Big Rig Owner

Our Model Sucks

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:08:01 EDT

By Gary Bricken

Every day we are seeing headline financial news that oil has hit record prices on the world market. The auctioneers chant is endless: $100, do I hear $110, $110, do I hear $120, $120, do I hear $130,----$130, $130, last chance-----sold for $130 a barrel!

Then there are the politicians weighing in on the problem with an endless stream of nonsensical plans. “Let’s get rid of the Federal Tax for 3 months”, chants a voice, while another says, “Let’s tax the huge profits the oil companies are raking in.” For truckers these ideas are about as valuable as yelling, “Lets install adequate fire sprinklers,” while our building burns to the ground.

The real problem for our industry, from the mega fleets to the single owner operator is that our business model sucks. The oil companies have it right; pay off the politicians to create tax loopholes that make any legislation affecting their industry almost meaningless and most importantly start every day anew. We really can’t do much about paying off the politicians right now; for one thing we are too broke paying for fuel because those oil company crooks outsmarted us on that one. But we can start every day anew, just like the oil companies do.

Here’s how the oil game works. Grandpa Joe drilled a well in 1940 and sold a barrel of oil for about $1.00. That hole is still pumping oil, and the rig and equipment now used has raised the cost somewhat but everyday that one dollar’s worth of oil changes it price based on the so called “world market” demand price. So the Great Grandson Joe the III who never lifted a finger in the whole process gets not only $120 for a barrel of oil he doesn’t pay squat in taxes because oil is classified as a non-renewable resource. These guys are rich because these guys are smart, it’s that simple. We need to copy their business model and start raking in the dough too.

First off we need to price freight on a daily basis using first the cost of a new truck in the equation, FOB at the factory. We don’t want to use the dealer price, it fluxuates too much, but the build sheet price which is calculated on the individual price of the components of the truck. That price is about twice what you would actually pay at the dealership after combined discounts are accounted for, but would more easily calculated on a daily basis. Then we need to add generous depreciation for all oil based parts of the trucks using the same formula that oil companies for the non-renewable resources involved. Then we need to make a daily adjustment for all labor, salaries, rents, tolls, taxes and other non-tangible costs in relation to the cost of living increases that are affecting the economy every day. The end result is a freight rate that would at the minimum be about $4.50 to $6.00 a mile which makes this business attractive to investors again allowing stockholders to make some real money. Those outfits that do business the old way, pricing their services on depreciated trucks, paid for buildings and ancient wage systems would be labeled un-American, the tools of Caesar Chavez and his fellow travelers who are trying to destroy our way of life with their twelve cent a gallon gasoline in places like Venezuela, while decent countries are charging $4 to $8 a gallon for the same stuff.

Yes, its possible that some will brand us as crooks and profiteers and say other bad things about us, but they say bad things about us anyway, so who cares. At the end of the day or the end of a run we get in our Caddies, drive off to our nice homes, and play a few rounds of golf until the next run comes around. Learn to ignore the pubic whining just like the guys in the oil business do. And you never know what the outcome will be. Maybe in few years the President himself will be one of our men too. That’ll be a cash cow we can live with.

Florida Wants to Castrate Truckers

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:12:00 EDT

By Gary Bricken

Your tax dollars are at work again. According to recent news reports displaying or dangling big metal testicles on the back end of a truck could be banned in Florida. These ornaments, which actually come in a wide variety of materials, colors and sizes, including progressively smaller ones for pickups, motorcycles and key chains, apparently are offending Florida state Senator Carey Baker.

Okay, I will admit that I personally thought the major issues facing this country were the War on Terrorism, the fighting in Iraq, the housing crisis, rising food and gasoline prices and nearest and dearest to truckers, the huge increase in diesel fuel prices. Whoa, did I miss the mark so far as where some of our elected officials are concerned. Its fake bull’s balls! I really need to get out more often.

