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Amber Alert

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Will a Truckers strike fix the high fuel cost

No, and I will tell you why a strike won't do it. I here this 15 times a year, WE NEED TO STRIKE to get fuel cost down.
Then in the next breath I hear the same driver bragging about running down the road at 75 mph. Huh? Did I just read that right? Yea, my friend I am afraid you did.

Why would you complain about the fuel prices, and then in another sentence blab about running 75 mph? Most trucks are set to run at around 55 mph for optimized fuel economy. When you decide to speed you are just wasting fuel.

There is no reason why you can't survive and still make a decent living if you would just slow down and run the speed limit. Oh yea and stop pulling this CHEAP freight. I swear these fools who run down the road pulling $.95 cpm freight should go bankrupt. That kind of freight should be left for the bottom feeder companies, like JB Hunt, Swift, etc. you guys know who I am talking about.

An owner operator should these days be getting at least $.51 cpm fuel surcharge. Do you know how to charge for fuel surcharge? Those who don't know how to do this need to click on that link, it is from OOIDA and is pretty useful information.

There is another reason why a strike won't work. there are too many "cut throat" companies out there waiting on the freight that you will be refusing to pull, if you were to strike. There is no organization among truck drivers. There will never be any kind of organization among truck drivers. I know too many drivers out there that if you were holding a "blue ink pen" in your hand they would swear it was a "red ink pen".

In all reality it is up to you guys/gals out on the road, to be able to adapt and make ends meet. The first thing I would do if I were you was to slow down and quit wasting fuel. It makes a difference.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This was a good blog post and has some interesting arguments about the trucking strike. We'd like to have you over at the Social Truckstop to have your view on situations going on there!

We added your blog post to our discussion here: http://www.socialtruckstop.com/forum/topic/show?id=2028883%3ATopic%3A848&x=1&page=2

http://www.socialtruckstop.com

Hope to see you there!

Anonymous said...

I agree on some of your points.I also think you must be a little nutty!First of all if you are listening to anything said on a c/b radio.Second,who cares what color your pen is.(maybe I R S)And third do you just make up the information about trucks being set to run at 55 for fuel economy(I know you gave your self an out by saying"MOST")thats crazy no one who owned a truck would set it up to run that slow.finally are you a truck driver or do you sit behind a desk?This sounds like a desk jock.Because COMMENT MOD ENABLED and did you drag 51cpm surcharge out of the air?All my fsc is a percentage of the line haul so it is differant from load to load.And everyone I Know tell me the same

Anonymous said...

I think you're stupid! speeding has nothing to do with the strike! would you want to go days without food? because if you stop truckers from running the way they need to, you'll go hungry for days, because they can't get the freight to the stores that you buy your living supplies at! think about this, every truck driver in this country has to make a living! if the cost of fuel doesn't go down soon, the number of truck drivers will eventually decrease! that means that every store in the country that gets their products delivered to them by truckers would have a hard time suppling you the consumer! but you wanna know who will not be affected by those future changes the oil companies, because they're living their lives in luxury, not having a care in the world about gas and fuel, because they're not the ones wasting 4 dollars a gallon on it! My dad has been a truck driver since before i was born, and we had a nice life, we weren't rich, but we sure as hell weren't poor, unlike now when their are hard times for truckers! i'm just a high school student, who now just because of fuel prices and the economic rise in product prices i have to work 2 jobs, and it's sad when more than half my paycheck goes to the oil companies just so i can get to work!! you need to understand that we are going into another depression, if something isn't done about the economy and fuel prices, there will be a World War 3! so my personal opinion is that everyone needs to go on strike, so we can end this economical downfall! we need to get our country back from the controlling rich oil companies! i don't drive a truck, but you better believe i will be right beside my dad on strike, and i won't buy gas!!!!!!!!