GEF @ 6:08 AM MST
“If you eat it, drink it, wear it … sit on it, if it is anything other than the air you breathe, an American truck driver made it possible!” wrote trucker Joe Misilewich of Norwich, New York in an e-mail. “Don’t forget it! Without truckers, America is nothing!”
Enter Now Bush’s Mexican Truckers…A disaster waiting to happen – GEF
Independent Truckers See End of the Road
Trucker Robert Griffith is on the road three weeks out of four, pulling oversize loads like crane booms, railroad ties and air conditioning ducts. One of his biggest worries: How he’ll find the money to buy his daughter a prom dress.
As the cost of diesel doubled over the last four years, his take-home pay has plummeted, from $50,000 to $11,000 last year. He’s literally burning money; he spent $64,000 on diesel in the last eight months. Since he canceled his satellite radio, he’s on citizens band radio constantly (handle: Instigator) talking about what needs to change so truckers like him can survive.
“I had to learn to live totally different,” said Griffith, 41, of Lebanon, Tenn.
No more $150 family outings to Shogun sushi. No more weekly washes for his Western Star 4900 EX truck. No more health insurance for him and his family.
“It hurts,” he said. “I’m a man who’s trying to make a living for my family and I’m not succeeding.”
Trucking’s owner-operators, the self-employed drivers who haul everything from Hummers to hay, are suffering. Many say they’re running on the edge of bankruptcy, about to disappear unless they get help. While a wave of trucking failures now might be invisible to consumers, when the economy rebounds, it would push up shipping rates, helping increase prices.
The housing downturn and decreased consumer spending have cut into loads; the extra trucking capacity is pushing down freight rates. Diesel prices, which are always higher in the winter, have hit such highs that Truckinginfo.com runs ads for thief-stopping fuel-tank locks.
“If you can run all week without a flat tire, you’re a little bit ahead, otherwise, you’re basically just running to put the money right back into the fuel tank,” said trucker Benjamin Stanley, 40, of Spotsylvania, Va. “Truckers are in the same spot farmers were in a few years back.”
Reposessor Nassau Asset Management repossessed 110 percent more trucks in 2007 than it did in 2006, according to president Edward Castagna. And it’s taking less time to pick up a truck, which he sees as a sign that there’s less work to keep them on the road — and out of his reposessors’ reach.
“It used to take weeks, now it takes days or hours,” he said.
Industries that depend on independent truckers, like logging, are starting to suffer. Maine Gov. John Baldacci declared a civil emergency at the end of November, speeding fuel tax reimbursements for logging truck operators and asking the Department of Transportation to identify roads that could tolerate logging-truck weight, allowing truckers to take more direct routes and save fuel.
About nine percent of the nation’s 3.4 million truck drivers are independent owner-operators, according to the Department of Labor. Without the independents, trucking will turn into a group of “regional and national oligopolies” that would send shipping prices higher when the economy improves, said John Saldanha, who teaches logistics at Ohio State University.
A Baird & Co. research report said the one positive note is the likelihood of more bankruptcies could eventually push freight rates up for the survivors.
Truckers, who felt unappreciated in the best of times, say they feel even more marginalized now.
Rumors of a nationwide truck strike are a nearly annual occurrence — but this year an effort in January generated more talk than usual on MySpace and the Sirius Satellite Radio show “Freewheelin.'”
“If you eat it, drink it, wear it … sit on it, if it is anything other than the air you breathe, an American truck driver made it possible!” wrote trucker Joe Misilewich of Norwich, New York in an e-mail. “Don’t forget it! Without truckers, America is nothing!”
Nanette Jenkins Rudd, 40, a third-generation trucker based in Mapleton, Ill., kept her five trucks off the road the week of the strike.
“I pray that this strike is successful, so that we only have to stop rolling for a week — and not forever,” she said.
Like other truckers, she’s hoping for government help. “The government stepped in and helped the farmers when they were in trouble,” she said. “Why? Because the farmers feed America, the farmers put food on the table. But who do you think delivers that food?”
Truckers say they want caps on diesel prices, or tax credits for truckers, as well as increased regulation for the middlemen who broker truck loads.
While independents struggle, the large public trucking companies seem to be on a different road. Their stocks have, for the most part, climbed since January.
J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. and YRC Worldwide Inc., with more than 10,000 truck tractors each, buy everything from fuel to tractors in bulk. The big companies buy thousands of gallons of diesel at a time on the commodities market, then store at their depots; Griffith buys his at truck stop pumps, where prices increased 38 cents a gallon over two days last month.