Admittedly Senator Baker does acknowledge that Florida lawmakers may have more pressing issues, including huge revenue deficits, but this is a matter of public obscenity that must be addressed first. I imagine the thinking goes; how can we, as elected officials, sit and debate issues like the homeless, the aging, the war, crummy roads and people losing their homes while those little things are dangling away up and down the highways of Florida. One can only guess that the very thought that there are testicles out there that elected officials can’t get their hands on is very upsetting indeed. After all they have just about everybody else’s.

One the other side of the table from this timely and important debate on ornamental bull balls, State Senator Steve Geller opposes the idea of levying a $60 fine on offending truckers and suffering demerit points on their license. It’s highly probable that if nothing else, this was one of the most entertaining debates ever enjoined by Florida lawmakers.

But in the end the “No Balls in Florida,” group carried the day and the provision was attached to a larger transportation bill approved by the Senate, however the House version of the bill does not include this provision yet. And probably won’t in the end. It’s just possible, but unlikely of course, that some of the elected officials might actually be paying so much attention to the real issues in their state to give a hoot about what’s hanging off the back of a truck. But who knows?

The Titans Return

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:33:34 EDT

By Gary Bricken

The man and moment have arrived this cool April day. James Hebe, once the unrivaled power at Freightliner Trucks was banished to obscurity seven years ago when the whole industry took a nosedive back at the turn of this new century. In 1990 when Mr. Hebe joined the Freightliner team it had a long history of making good trucks, but was not a power player so far as sales went nationwide. He brought to the table a new aggressive style of marketing honed by 20 years of developing Kenworth dealerships and his known ability to create, anticipate, and adapt to changing markets and business strategies. Over the next decade he raised Freightliner’s market share of sales to the point where Freightliner LLC was making almost half of the over-road-rigs seen on America’s highways.

One of the keys to selling new vehicles, as industry legend Henry Ford once observed, is being able to sell used vehicles. Hebe knew he was pumping out FLD 120’s, the most popular of the Freightliner products, faster than Krispy Kreme donuts, and helped get the industry hooked on the idea of replacing trucks at timed intervals and in large groups. He had all kinds of buy-back schemes afoot for fleets and pioneered the idea that big fleets could halve maintenance costs only keeping in trucks in service for a few profitable years then trading them in before any heavy repairs were necessary. He saw that the only snag in this idea were the thousands of still roadworthy rigs were going to flood the dealers eventually.

At that time it was harder to obtain financing on a used rig than a new one. And often used rigs required additional investment over an above their initial cost to put them on the road. That problem was solved by creating a system for refurbishing used trucks before sending them to the sales lots with new tires, batteries, hoses and brakes so that they were ready to hit the road and start earning their keep quickly. And then low down payments and extended warranties sweetened the pie. The real brainstorm was the creation of a whole new used sales arm called SelectTrucks that offered one-stop shopping for well maintained, low mileage rigs originally sold new by Freightliner. In just a decade Hebe became an industry hero. And the fate of heroes is that they sometimes fall as hard and fast as they rose to glory. In this case the high volume of Freightliner production, even with its creative ways of selling used rigs to make room for more new trucks met head on with a dramatic downturn in the trucking industry itself in 2001. Naturally Mr. Hebe took the blame for the overcapacity of trucks from an industry populated with conservative drones jealous of his style and success.

The fact is that James Hebe created more successful owner-operators than any man in the history of this industry with his easily financed certified used truck schemes. Not every buyer was a success, but more men and women got a chance to grab the brass ring under Hebe’s leadership than every dreamed possible. Hebe was banished to relative obscurity back in the fire truck business where he started in the early 1970’s but used his time well to build up new business enterprises and now has returned at a propitious moment in our development to become vice-president of sales in North America for Navistar International. And Navistar’s new Lone Star series is sure to be a sales hit on a par with one of the best trucks ever made, the Transtar cabover, which in its day back in the 1970’s made half the CO rigs on the road. Hebe’s work in the early 90’s pushed the Freightliner brand past the International’s for the first time in history and now the shoe is on the other foot. Binder, an old nickname for International trucks, has once again got a great looking product and a proven sales leader on board at the same time and both are ready to return the Binder lineup to its rightful place as the industry’s number one selling over-the-road rig.

