To back up my position (again) that striking for fuel prices is the wrong way to go, I want to point out a couple of articles from Canada –

MAY 1, 2005
OBAC Urges Owner-Ops To Say No To Cheap Freight

OTTAWA, ONT. (May 1, 2005)
– Responding to the recent protests and road blockages in the Vancouver
area, the Owner-Operator’s Business Association of Canada is advising
its members that blockades and protests will have little, if any,
impact on fuel pricing, and serve only to alienate truckers from the
communities they serve.

“Rather than clambering after governments to cut fuel prices,
owner-ops should be focusing their attention on the real problem –
inadequate haulage rates – and going after their customers to start
paying what it costs to have their freight moved,” says OBAC chief
Joanne Ritchie. “Tax exemptions and rebates are band-aid solutions when
what’s needed is open-heart surgery.”

These are watershed times, Ritchie says. With strong economic growth
driving increased demand for trucking services and driver shortages
squeezing capacity, there’s never been a better opportunity to improve
the rate structure.

“There’s plenty of evidence that customers are
willing to pay more to have their freight moved, and the vast majority
of shippers are paying surcharges to offset skyrocketing fuel prices,”
she says. “If owner-ops aren’t seeing the benefits, their carriers are
either not collecting appropriate surcharges or are not passing them
through to the contractors.”

They go on to explain how to run a business.

OBAC suggests all owner-operators begin
conducting a critical cost analysis of their operations to determine
the scope of the shortfall in rates. For example, at 80 cents per
litre, an owner-operator achieving a reasonable fuel mileage of six
miles per gallon (IMP) is paying 60.6 cents per mile to run the truck.
When fuel was at 50 cents per litre, it cost only 37.8 cents per mile
to operate – a difference of nearly 23 cents per mile. At current
haulage rates, fuel eats up the lion’s share of revenue, leaving little
for payments, maintenance, wages, or profit. This is the kind of
rationale owner-ops need to bring forward when approaching their
customers for rate increases. 

“Owner-operators have a huge amount of clout in this market, and
many of them just aren’t taking advantage of it. They’ve got to get
over the idea they have to settle for less because there are a dozen
drivers lined up to take the job,” Ritchie says. “That’s simply no
longer true. Buying into the myth and continuing to work for less than
it costs to run the truck allows carriers to get away with charging
substandard rates. This keeps the bad carriers in business. As long as
they have a workforce willing to haul for less than it costs to run a
truck, the carriers have little reason risk angering their customers
with the prospect of rate increases.”

Ritchie points out that the carrier associations are urging their
members to use this tight market to regain some lost ground in rates,
and she says it’s high time owner-ops took a little of that advice too.

The American version OOIDA says the basically same thing, except for gallons instead of liters.

Here’s a seperate article about a strike about fuel prices, also in Canada.

B.C. truckers snarl traffic to protest high fuel

            CTV.ca News Staff

Upset
over dramatically rising fuel costs, about 500 dump truck drivers drove
their rigs through Vancouver’s Lower Mainland Friday in protest.

The drivers are trying to bring attention to their increasingly
desperate situation, with diesel prices hovering around $1 a litre — a
huge monthly increase that’s cutting a deep swath into their wages.

"I’m paying at least a thousand dollars more (a month) than I used to pay last year," one trucker told CTV Vancouver.

Their protest, the second in a week, slowed Vancouver area
traffic to a crawl; and completely starved the construction industry of
supplies on Friday, grinding it to a halt.

"This is the only way to get your message through to industry that,
in fact, (we) mean business," said B.C. Teamsters president Don McGill. 

Notice that it’s an actual organized Teamsters union. And their solution?

To make up the shortfall, truckers are demanding fuel surcharges on
their hauling rates, amounting to an extra 12 per cent from
contractors. The amount will then, ultimately, be handed on to
consumers.

"Costs are going to be passed on," said McGill. "It’s payback time and we have to have it."

Last week, truckers hit the road to pressure federal and provincial governments to cut fuel taxes.

Good idea, but…

Falcon met with the truckers’ representatives, but all he offered
was a promise to gather the stakeholders for a meeting to look into a
solution for the high fuel costs.
 

A Calgary fuel industry analyst said that the struggling western
truckers will have to live with the high pump prices. At least for now.

Promises from a politician to have a meeting and a fuel analyst saying, "eh, too bad." Really successful strike.

A seperate article about the same strike, but from the other side.

Truckers’ action has low impact on industry
May, 06 2005 – 2:50 PM

VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980)
- Peter Simpson, the CEO of the Greater Vancouver Homebuilders
Association, says the impact of today’s protest by dump truck drivers
has been very small on his members.

"We have about 470 member
companies, half of whom are builders, developers and renovators so they
had the warning. They took steps to make sure that they were okay and
it hasn’t been a major problem today because it’s only a one-day event,
anyway."