Independent truckers are increasingly dependent on freight brokers, middlemen who match shippers with drivers one load at a time, taking a cut for themselves. At one of the country’s largest brokers, Landstar System, Inc., revenue from brokered loads was $881.57 million in 2007, more than double what it was four years before. But the company said it paid less for transportation in fiscal 2007, while its revenue per load was nearly flat at $1,612.
Jim Gattoni, Landstar’s chief financial officer, said payments were lower because volume was lower. Drivers carrying brokered loads from the company earn between 80 and 90 percent of the value of the freight they carry, he said, depending on the weight and complexity of the load.
“Our margin, at the end of the day, is seven percent,” he said.
At brokerage sites like getloaded.com and internettruckstop.com, freight rates are where they were in 2002, said Roger Carpenter, a Binghamton, N.Y. trucker who hauls dairy and chickens. The middlemen behind the boards “are so competitive, they chop each other’s rates up like hungry dogs trying to get a scrap of meat,” he said.
Truckers complain that the brokerage system is unregulated and lacks transparency: They know what they’re getting paid, but they don’t know what the shippers are paying the brokers. They say they’re also forbidden from showing the shippers their contracts. Many independents have a story about a shipper’s shock after finding out what the trucker was being paid.
A load traveling 800 miles that cost a shipper nearly $3,000 to send may pay the trucker $1,000, out of which the trucker would pay all expenses including fuel and insurance.
“It’s truly highway robbery,” Misilewich said.
Jim Butts, vice president of transportation at C.H. Robinson, a company whose business includes brokering loads, said his company serves truckers well, acting as their sales and marketing arm and paying them even when shippers fail to pay.
“Not all these competitors are playing the same game and not all abide by the same rules,” he said.
Griffith, who’s been driving a truck for 20 years, stopped working with brokers six months ago and started hauling specialized loads, which pay $2 or $3 a mile more than standard.
Not that it’s helping.
Three-quarters of his pay is going to fuel and maintenance, up from half in the past. And how much work he can cram in is regulated, with the number of hours he can drive capped by federal regulations at 11 a day, all of which must be recorded in a log book.
“People will say, ‘Run harder,'” he said. “I can’t run harder. You can’t run beyond your log books.”
Back on the CB, “someone will get on about trucking, someone will get on about the fuel prices, then everyone will start arguing and cussing.” Listen to CB for an hour he said, “you’ll feel the animosity, the hatred, the despair.”
Griffith longs for the old Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa, who led truckers in their most powerful — and profitable — years. Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and was declared presumed dead in 1982.
“We need to band together instead of fight each other and somebody needs to help us do that,” he said. “I wish Jimmy Hoffa were still around.”
Well said and everything he said is true. Truckers are important part of the backbone of America.
Trickle down economy….truckers and those that know them figured that out decades ago.
I wonder then why the DoD awarded a contract worth 35 billion for tanker fleet not to Boeing KS but to France? Another trucking job taken away too. How many Americans lost their jobs overseas? Trickle down, our asses.
Teak,
The Bush Administration is up there committing wholesale Treason against his country and countrymen and Congress is up there sucking their thumbs and just sitting on Impeachment…
I call that aiding and abbeding traitors to America.
Where am I, moron land ?