O’yeah, the recession, I almost forgot that. Well history is full of examples where economic downturns in this country have given birth to the giants of the future like IBM which was founded in the depths of the Great Depression. The beauty of economic downturns is that new ventures are by the nature of the hard times able to have in place the discipline needed to not only make a buck, but keep it. Anybody can make money in the good times, witness the recent housing boom that made millionaires overnight, but caused our current recession because neither lenders nor borrowers had any discipline or experience in how markets really work. So this joining of one of America's oldest truck makers with a hot new product and the industry’s top salesman of all time should be something to watch. The man and moment are one. Welcome back Mr. Hebe, you have been gone too long. The Titans have returned for battle.

Strike Against a Way of Life?

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:46:05 EDT

By Gary Bricken

Well it appears that the anticipated Trucker Strike went somewhat unnoticed across the land. That does not come as a surprise to veteran truckers; there have been at least half-dozen similar failed efforts over the past 30 years. The underlying reason for all the strikes has been the same: high fuel prices. And the results all the same; lack of organization.

So why can’t truckers organize a strike? The reason is that the very nature of organizing truckers runs counter to the why men and women get into trucking in the first place. Owner Operators are not your run-of-mill 9 to 5 types. They like the freedom of making most of their own decisions about how and when they work. They definitely hate to types of jobs where you have to, “look busy, the boss is coming.” When there is work to be done, you work hard and fast. When there is nothing to do you relax. You don’t have to put on some silly costume to go to work, you don’t have to listen to the same radio station as everybody else in the office, and you can take a break when you feel like it, not on some schedule set up by guy that got fired ten years ago. It’s all about personal freedom. And personal freedom and organized striking mix about well as gas and water.

Let’s be honest here. Striking against high fuel prices is a fool’s errand. The price of diesel is set by complex formulas spread over a global economy. We sort of did this to ourselves really by allowing so many jobs to go to China, Viet Nam, India and Mexico along with a dozen other places. The transfer of wealth that resulted allowed those folks to enjoy a higher standard of living than anyone dreamed imaginable including buying millions of new cars and trucks. Those vehicles need fuel and fossil fuel is a finite resource ultimately. There is only so much to be had in the long run. So the price goes up as more people chase a dwindling supply of resources. This is not exactly rocket science here.

Add to the mix some clever traders who prey on the hopes and fears of investors and buy mega chunks of fuel supplies in advance and you have another layer of people adding to the burden of the fuel prices. And don’t forget the politicians who have a habit of adding burdensome taxes to anything that people are addicted to or really can’t live without which includes fuels of all kinds.

The idea that the Federal Government will open up the fuel reserves to bring down prices, one of the demands of the recent call for strike, is a pipe dream. The national reserve is just that, a National Reserve, in case of a real emergency like we had on 9/11. Taking our savings out the bank for this particular problem is a dangerous move that could leave our military and vital relief organizations without their fuel supplies in case of a real emergency.

It comes down to this; you can’t have it both ways. If you want to be an owner operator, that is a person who makes most of the decisions in their daily life while still making a living, you can’t surrender that core freedom by following so-called strike leaders who credentials are somewhat suspect. We are not farm workers and there is no Caesar Chaves leading us out of the lettuce fields. We are out already, we are self employed, if we wanted a regular job we would have one by now.

Is there no solution? Only the natural process of all business adventures can offer a solution. You adjust to the reality. If your business can’t survive ask yourself why and be honest. Many owner operators paid too much for their rigs in the first place, they used blue-sky planning on what their rig could really earn. Shop, shop, shop for absolutely everything your rig needs, a $100 saving here and there could make all the difference between success and failure now. And that includes excess idling. If something isn’t working in your business find out why and think outside the box as they say to find a solution.

