Takes a little while to get up to speed, but once it finds its 5th gear, the very American story lines of Doug Pray’s ‘Big Rig’ take hold.

These Big Rig truckers reveal that “freedom” means different things to different people. But they all tell the same story of the independent trucker losing to corporations as rising diesel prices slash into their take-home pay.

This two-hour documentary shows the power of a determined independent filmmaker such as Pray (the man behind “Hype,” “Scratch” and now “Surfwise”) who traveled through 45 states and rode 25,000 miles to make this movie. He directed, shot and edited the film himself.

Since the shooting for the film was completed - likely sometime in 2006 - diesel prices have doubled to nearly $5 a gallon. Still American truckers keep rolling - though I did recently hear about Big Rig drivers circling downtown Washington D.C. in protest of the high fuel prices.

For more information about the film, or to buy a copy of it, visit www.bigrigmovie.com. Posted on the Web site is a list of truck stops across the country where the documentary will be shown this summer for free.