Candace

Talmadge

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April 14, 2008

$4-A-Gallon Diesel Puts Rig Owners in Protest Mode 

They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. At the start of the month, hundreds of them put the brakes on traffic in Chicago, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on the New Jersey Turnpike and at the Port of Tampa. 

Now their sights are set for additional and bigger traffic slowdowns in New York City (April 21) and Washington, D.C. (April 28) – all leading to a possible national shutdown on May 1. 

They are the nation’s independent long-haul truckers, small business persons whose livelihood is being crushed by $4-per-gallon diesel fuel. 

Why should the rest of us care? The big rigs transport almost everything Americans consume on a daily basis. If the trucks slow down or do not roll, the bread and milk, along with the flat screen TVs and the $800 handbags, are going to be late or not arrive at all. Business might just grind to a halt. 

Thus self-employed rig owners and truck-driver employees, albeit lacking corporate megabucks or political insider connections, are nonetheless in the unusual position of being able to make even the most powerful and indifferent pay attention to them. 

“Just call this the last straw on the camel’s back,” says Michael Schaffner, a trucker-activist involved in helping to organize the nationwide series of protests. Better known as “JB,” for his CB handle, the “jake brake” on big rigs, he adds: “We are just so economically stressed and the government and the major corporate players are devouring all the resources.” 

Rig owners are by no means alone in their gloomy assessment of their financial status. A Pew Research Center poll recently released shows that more than half of Americans say that in the last five years, they either have not moved forward (25 percent) or actually slid backward (31 percent) in their economic well-being. 

“This is the most downbeat short-term assessment of personal progress in nearly half a century of polling,” the Pew Research Center noted. According to the center, as of 2006, real median annual household income had not yet returned to 1999 levels, making the most recent decade one of the longest downturns for this widely accepted measure of middle-class living standards. 

JB and his fellow organizers are calling on all drivers – not just rig owners – to participate in “all out civil obedience” by starting and continuing to drive five mph under the posted speed limit. He and his brother, Frederick, built a website (www.theamericandriver.com) they are now using to help organize the ongoing protest.  

The site lists rig owners’ 10 complaints and grievances specific to their industry. It also provides helpful links to current road conditions by state, nationwide weather sites and other travel-related information useful to all road warriors. 

JB emphasizes that the truckers are motivated by more than their own pocketbook issues. He and his fellow drivers see their troubles inextricably linked to the economic perils that beset all of the nation’s poor and middle class these days. 

“The entire protest is really about how the government is so divorced from the people,” JB says. “We’ve had enough, enough, enough. We can’t survive anymore. Company after company after company is going out of business.” 

Amen! Tell it, Brother. Can these protests be the first rumblings of more widespread discontent among American workers? All of them, right along with the truck drivers, are toiling longer and harder than ever yet being left further and further behind. Until now, however, their protests, if any, have been private and quiet. 

Let us hope that the truckers make those at the top of government and industry very, very nervous. It’s time for the rest of us to stand with them and say, “No more!”

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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