Being an owner operator has always been a tough gig, it both the curse and allure of this business. If you really want to it you probably will succeed and it might be long hard road to success. Striking may sound appealing, it doesn’t require much work does it, but in the long history of truck strikes it’s totally ineffective too. It does not add to the bottom line in any case.

Right now our industry is in a downturn, but it won’t last forever, never has. Those who survive get stronger those that don’t survive often get the lessons they need to succeed next time. Remember being an Owner Operator is a not just a job, it’s a way of life, and you can’t really strike against that.

This I Gotta’ See

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:29:37 EDT

By Gary Bricken

A number of news articles and internet blogs this week are predicting that truckers are going on strike to protest high fuel prices.

Many drivers are quoted as saying, “I’m going broke, the cost of fuel is driving me out of business, and we have to protest somehow.” Another favorite complaint is, “The oil companies are driving us out of business, and you can’t make it out here anymore.” But as usual there are more questions than answers when it comes to truckers striking over fuel prices.

The calls for a strike to protest high fuel costs dates back over thirty years. When diesel doubled in price almost overnight from twenty-five cents a gallon to just under fifty-cents the call went out. And it went mostly unheard. And that has been the tale of every other so-called fuel strike. The fact is that this is a competitive business and the object of competition is to knock your competitor out of the game. The calls for a strike, stopping your truck for a week, run counter to the whole competitive process. It’s not how the world really works.

In any group when there are too many mouths to feed somebody has to starve. It’s that simple. For a while of course the weak survive on what the strong leave behind, but when the food supply dwindles, the weak get too weak to even search for scraps and quietly drift away. It happens with every stratum of society and at every level of organization including nations.

Right now we have too many mouths to feed and the big companies are retrenching on there customer base and in the process dumping those whos business doesn’t add to the bottom line. Those customers in turn work through brokers who prey on the weakest truckers to move the freight regardless of the loss to the truckers. Right now every haul is somebody’s back-haul when it comes to the rates paid to the truckers. Note carefully here that the brokers are very often getting good rates for the freight they just aren’t passing them along except where they have customers they have to protect.

The problem is not fuel prices. It’s the rates. The scheme concocted ten years ago to add fuel surcharges was both ridiculous and a stab in back to truckers from the shippers. This has caused truckers, especially independent truckers and leased owner operators to bleed out slowly. The fuel surcharges were passed through the entire commerce chain resulting in higher prices for everything we need in our lives. But the basic rates for trucking services hardly went up at all even though the costs for everything needed by a trucker rose at the same time. The paychecks stayed the same, but their buying power has dwindled to the point where many drivers could make more money working at non-driving jobs.

Attacking fuel prices with threatened strikes actions accomplishes no more than burning down your neighborhood to protest the lack of fire departments in your area. Yeah, you make noise, you make headlines, but in the end you are the big loser.

Does anybody really think the oil companies care? Do the Chinese and Indians who are rapidly developing motor transportation markets and sucking up huge amounts of fuel really care? Do you think the big oil producing countries care? Does anybody working a 9 to 5 job outside our immediate industry care? The answer is NO. In fact the lack of trucks on the highway if a strike were to take place for only five days would be welcome relief to the driving public who just see us as a nuisance anyway. And remember there is no Walter Ruther or Jimmy Hoffa leading this parade in fact there never has been any proven leadership to any threatened non-union based strike. A call for a strike without the proven power of a qualified organization behind it is like seeking justice through a lynch mob. And currently, as in the past, no such organization exists or is likely to come into existence.

