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."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TRUCKERS_TROUBLE?SITE=NJVIN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
From: Trucker
Strike
Date: Mar 1, 2008 11:37 AM
Yall got the point across and it hit the front page. I did what I can
do to help and hope it does open some people's eyes. All you drivers
be safe out there and keep your chin up. People still do care about
you!!! This article made me cry! lol don't make fun!
Hello,
Sorry for the mass email, but I wanted to make sure all the truckers
I’d talked to see my piece, which moved today, about the pressures
on independent truckers. Thank you all so much for talking to me and
writing me. I’d be interested to hear what you think of the piece.
Thanks again,
Ellen Simon
AP Business Writer
esimon@ap.org
212/621-1681
