Freighter tramper

Freighter trampers, also called "space hobos," were individuals who made their living through hard labor and commuted from job to job on the freighter lanes.

Description

Becoming a freighter tramper

Freighter trampers, also referred to as "space hobos,"^[2] were migrant^[3] individuals forced to make their living through dangerous hard labor, dangerous maintenance, and repair work. The trampers did everything that needing doing on space transports. Trampers commuted from job to job on the freighter lanes.^[4] Individuals became freighter trampers through a variety of sobering reasons, such as abandonment, criminal records, debt, personal tragedy, and unemployment. For most, their move to the itinerant lifestyle of a tramper came from necessity rather than the desire to roam the galaxy deeply inhaling the heady scents of toxic gas emissions or drinking in fine rays of deadly radiation.^[1]

There was often no choice for those who become a freighter tramper, and it was not unknown for trampers to have been down on their luck individuals who had, in effort to escape a planet, fall into the company of dishonest captains and crews. Those trampers were stripped of their possessions, their identity, and held hostage by the ship that gave them hope, sometimes with their families. The beings held hostage could suddenly find themselves a virtual slave with little prospect of rescue or respite.^[1] In order to earn the cost of their passage to new worlds in search for work, many trampers indentured themselves to corporations. However, many found that when they arrived, their long hoped for employment had disappeared. Those trampers then had to indenture themselves for a second passage to another world. The disappearing employment started a cycle, little different than slavery, in which millions were affected by.^[4]

Life as a freighter tramper

Trampers spent most of their lifetime doing their work and were used to utilitarian conditions.^[5] Many different species from across the galaxy that became freighter trampers formed an unlikely alliance^[1] and a diverse community,^[4] as they were bound by their common fate. Trampers often grouped together and looked out for each other, though in the end, the laws of survival applied.^[1] Harsh steerage overseers^[4] appointed by the freighter operators,^[6] had the authority to strand miscreants on any star system^[4] or world^[6] they passed by, keeping the freighter trampers in line.^[4] These overseers were armed with stun batons.^[6]

Freighter trampers bartered with each other for the goods in their possession, often recombining components of disparate origins into workable equipment, known as "tramper gear."^[4] Experienced trampers frequently manufactured their own tools and often provided designs for manufacturers to follow.^[7] Tramper gear created included a backpack transponder for mining scouts with housing made with a bedpan, a filter for polluted air in steerage, and a welder made from a diatomic bomb igniter. Trampers dressed in a bewildering array of clothing that indicated various specialized professions, cultures, or callings. Seasoned trampers could quickly spot fresh synthetic vegetables on a tray of food, loaded with preservatives, that may have been years old.^[4] Many trampers were killed in industrial accidents, having their bodies disposed of unceremoniously by the crew of the ship they worked on.^[1]

Many forms of the media portrayed the life of a freighter tramper as the romantic ideal of a carefree galactic wonderer, even though the truth was harsh and alarming. The life of a tramper was far from the romantic image of a whistling "space-hobo" surviving on wits and astonishing luck.^[1]