Is there a solution to the problem? Only time is a solution. Eventually the number of trucks will be pared down to be somewhat in harmony with the demand for the customers willing to see truckers as partners in their enterprise, not just another vendor to use and abuse. As the strong survive in their respective industries then the truckers that are left standing will prosper again. It's part of the American landscape of business; a cycle that repeats itself over an over. This so called strike, or slowdown, or stoppage, call it what you will, is doomed to fail. It works to the advantage of the big trucking companies, none of which has ever joined a work stoppage in the history of this industry. In the long run the big outfits got bigger and the independents disappeared into the mists that hang over the valleys of this industry.

As individuals, do as your conscience dictates. But don’t get your hopes up.

The Law of Money Management

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:09:01 EDT

By Gary Bricken

The mismanagement of today’s economy does not have a specific origin. Maybe one day a few years ago some banker decided that he had plenty of cash on hand and started making loans without the normally required security or collateral for that loan. Or maybe it started with a real estate company that decided to pad the buyer’s income or work history just a little to get his customer over the bottom line for qualifying a loan. And maybe it all started with the idea that a home is an investment more than a place to build your life upon. And maybe it was all of them plus a few other bad ideas.

During the height of the great real estate boom that ended over a year ago, there were actually companies around that for a few hundred dollars would claim you were a part time employee and return part of that money you paid them as a paycheck to prove it. Where accountants commonly rounded off cents to the nearest dollar, this new breed of money managers rounded off dollars to the next highest thousand on loan applications. Everybody was going to get rich! A house that you bought for 150 grand one day could fetch 200 grand in a few months. And most importantly builders went wild converting every patch of dirt they could find into subdivisions. That in turn kept the wheels of the big rigs moving in an unbelievable stream of commerce day night for about five years. Company drivers became owner operators faster than ever before. Why not: new trucks could be had for almost no down because the freight was stacking up and rigs were needed to keep the system rolling. It was a very good time to have blinders on.

It’s a basic law of human nature is to nurture that in which the individual has the most interest and most investment. Those people who put down substantial down payments on a home are not the ones being evicted today. And those owner operators who selected trucks that could do the job and had payments not greater than one week’s low average earnings are still in their cabs. But the gamblers got in trouble and I for one don’t feel like bailing them out.

Investing is a matter that entails both personal effort and good partners in the business community as well as oversight by the government. And investments include an Owner Operator’s truck or any other large piece of equipment. When all three actors in this play, the buyer, the broker and the banker, are outright gambling somebody has to lose. Bankers who demanded the normal 20% down on honestly appraised a home, truck or business often sat by silent phones. Meanwhile their peers in more aggressive institutions hired the unqualified 50mph drive-by appraisals and sold loan packages like loaves of bread. And that included as well truck dealers who agreed to underwrite that missing 20% to get the deal done. Now we have a huge mess on our hands, homes and big rigs are being snatched back at a record rate or worse yet being abandoned by their non-equity owners further damaging the value of the banking system itself.

It’s not like there weren’t a lot of warning bells. Six or seven years ago the bankruptcy laws were tightened up at a time when bankruptcies were not much of a problem. They reinvented the wheel so that bankruptcy for individuals would be harder to achieve. Now why did they do that if there was no problem at hand? Because the guys who make the rules saw a big problem coming down the line. They knew that the newer generation of workers would not achieve the real income levels of the established workers primarily because of the new world-wide market place. That meant that the younger generation of American workers would not really be able to pay the price for homes and other big ticket items that retiring generation was selling. The big money men fully understood that when people can’t win they may stop playing the game so the game had to keep going at any cost. And if little people lost they made sure bankruptcy wouldn’t be an easy option.

By violating the basic law of nature about nurturing that in which we are heavily invested, and turning home owing and big rig ownership into a get rich quick scheme, thousands of lives have been destroyed. And the damage will be hard to undo now. Those who had good potential earning capacity have been hurt badly. Not all the victims were greedy but they were poorly educated about how big money really works.