Simpson says they empathize with the truckers because everyone is suffering under the high fuel prices.

Again, the same response, "poor truckers have it rough, but so does everyone." What good did a union organized strike do? And some owner operators here in the states think striking is going to do any good? Someone explain that to me, without saying a strike will show how important we are.

Call me names, tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, but BACK IT UP!!!

Originally posted 2005-05-10 12:00:24.

Perception is reality, even though it shouldn’t be. Last week I was fueling my truck on the fuel island (fueling on the fuel island, what a concept!), anyway, I watch as the driver ahead of me climbs into his truck wearing a black suit. No tie, but a suit, with a dress shirt and what used to be nice shoes. Thirty seconds later another driver walks by in a black sweat suit and black flip-flops. It was weird like a dream kind of weird. One of the parts I like about this job is the lack of a dress code, but I also go with moderation and dress for the occasion.

There’s an attitude some drivers have about other drivers. We should dress respectively, maybe it’s just me, but a crappy, dirty suit, still makes you look as crappy as the guy walking around in sweats and flip-flops, but it also makes you look out of place.

Granted, drivers in general have an image problem, but wearing suits isn’t the answer. I believe the answer is not trashing yourself or the space around you.

He’s on my blogroll on the side and I’ve listened to his podcast more than a few times and I’m sure he’s a good guy, but he’s a good guy that reminds me of Robert DeNiro’s character in Taxi Driver during the psycho shoot-out part when Travis has his head shaved. With tattoos on his neck and all the way down his arm, this guy gets on radio and even a local TV news broadcast about pod and video casting from his truck. 

I’m still undecided if it’s a good image or not. Or maybe it’s just neutral. I’m definitely happy for him, that’s great publicity and we need all the good publicity we can get.  It’s kind of a stereotype, not a bad stereotype, but still… that a lot of truckers are bikers and they carry the dress into their trucks, which isn’t a bad thing, but bikers have an image problem as well. And it’s not just the tattoos, I’ve got tattoos, they just don’t show when I have a shirt on. There’s a time and a place for everything and if I ever had to go back into a corporate environment or even in trucking, meeting customers and executives, the "biker-trucker" image isn’t the one I want to convey. But that’s just me.

Originally posted 2005-12-20 12:51:59.

AP Wire | 07/11/2005 | Help Wanted: Trucking looks to Hispanics to drive industry.
READING, Pa. – Jose
Frias scrubbed a chicken processing plant for six years, never earning
more than $8.50 an hour. The latest of Tomas Rodriguez’ three layoffs
came in December when he lost his factory job making door knobs and
tools. And Alfonso Lua left his native Mexico 26 years ago to pick
fruit and vegetables in the U.S. for $10,000 a year.

No problem there. Layoffs and downsizings are everywhere. The bad part is that trucking has found someone else to exploit.

Their quests for more job security and
better wages led them down a road that driver-starved trucking
companies are hoping more Hispanics will follow.

Beset by an aging work force and high turnover, trucking companies
that traditionally culled drivers from middle America are recruiting in
urban Hispanic communities, advertising in Spanish, appealing to
high-school students and setting up booths at job fairs.

"…culled
drivers from middle America…" What??? I didn’t think the unemployed,
on welfare and ex-convicts were considered middle America. Which is
where they’ve been recruiting from lately. When Cindy went to CDL
school, she was the only one that didn’t get a grant to pay for her
school, but she’s probably the only one still driving. The schools
don’t care, they got their money and most of the people don’t care
because if was free for them.  Twenty years ago maybe, but back then it
was mostly handed down from father to son.

Truck-driving schools also are responding to
demand from the industry and from Hispanics hungry for better-paying
jobs that do not require fluent English.

No
one else speaks fluent english anymore so, why not? Most Hispanic
drivers I’ve run across speak better english than most of the East
European drivers I’ve run across. There’s a statistic that
state troopers have to use translation services more for european
drivers than they do for Spanish speaking drivers.  I’ve considered
learning spanish more than once so I can communicate with the dock and
warehouse workers. Not only in LA, but everywhere, Washington,
Illinios, everywhere.

"The truck driver has been the domain of the white male for years and years and years, and the face of the truck driver is changing," said Robert Lake, the executive publisher of Truckers News en Espanol. "And the companies that want to be profitable and fill their trucks have to look outside of that one individual."

I’m white and I’m offended by that. The domain? I don’t consider trucking to be anybody’s domain, trucking is a very diverse industry.  That statement should read – Companies want to be profitable and fill their trucks  by anyone they can take advantage of.

The rest of the article is a bunch of statistics and how trucking companies want to cater to Hispanic drivers by hiring Hispanic or Spanish speaking payroll clerks and such. 

