blue line roads."

     "As I pass the little towns along the way, I think, `I'll probably never see this town again in my lifetime.' It impresses you with how vast this country really is," he says.

     By far the most impressive sight he's ever seen, however, occurred on a February night about 200 miles east of Fairbanks, Alaska.

     "All the trees along the road had crowns of about a foot of snow and were bent over like ferns," he says. "It was like a forest from primeval times.

     "Suddenly I realized I was seeing it all very clearly for 2 a.m. on a moonless night. About the same time I noticed all the terrain around me was glowing green as if it were radioactive.

     "I stopped the coach and stepped out into absolute total stillness. It was quiet like you can't even imagine.

     "Coming down from a point directly overhead and surrounding me from every direction were huge curtains of light twisting and turning. It was the aurora borealis.

     "Amazingly, at that latitude, the Big Dipper was directly overhead, and it looked for all the world like it was pouring out all this radiance. It was fantastic."

     Still, moving as it was, it's not what he sees that fuels his passion for the road. It's the freedom.

     "The whole world is talking about freedom now that the Iron Curtain has fallen, but even most Americans don't realize how much freedom they can have. You can set your own hours, choose your own routes and do everything just the way you want to do it," he says.

     "Delivering RVs is more than a lifestyle, it's a gateway to any kind of opportunity you want. Most people go through their entire lives without ever simultaneously having enough free time and enough money to explore their dreams. It gave me the chance to do the two things I love most: drive and write."

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