Can any good come from this? Of course and it usually does, eventually. For Owner Operators it starts with being realistic about what your truck can earn, and how much you can afford to pay for it. If it’s your main source of income you have to protect it at all costs. Making a house payment with the money you need to keep your rig on the road is bad economics if you really want to be an owner operator. The basic economic law of Owner Operator’s is simple: it’s not a job and it’s not a scheme to make a fast buck: It’s is a way of life. The law of money management is quite simple; protect you investment first and everything else will follow.

Back in November

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:10:32 EST

By Gary Bricken

Back in November I wrote an article about the problems in updating the trucks that serve the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor systems. Many of the rigs are literally ancient, belch black smoke and are operated on a shoestring budget by underpaid truck owners.

For the truckers there is no easy solution to their problem. They start out with a decent truck and make a few bucks before the repair bills begin to take a larger and larger portion of their income. By then they are buried in the system. Short hauling is tougher on big rigs than long haul work most of the time. Trucks specifically designed for what they call vocational work generally survive longer because of shorter gearing, lower revving engines and short-step transmissions. The trucks that fare the worst are the old OTR rigs that just aren’t set up for sprinting but rather are designed for long periods of steady rpms out on the road and have tall gears. So the drivers either don’t have trucks that can convert to the higher paying OTR jobs or their rides are just too worn out for the work anymore. Either way after a period of time the truck owners, mostly single truck operators, find themselves taking home less than ten-bucks an hour in a town where a two bedroom apartment costs nine-hundred dollars a month or more.

Recent proposals floated by the cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together operate the biggest combined port facilities in the US, which annually take in 40% of all overseas container freight, generally were aimed at helping these truckers update their rigs by creating financing so they could afford for newer trucks. They figured that they need two-billion dollars to get all the trucks replaced, but that was only one part of the problem. By tacking on a $35 container loading fee the two-billion will become a reality. However these plans were only aimed at replacing the trucks not actually paying the drivers any more money for their labor.

The mayors of Long Beach and LA are now at loggerheads over this issue. Long Beach wants to continue to use owner-operators who show proof of health insurance and are using trucks that are well maintained and most importantly meeting the 2007 Federal Emission Standard by 2012. But LA has a much bigger goal in mind. They want the truckers serving the Port of LA to have the newer trucks and be employees of legitimate trucking companies that provide good wages and health insurance. Not unsurprisingly the Teamsters are a big part of this plan as they see this scenario as being fresh green fields from which to recruit new members. The 35,000 member American Trucking Associations opposes the union based plan and part of the Long Beach plan as well. Their position is that deregulation of trucking almost 40 years ago was designed to open up competitive commerce and both these plans are restrictive in one manner or another to that goal.

The Mayor of Los Angeles is a strong union man; in fact his career started as a field representative for the United Teachers Los Angeles and he has had union support throughout his political career. The Mayor of Long Beach has a background in business management. They come from two different worlds of business models and the outcome of their battle may have far reaching effects on drivers and owner operators throughout this nation. The ports are the gateways to most of our commerce now. Not all ports are water based, some are inland and some are landlocked across our borders with Mexico and Canada. This seemingly small war at the western edge of the continent will sew the seeds for new laws and litigation for decades to come. On one side the union leaders, environmentalists and truck makers, all of whom stand to benefit from proposals to upgrade trucks, working conditions and wages will be pitted against an army of lawyers from the American Trucking Associations. The ATA believes that business and the community is best served letting the natural selection of the unregulated competitive process run its course.

The winners I suspect will be the lawyers as usual. They will drive home every night for the next 10 years in their fairly new Cadillac to their fine homes in Beverly Hills, while 17,000 marginal truckers will line up nightly beside outlaw shade tree repair shops and hope for a better day tomorrow. And in the meantime the trucks serving the combined harbors will spew out tons and tons of harmful diesel fumes choking the residents of what was once a beautiful seaside community.

If you are a long haul trucker take note of this battle brewing by the sea. I can’t count the many times I have heard a trucker say, “I’d like to hang up long-hauling and get something local.” Be careful what you wish for.

What Goes Around...

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:58:06 EST

By Gary Bricken

An interesting phrase or idiom in the English language reads: What goes around comes around. The exact origin of that phrase is hard to identify probably because it was a condition noticed so far back in the annals of time, and so innately correct, that there is no single source for the warning.

I was reminded of this saying earlier this week when I received an email from some trucking writers upset with what they termed “blacklisting” by the Department of Transportation for their editorials questioning the legality of the continuation of the Mexican Truck pilot program that will allow up to 500 trucks from Mexico to have full access to US highways. Even though Congress shut off the funds for this program in an effort to kill it, the DOT has somehow skirted that roadblock and is continuing on with the program. And supposedly there was some criticism leveled at the DOT by prominent writers about Toll Road issues. The result they say is that these writers and their magazines have been “blacklisted,” basically cut off from access to DOT officials and their press conferences. Let me clarify something here. I am a trucker who writes, but I don’t consider myself a “truck industry writer” in the most formal sense. My job has always been to actually deliver the goods, not make excuses as to why they are late.

At first I didn’t give the matter much thought. I haven’t paid two-twits of attention to the DOT or their shenanigans in three decades. The Department of Transportation is a huge government agency that over time has insulated itself against criticism by muddying the waters of any given subject so badly that it’s impossible for almost anybody to find the correct path through their system to get any straight answers about anything. But that is somewhat true of almost any department or division of our combined Federal, State and Local governments. The moats surrounding the castles of our empire are filled with the highly repellent and stagnant waters of bureaucracy.

After a few days of mulling on this “blacklisting” issue a thought came to me that enlivened the debate going on in my mind. First off, Blacklisting is a normal tenant of human activity. We all do it. For instance my girlfriend recently purchased a freezer from a big chain electronics and appliance supply company that refused to refund her money when the product proved to be defective, and they admitted that many of those freezers were in fact being returned. Our Blacklisting simply includes a personal pledge not to buy from those con-men again and to tell anyone who asks about our missing freezer and the circumstances of its disappearance. Perhaps in a more related situation to our industry, consider that when an employer refuses to hire or rehire a driver because of negative comments on truckers DAC report are engaging in a legal if unethical form of Blacklisting too. Advertisers in any industry who cancel their contracts with newspapers or magazines when a negative, but true, story about their company appears are engaged in Blacklisting too. And every boyfriend my daughter ever had was on a special Blacklist from the get-to with me.

Blacklisting, which is merely a self defense mechanism used by humans when they don’t get what they want or otherwise feel threatened, is as old as time. Blacklisting is also a two-edged sword that can be used by both sides in a dispute and to some degree is a silent weapon that often keeps the peace as much as it causes war. Getting allies to your own cause can be difficult when you yourself never helped them in their hour of need. I don’t recall any fellow writers defending the rights of drivers who smoke very hard. And there has been few if any in-depth exposes by writers about how some companies just use-up and toss drivers like old rags when they are done with them. Now suddenly they want me to pay attention their dilemma. Sorry fella’s, what goes around comes around in this case, my shoulders were too dirty apparently to rub up against in my many battles as a driver over the years when I was Blacklisted along with other wheelmen thousands, if not millions, of times in the past.

Naughty, Naughty, Somebody Followed the Rules

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:01:00 EST

By Gary Bricken

This day was bound to come. There is an old saying that if you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters eventually one of them will write the complete works of Shakespeare. Of course that’s just a theory, it’s never been actually been done. But this incredible event has happened.

According to articles that appeared in the Corsicana Daily Sun, USA Today and on the Associated Press newswires, a bus driver actually followed the HOS regulations to the letter. The driver was apparently about an hour from her destination in Dallas with a busload of 40 passengers who had been paroled or released from the Huntsville, Texas State Prison, including some wearing ankle bracelets, when she ran out of hours. So she parked the bus in front of a convenience store, told the passengers that another driver was on the way and left the bus.

The convenience store clerk called the police who arrived shortly and watched the passengers, who apparently caused no problems, and three hours later Greyhound Bus Lines Inc., which operated the bus, sent some relief drivers.

It’s pretty clear what happened here. In bus driving school, which is just like truck driving school, this trainee at the time was not paying attention during the HOS lectures. She missed the subtle winks and nods from the instructor when he said, “You have to follow the hours of service regulations to the letter,” (wink, wink). Never-never exceed your 11 hours of driving no matter what happens, (wink, wink) it’s a violation of federal law that companies take very seriously, (wink, wink, muffled laughter) and should never happen in any circumstance. She probably believed that stuff about the log book being kept up to date too.

The tone of the article was that the bus driver was probably in big trouble, the dispatcher of course was never mentioned, they are the most blameless crew in the world anyway, and you can bet no tape of the conversation between the driver and the dispatcher exists anyway.

But, back to the incident for a minute. What would happen if every trucker did that? I saw an old black and white movie on TV this week called The Day the Earth Stood Still about some space aliens who visit the earth and stop everything for a half-hour to get the attention of the world’s leaders. The world leaders promise to come together and really work for peace and good of mankind, which by the way was the science fiction part of the story I think. But could it really happen. The World Standing Still all because truckers followed the HOS regs to the letter at one given moment? We’ll probably never know will we? That’s the stuff of science fiction.

The World’s Greatest Con Job

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:56:00 EST

By Gary Bricken

There is a lot of competition in the world today for the title of the “World’s Greatest Con Job.” Let’s see there is Enron grand theft, the Hitler Diaries and certainly the idea that Congress is doing something important this year. I want to offer up what I believe to be the greatest con job ever foisted on the public, especially the truckers: the Great American Fuel Surcharge scam.

The Fuel Surcharge has only one redeeming value: it’s better than nothing. And if left up to the trucking companies many owner operators would get exactly that: nothing. The idea behind the Fuel Surcharge was fraudulent from the very beginning and the companies that promoted it knew that from the very beginning.

Admittedly when the Fuel Surcharge first took flight it seemed like a reasonable solution to fuel prices that were varying between $1.25 and a $1.50 and playing havoc with trucker’s bottom line. But when fuel passed a $1.50 a gallon it should have been incorporated in the rates and again every time fuel settled in for more than three months in quarter increments. Now we have a situation where the rates are still 1990’s with fuel charges that almost equal the freight rate on top of them. There is no accounting for the money needed to buy everything else for the truck that is fuel based like tires, oil and plastic or rubber components.

Think of it this way. What if McDonalds charged different prices everyday for a hamburger based on the shifting price of the ingredients. The 99 cent menu varied from 99 cents to $1.25, up and down every week. The public would go elsewhere fast. A core principle of good business is to control costs and that means accurately estimating costs in advance. The number one reason for failures in business is under-funding, generally caused by what they call blue sky estimates of what the future holds in store.

And that’s what happened to us. Blue Sky estimates of the real nature of the fuel increases, which the guys at the top of the food knew well in advance, were sold to truckers from the get-go. These guys knew full well that China and India were going to be using ten to 50 times more fuel after the year 2000 than they did in 1999. And they knew that production would not rise as fast a demand. And where every other industry simply raised prices to cover the increased cost of fuel where it affected their delivered product the truckers got sucked into a crazy scheme that left rates pretty much alone and just added a fuel surcharge to cover the singular cost of fuel used by the truck. Nobody else did it this way. That alone should have been a warning bell to the trucking industry.

It’s interesting to note that not one of the World’s Richest People is in the trucking business, although a few individuals are connected to actual manufacture of trucks and many billionaires have interests in oil including exploration work. As far as these guys are concerned we are just here to tote their goods and be happy with a few extra coins thrown our way from time to time.

But then after buying into the world’s greatest con job, what else are they to think?