However, the Spanish-language pitches have
yet to trickle down to Hispanic students at the AAA School of Trucking
in Reading, Pa., where Spanish speakers can learn English along with
trucking skills. Instead, they learned about the favorable wages by
word of mouth or English-language newspaper ads.

Most trucking schools are three to six weeks at the most. How much foreign language skill can you learn part time in truck driving school?

I don’t care who drives. As long as they’re legal. Speaking English is apparently optional. European drivers have European dispatchers. Their customers and law enforcement can deal with them when they can’t communicate.  My problem is with companies exploiting their employees, with the "don’t like it? We’ll find someone else" attitudes.

This entire article assumes that the Hispanic community can’t or doesn’t want to speak English. Canada sends everyone to a government program to learn French or English. I don’t think our government should do the same thing, maybe the Hispanic community could step up to the plate and teach immigrants English or others that want to speak Spanish, instead of making everything Spanish only and promoting the divisiveness.

Originally posted 2005-07-12 10:18:46.

Here is a picture of the GPS I use and a link to the program. I only wish they would update the map data once in a while.

This comment from Chad, I answered it there as well. Maybe I am nuts, but strike for lower fuel prices instead of raising freight rates because raising rates will hurt the consumer? That almost makes sense, I don’t think that has ever stopped anyone else from raising prices. I love America and the consumer (I are one too!), as much as Chad, but why should truckers be the sacrificial lambs for the consumer? And the part about the Saudi’s controlling the price of oil is true, but right now, it’s the refining that is being hurt and is causing the biggest jump at the pump and any price drop from strike would only be temporary at best. We need more refineries and we need to put them someplace besides the Gulf! How about Alaska? Drill the heck out of ANWR and the North Slope, refine it right there and ship to Valdez through the pipeline that’s already there. That way all the money we spend on energy will at stay in America and go to Americans (okay, Alaskans) and American companies.

We were picking up some store fixtures in New Jersey for delivery in Seattle and California. The trailer wasn’t even half full. I’m parked and on the phone with my office looking for something to fill the trailer and this other owner/operator (who happens to be Russian and has nothing to do with this.) walks up and asks about getting back to the interstate and about getting fuel etc… He asks what I’m doing and

• I say, “I’m looking for a load”,
• “didn’t you just get a load?”
• “The trailer is half empty, I want more $$$!”
• “I can drive faster when it’s light like this”.
• You like to drive faster, I like to drive richer!

Even full, it was still pretty light. We turned a $7,000 trip into a $10,000 trip. You guys keep running faster.

All the news about fuel prices has my family and friends asking how that’s affecting us. It is and it’s not. It’s shocking to see a $500 fill up, but we are getting paid more too. Trucking will always be around, if fuel is $1 or $4. Fuel has always been a major complaint for truckers, but trucks are still on the road. Now if it gets to the point like Chad says, the rates are so high that people stop buying stuff, we may have a small bump in the economy, but it will be temporary just like all the other bumps before. People still have to eat and buy clothes and trucks will always carry the food and clothes for them.

I’ve also updated my resume and changed some of the blog listings on the side panel. Next week while we are in Vegas (home), We are going to install a new fridge, if you notice it says, “Fits most 770’s”, doesn’t mention a 780, that’s
the reason for the minor surgery on the truck, but we think it will be worth it. Cindy has already voiced her opinion of the built-in fridge over here, more on that fiasco later. And we are going to check out a used trailer and if it’s not what we want we will order a new one from the factory.

Originally posted 2005-09-26 21:27:00.

Layover.com: News Archives

Granger, IA – Sept. 29, 2004 – Barr-Nunn Transportation, Inc., a premier provider of transportation and logistics services, has announced it has signed C.W. McCall as their marketing personality for 2004-2005. C.W. McCall wrote and performed the 1976 number one hit “Convoy.” The song was later used as the basis for a movie bearing the same name. McCall can be heard in Barr-Nunn radio commercials on XM satellite beginning in October 2004.

Nice gimmick, but how about spending that money on wages to the drivers?

Originally posted 2004-10-04 04:00:00.

Traffic Jam,
originally uploaded by Adventures In Trucking.

The guys that want to strike to make America realize how important they are might be fighting a losing battle. This is the Transportation exhibit at the American History Museum at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. One truck and one little sign about trucking and it’s in a traffic jam! And it’s a Werner truck, when the Independent Trucker was the biggest part of trucking back then. Compared to several rooms full of ships and trains. See more of our DC visit on our personal site.

While we were at the American History Museum we walked through the exhibit that showed immigration and how immigration helped industrialize America. Next to that, was a picture of the labor violence that mentioned the government often sent troops to help the companies keep out strike busters. Which reminded me of today’s company’s need for cheap labor and the exploitation of all immigrants, legal and illegal and the government behind the companies, again. It’s always been about power and it will always be about power.

trucking

Originally posted 2006-04-24 05:55:20.