Don’t believe one optimistic word from any public figure about the economy or humanity in general. They are all part of the problem. Its like a game of Monopoly. In America, the richest 1% now hold 1/2 OF ALL UNITED STATES WEALTH. Unlike ‘lesser’ estimates, this includes all stocks, bonds, cash, and material assets held by America’s richest 1%. Even that filthy pig Oprah acknowledged that it was at about 50% in 2006. Naturally, she put her own ‘humanitarian’ spin on it. Calling attention to her own ‘good will’. WHAT A DISGUSTING HYPOCRITE SLOB. THE RICHEST 1% HAVE LITERALLY MADE WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. Don’t fall for any of their ‘humanitarian’ CRAP. ITS A SHAM. THESE PEOPLE ARE CAUSING THE SAME PROBLEMS THEY PRETEND TO CARE ABOUT. Ask any professor of economics. Money does not grow on trees. The government can’t just print up more on a whim. At any given time, there is a relative limit to the wealth within ANY economy of ANY size. So when too much wealth accumulates at the top, the middle class slip further into debt and the lower class further into poverty. A similar rule applies worldwide. The world’s richest 1% now own over 40% of ALL WORLD WEALTH. This is EVEN AFTER you account for all of this ‘good will’ ‘humanitarian’ BS from celebrities and executives. ITS A SHAM. As they get richer and richer, less wealth is left circulating beneath them. This is the single greatest underlying cause for the current US recession. The middle class can no longer afford to sustain their share of the economy. Their wealth has been gradually transfered to the richest 1%. One way or another, we suffer because of their incredible greed. We are talking about TRILLIONS of dollars. Transfered FROM US TO THEM. Over a period of about 27 years. Thats Reaganomics for you. The wealth does not ‘trickle down’ as we were told it would. It just accumulates at the top. Shrinking the middle class and expanding the lower class. Causing a domino effect of socio-economic problems. But the rich will never stop. They will never settle for a reasonable share of ANYTHING. They will do whatever it takes to get even richer. Leaving even less of the pie for the other 99% of us to share. At the same time, they throw back a few tax deductable crumbs and call themselves ‘humanitarians’. Cashing in on the PR and getting even richer the following year. IT CAN’T WORK THIS WAY. Their bogus efforts to make the world a better place can not possibly succeed. Any ‘humanitarian’ progress made in one area will be lost in another. EVERY SINGLE TIME. IT ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT WORK THIS WAY. This is going to end just like a game of Monopoly. The current US recession will drag on for years and lead into the worst US depression of all time. The richest 1% will live like royalty while the rest of us fight over jobs, food, and gasoline. Crime, poverty, and suicide will skyrocket. So don’t fall for all of this PR CRAP from Hollywood, Pro Sports, and Wall Street PIGS. ITS A SHAM. Remember: They are filthy rich EVEN AFTER their tax deductable contributions. Greedy pigs. Now, we are headed for the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time. SEND A “THANK YOU” NOTE TO YOUR FAVORITE MILLIONAIRE. ITS THEIR FAULT. I’m not discounting other factors like China, sub-prime, or gas prices. But all of those factors combined still pale in comparison to that HUGE transfer of wealth to the rich. Anyway, those other factors are all related and further aggrivated because of GREED. If it weren’t for the OBSCENE distribution of wealth within our country, there never would have been such a market for sub-prime to begin with. Which by the way, was another trick whipped up by greedy bankers and executives. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. The credit industry has been ENDORSED by people like Oprah, Ellen, Dr Phil, and many other celebrities. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. Now, there are commercial ties between nearly every industry and every public figure. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. So don’t fall for their ‘good will’ BS. ITS A LIE. If you fall for it, then you’re a fool. If you see any real difference between the moral character of a celebrity, politician, attorney, or executive, then you’re a fool. WAKE UP PEOPLE. ITS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. The 1% club will always say or do whatever it takes to get as rich as possible. Without the slightest regard for anything or anyone but themselves. Vioxx. Their idea. Sub-prime. Their idea. NAFTA. Their idea. Outsourcing. Their idea. The commercial lobbyist. Their idea. The multi-million dollar lawsuit. Their idea. $200 cell phone bills. Their idea. $200 basketball shoes. Their idea. $30 late fees. Their idea. $30 NSF fees. Their idea. $20 DVDs. Their idea. Subliminal advertising. Their idea. The MASSIVE campaign to turn every American into a brainwashed credit card, pharmaceutical, love-sick, celebrity junkie. Their idea. All of which concentrate the world’s wealth and resources and wreak havok on society. All of which have been CREATED AND ENDORSED by celebrities, athletes, and executives. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. So don’t fall for their ‘ good will’ ‘humanitarian’ BS. ITS A SHAM. NOTHING BUT TAX DEDUCTABLE PR CRAP. Bottom line: The richest 1% will soon tank the largest economy in the world. It will be like nothing we’ve ever seen before. and thats just the beginning. Greed will eventually tank every major economy in the world. Causing millions to suffer and die. Oprah, Angelina, Brad, Bono, and Bill are not part of the solution. They are part of the problem. EXTREME WEALTH HAS MADE WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. WITHOUT WORLD PROSPERITY, THERE WILL NEVER BE WORLD PEACE OR ANYTHING EVEN CLOSE. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL. Of course, the rich will throw a fit and call me a madman. Of course, their ignorant fans will do the same. You have to expect that. But I speak the truth. If you don’t believe me, then copy this entry and run it by any professor of economics or socio-economics. Then tell a friend. Call the local radio station. Re-post this entry or put it in your own words. Be one of the first to predict the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time and explain its cause. WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE.