Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
- Thread starter nedrow
- Start date
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
No doubt this was caused by a lone (owner/operator) trucker with an idea and broadcasting on his CB while sympathetic truckers joined in.
Cops can't write tickets because everyone's speed of traffic is 20 m.p.h.
Doing that on that GW Bridge at rush hour would really fuck off a lot of people!
No doubt this was caused by a lone (owner/operator) trucker with an idea and broadcasting on his CB while sympathetic truckers joined in.
Cops can't write tickets because everyone's speed of traffic is 20 m.p.h.
Doing that on that GW Bridge at rush hour would really fuck off a lot of people!
OMNIVOROUS FROG
EOG Master
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
They might even be more pissed off about diesel prices, which are even worse than gas prices. I doubt many care about the price of gas. What does this accomplish? Nothing, just messes up traffic for ordinary shmucks trying to get somewhere, probably to work, and hurts their fuel economy. They would be better served running one of those big rigs straight into the lobby of one of those oil corporations buildings. That would serve notice. The oil companies will undoubtly have record setting earnings and tax free with corporate loopholes. They run the show, and have lobbyist armies to get any legislation they want passed. Probably half if not more of the current messes the US is involved with is about these greedy corporate swine. Just a bunch of dirty pigs, rolling in corporate profits, controlling the media and the puppet politicians, maybe even GDub and his boss Cheney. Our forced reliance on fossil fuels is a quick end to the planet as we know it.
Best Wishes...OF :+whipping
They might even be more pissed off about diesel prices, which are even worse than gas prices. I doubt many care about the price of gas. What does this accomplish? Nothing, just messes up traffic for ordinary shmucks trying to get somewhere, probably to work, and hurts their fuel economy. They would be better served running one of those big rigs straight into the lobby of one of those oil corporations buildings. That would serve notice. The oil companies will undoubtly have record setting earnings and tax free with corporate loopholes. They run the show, and have lobbyist armies to get any legislation they want passed. Probably half if not more of the current messes the US is involved with is about these greedy corporate swine. Just a bunch of dirty pigs, rolling in corporate profits, controlling the media and the puppet politicians, maybe even GDub and his boss Cheney. Our forced reliance on fossil fuels is a quick end to the planet as we know it.
Best Wishes...OF :+whipping
Journeyman
EOG Master
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
They drove to Washington in protest when the price hit 2 dollars a few years back, a lot of good it did then, now it is almost double!
Fuck you G Bush.
They drove to Washington in protest when the price hit 2 dollars a few years back, a lot of good it did then, now it is almost double!
Fuck you G Bush.
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Some of the "ordinary shmucks" are are other truck drivers. That is, they're company truck drivers and they couldn't care less about fuel (as the company pays the costs), they just want to get to their shipper/receiver on time.
Likely many company truckers caught in the slow down on the NJ Turnpike are on their CBs mad as hell. Channel 19 would be full of arguments.
Surely you speak hyperbole.
The slow down on the turnpike is a form of civil disobedience and it seems to address the issue the truckers are concerned about.
Some of the "ordinary shmucks" are are other truck drivers. That is, they're company truck drivers and they couldn't care less about fuel (as the company pays the costs), they just want to get to their shipper/receiver on time.
Likely many company truckers caught in the slow down on the NJ Turnpike are on their CBs mad as hell. Channel 19 would be full of arguments.
Surely you speak hyperbole.
The slow down on the turnpike is a form of civil disobedience and it seems to address the issue the truckers are concerned about.
No argument there!
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Be thankful his father didn't win a second term or you would have saw these prices back then.
Be thankful his father didn't win a second term or you would have saw these prices back then.
OMNIVOROUS FROG
EOG Master
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Surely you speak hyperbole. Yes, and don't call me Shirley.
Best wishes...OF
Surely you speak hyperbole. Yes, and don't call me Shirley.
Best wishes...OF
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
They should be. They are getting "squeezed".
They should be. They are getting "squeezed".
Journeyman
EOG Master
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
no end in sight
no end in sight
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
if i was a trucker i would use vedgtable oil. Much much cheaper it is illegal but it would save a bundle.
if i was a trucker i would use vedgtable oil. Much much cheaper it is illegal but it would save a bundle.
Tuckman
Uh Poster
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
u spell like a trucker, u sure you are not 1 :+clueless
u spell like a trucker, u sure you are not 1 :+clueless
Tuckman
Uh Poster
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Like I've said before....G. Bush worst in my lifetime....killing us:hung
Like I've said before....G. Bush worst in my lifetime....killing us:hung
Doug
2
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
sure was, I would have been about 13 when he took office.
sure was, I would have been about 13 when he took office.
carnivorous hog
Banned
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Driven to the end of the road
As opportunities to haul freight shrink with the declining U.S. economy, and diesel costs soar, independent truckers are fast becoming a vanishing breed
<dl class="byline">By Stephen Franklin |Tribune Reporter<dd> March 25, 2008</dd></dl> Article tools
</noscript>
LAKE STATION, Ind.?With its croaks and whines and oil spilling out, the engine in Tim Fischer's truck is telling him a story, Fischer said, and he hopes it's not a tragedy.
If it is, then his one-man trucking business is finished, since he cannot afford an overhaul, let alone a new engine. As it is, he pays only a few important bills, and tries to reassure his wife that they will get through this crisis. But he has his doubts.
"If things don't get change, I'll be under in four to five months," he glumly predicts at a truck stop here, finishing an $8.88 eggs, bacon and grits breakfast, his only meal of the day. In a few minutes he'll continue on a low-paying haul from Iowa to the East Coast that he accepted only because he needs money to stay ahead of bills.
Truckers like him are vanishing from the nation's highways. Vulnerable before, they are almost defenseless now. Facing dwindling freight shipments as the U.S. economy shrinks, fierce competition from job-hungry truckers that keeps rates down, and diesel fuel costs surging over $4 a gallon in some areas, the highest since the government began keeping inflation-adjusted figures in 1980, their financial woes force them to cash out daily.
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<!-- END rail --> This is a reality that spells an uptick in profit for Nassau Asset Management, one of the nation's largest repossession firms. Last year its truck repossessions surged 110 percent, and there's been no let up so far this year, said Edward Castagna, president of the New York-based firm.
Nearly all those who face repossessions are independent operators, Castagna said. They have refinanced their homes, maxed out their credit cards, and the financial salvation that they usually could count on in the past has all but dried up.
But unlike the impact foreclosures are having in neighborhoods across the country, repossessed trucks are hot properties. The weak dollar makes them especially attractive in such emerging markets as Russia, Vietnam, Panama and Africa, said J.D. Larsh, an official at Adesa Auctions. If the export business were not booming, he added, "we would have fields of trucks."
The number of trucking companies that failed last year rose 52 percent, said Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Association, who expects the toll to climb at a "faster clip" in the first half of 2008. But, he added, those numbers don't include firms with less than five trucks, a segment he thinks has even more serious financial woes.
Competition is much stiffer today, said Chris Brady, a trucking industry expert with Commercial Motor Vehicle Consulting of New York, because truckers and firms shift from one market to another in search of goods to carry. The combination of surging fuel bills and greater competition drives down already low profit margins, he explained, "because they don't have pricing power."
Talk of a strike
Over a cup of coffee at a truck stop with a stranger, jabbering on their CB radios or unloading their thoughts to a trucker's blog, truckers lament the winnowing of their ranks.
"Everything seems to have dried up," complained Wayne Weisser, a Las Vegas trucker who spent a week in Dallas recently waiting for a load. He also helps run Life on the Road (www.lifeonthe road.com), a trucker's blog where the buzz includes the need for a strike to force public solutions to their private agonies.
But officials at the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, a Missouri-based group that views itself as a voice for the nation's 350,000 independent truckers, frown on the strike talk.
Their rationale is that not all truckers are affected by high fuel prices, because some are in better-paying niches or can rely on cash reserves to get them through the crisis. A weak strike would hurt only the few who would put their livelihood on the line.
Yet that doesn't mean they have downplayed the crisis brought on by the 129 percent increase in diesel fuel costs in the last year.
They have asked the government to stop fuel companies from shipping diesel overseas and to halt strategic reserve fuel stockpiling. They also have asked Congress to force trucking brokers to pass along 100 percent of the fuel surcharges they get from customers.
"We know that [brokers] are pocketing the surcharges," claimed Norita Taylor, a spokeswoman for the independent truckers group.
Drivers like Dan Kupke, 50, of Martinsville, Ill., figures he will park his truck in five months and get a job with a trucking company.
"A lot of drivers out here are living hand to mouth," he said over the cell phone in his cab on a Miami-bound trip. "They'll finish a load and get paid for it, and that's the only money they'll have until the next load."
At the Flying J truck stop in Lake Station, Chris Petty, 37, a Detroit trucker carrying a load from Cleveland to Milwaukee, is nursing his coffee, trying to wake up after driving much of the night. It's early morning, and some drivers are hunkered over breakfasts swapping stories.
"There are guys out there losing their butts," said Petty, stirring a chorus of silent nods. He is not one of them because he hauls animal feed, a product that brings him a better rate.
A dire situation
Then there's Fischer, 44, of Carlisle, Ind. An independent since 2001, his business went sour two years ago, and the spiral hasn't relented. He is a tall, hefty man of a few words, a former U.S. Army mechanic who tries to do all his own repairs. But if anything major goes wrong with his 8-year-old truck with 1.2 million miles on it, "I'm done," he said.
To conserve money, he has stopped taking toll roads. That means more driving time but less money out of his pocket. He also doesn't idle his truck while sleeping to stay warm at night, even when it is close to zero degrees.
Back home in southwest Indiana, he hunts to put food in the refrigerator. He makes his truck payments, but they pass on a lot of other bills. "We are right there on the edge," he admitted.
Around his wife he purposely tries to stay upbeat so she will fret less. He said she tells him he is faking it, but he insists to her that he isn't.
"I just kinda bury it," he said with a shrug, then pauses. "I have a big graveyard inside of me."
Out in the parking lot, he checks his tires in the chilly drizzle. They are OK. Then he listens to his engine, which hasn't changed its story.
sfranklin@tribune.com
Driven to the end of the road
As opportunities to haul freight shrink with the declining U.S. economy, and diesel costs soar, independent truckers are fast becoming a vanishing breed
<dl class="byline">By Stephen Franklin |Tribune Reporter<dd> March 25, 2008</dd></dl> Article tools
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LAKE STATION, Ind.?With its croaks and whines and oil spilling out, the engine in Tim Fischer's truck is telling him a story, Fischer said, and he hopes it's not a tragedy.
If it is, then his one-man trucking business is finished, since he cannot afford an overhaul, let alone a new engine. As it is, he pays only a few important bills, and tries to reassure his wife that they will get through this crisis. But he has his doubts.
"If things don't get change, I'll be under in four to five months," he glumly predicts at a truck stop here, finishing an $8.88 eggs, bacon and grits breakfast, his only meal of the day. In a few minutes he'll continue on a low-paying haul from Iowa to the East Coast that he accepted only because he needs money to stay ahead of bills.
Truckers like him are vanishing from the nation's highways. Vulnerable before, they are almost defenseless now. Facing dwindling freight shipments as the U.S. economy shrinks, fierce competition from job-hungry truckers that keeps rates down, and diesel fuel costs surging over $4 a gallon in some areas, the highest since the government began keeping inflation-adjusted figures in 1980, their financial woes force them to cash out daily.
Related links
<!-- google ads --> <iframe style="display: none;" src="http://www.chicagotribune.com/common/includes/google-adsense-content.html?client=ca-tribune_news3_html&channel_content=chicagotribune_business&channel_section=chicagotribune_section&type=wide&keywords=investment%2C%20investment%20jobs%2C%20mutual%20funds%2C%20online%20broker&page_url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-tue-trucks-repo-diesel-mar25,0,7660113,print.story" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" height="0" scrolling="no" width="290"></iframe> <!-- END google ads --> <!-- topix links --> <iframe src="http://www.chicagotribune.com/common/includes/topix.html?pcode=6003&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chicagotribune.com%2Fbusiness%2Fchi-tue-trucks-repo-diesel-mar25%2C0%2C7660113%2Cprint.story%3Flast_modified%3D3%2F25%2F08%201%3A13%3A8" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="176" scrolling="no" width="280"></iframe>
<!-- END topix links -->
<!-- END rail --> This is a reality that spells an uptick in profit for Nassau Asset Management, one of the nation's largest repossession firms. Last year its truck repossessions surged 110 percent, and there's been no let up so far this year, said Edward Castagna, president of the New York-based firm.
Nearly all those who face repossessions are independent operators, Castagna said. They have refinanced their homes, maxed out their credit cards, and the financial salvation that they usually could count on in the past has all but dried up.
But unlike the impact foreclosures are having in neighborhoods across the country, repossessed trucks are hot properties. The weak dollar makes them especially attractive in such emerging markets as Russia, Vietnam, Panama and Africa, said J.D. Larsh, an official at Adesa Auctions. If the export business were not booming, he added, "we would have fields of trucks."
The number of trucking companies that failed last year rose 52 percent, said Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Association, who expects the toll to climb at a "faster clip" in the first half of 2008. But, he added, those numbers don't include firms with less than five trucks, a segment he thinks has even more serious financial woes.
Competition is much stiffer today, said Chris Brady, a trucking industry expert with Commercial Motor Vehicle Consulting of New York, because truckers and firms shift from one market to another in search of goods to carry. The combination of surging fuel bills and greater competition drives down already low profit margins, he explained, "because they don't have pricing power."
Talk of a strike
Over a cup of coffee at a truck stop with a stranger, jabbering on their CB radios or unloading their thoughts to a trucker's blog, truckers lament the winnowing of their ranks.
"Everything seems to have dried up," complained Wayne Weisser, a Las Vegas trucker who spent a week in Dallas recently waiting for a load. He also helps run Life on the Road (www.lifeonthe road.com), a trucker's blog where the buzz includes the need for a strike to force public solutions to their private agonies.
But officials at the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, a Missouri-based group that views itself as a voice for the nation's 350,000 independent truckers, frown on the strike talk.
Their rationale is that not all truckers are affected by high fuel prices, because some are in better-paying niches or can rely on cash reserves to get them through the crisis. A weak strike would hurt only the few who would put their livelihood on the line.
Yet that doesn't mean they have downplayed the crisis brought on by the 129 percent increase in diesel fuel costs in the last year.
They have asked the government to stop fuel companies from shipping diesel overseas and to halt strategic reserve fuel stockpiling. They also have asked Congress to force trucking brokers to pass along 100 percent of the fuel surcharges they get from customers.
"We know that [brokers] are pocketing the surcharges," claimed Norita Taylor, a spokeswoman for the independent truckers group.
Drivers like Dan Kupke, 50, of Martinsville, Ill., figures he will park his truck in five months and get a job with a trucking company.
"A lot of drivers out here are living hand to mouth," he said over the cell phone in his cab on a Miami-bound trip. "They'll finish a load and get paid for it, and that's the only money they'll have until the next load."
At the Flying J truck stop in Lake Station, Chris Petty, 37, a Detroit trucker carrying a load from Cleveland to Milwaukee, is nursing his coffee, trying to wake up after driving much of the night. It's early morning, and some drivers are hunkered over breakfasts swapping stories.
"There are guys out there losing their butts," said Petty, stirring a chorus of silent nods. He is not one of them because he hauls animal feed, a product that brings him a better rate.
A dire situation
Then there's Fischer, 44, of Carlisle, Ind. An independent since 2001, his business went sour two years ago, and the spiral hasn't relented. He is a tall, hefty man of a few words, a former U.S. Army mechanic who tries to do all his own repairs. But if anything major goes wrong with his 8-year-old truck with 1.2 million miles on it, "I'm done," he said.
To conserve money, he has stopped taking toll roads. That means more driving time but less money out of his pocket. He also doesn't idle his truck while sleeping to stay warm at night, even when it is close to zero degrees.
Back home in southwest Indiana, he hunts to put food in the refrigerator. He makes his truck payments, but they pass on a lot of other bills. "We are right there on the edge," he admitted.
Around his wife he purposely tries to stay upbeat so she will fret less. He said she tells him he is faking it, but he insists to her that he isn't.
"I just kinda bury it," he said with a shrug, then pauses. "I have a big graveyard inside of me."
Out in the parking lot, he checks his tires in the chilly drizzle. They are OK. Then he listens to his engine, which hasn't changed its story.
sfranklin@tribune.com
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Yes I was and I'd take anybody over Bush:cheers
shooterman
EOG Veteran
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
I saw on the news tonight that it can take $1,189 to fill up their tanks for the big rigs. More than some make in a week....
I saw on the news tonight that it can take $1,189 to fill up their tanks for the big rigs. More than some make in a week....
OMNIVOROUS FROG
EOG Master
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Carter was just blatantly incompetent, GDub blatantly corrupt. But GDub is just a Cheney puppet, and Cheney is the corporations front man. Carter was very bad in a different way. But we are in a lot more hidden trouble with GDub. Just one segment after another is taking a brutal beating, and the trickle down effect has now become a ripple effect, with multiple ripples overlapping. You can always get a career in the ever increasing law enforcement field. I never saw so many rigs with for sale signs on them. The independent trucker is going the same place as the independent farmer. Work for a corporation or get squeezed out is the motto I guess.
Best Wishes...OF :hung
Carter was just blatantly incompetent, GDub blatantly corrupt. But GDub is just a Cheney puppet, and Cheney is the corporations front man. Carter was very bad in a different way. But we are in a lot more hidden trouble with GDub. Just one segment after another is taking a brutal beating, and the trickle down effect has now become a ripple effect, with multiple ripples overlapping. You can always get a career in the ever increasing law enforcement field. I never saw so many rigs with for sale signs on them. The independent trucker is going the same place as the independent farmer. Work for a corporation or get squeezed out is the motto I guess.
Best Wishes...OF :hung
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Brutal beating is what I'm talking about--never seen it affect so many people in so many ways. Democrats have a free ride to Oval Office....but do they have a piece of candy who can the win the flavor of a sour country.:doh1
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
i think i'm not one but i'm not sure at this point. I'll give you that one i did spell like a moron, but it dosen't happen often so i'll give you credit where credit's due.
i think i'm not one but i'm not sure at this point. I'll give you that one i did spell like a moron, but it dosen't happen often so i'll give you credit where credit's due.
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
not according to my mechanic, he says diesel engines can run on a lot of things since there is a much higher flash point in diesel engines vedgy oil can be used as a supplement.
not according to my mechanic, he says diesel engines can run on a lot of things since there is a much higher flash point in diesel engines vedgy oil can be used as a supplement.
OMNIVOROUS FROG
EOG Master
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
I was the top diesel mechanic on my sub, they will eat veggie oil supplement also.
Frybrid Vegetable Oil Fuel Systems -- Catalog
Best Wishes...OF :cheers
I was the top diesel mechanic on my sub, they will eat veggie oil supplement also.
Frybrid Vegetable Oil Fuel Systems -- Catalog
Best Wishes...OF :cheers
scrimmage
What you contemplate you imitate
OMNIVOROUS FROG
EOG Master
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
These Saudi customs confuse me, not thier stance on truckers, but the left hand is unholy, dirty, and should not be used for eating, let alone touching someone else, and yet, walking hand in hand like butt buddies is a sign of friendship. Any Saudi EOG members to enlighten me here?
Best Wishes...OF :+clueless
These Saudi customs confuse me, not thier stance on truckers, but the left hand is unholy, dirty, and should not be used for eating, let alone touching someone else, and yet, walking hand in hand like butt buddies is a sign of friendship. Any Saudi EOG members to enlighten me here?
Best Wishes...OF :+clueless
Re: Truckers Fired Up over Gas Prices
Would somebody just tell the truckers to forget that life and turn to sports gambling.
Would somebody just tell the truckers to forget that life and turn to sports gambling.