Can't keep on truckin'...
Susie provided the link and an excerpt, but everyone should read the entire article. But I'll provide a different excerpt:
About nine% 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.
