Truckers' strike - real or hoax?

More from Barb Ickes at The Quad City Times:


It evidently took a few days to sink in.

When my story from last week about plans for a truckers’ strike appeared Monday on the high-traffic Drudge Report Web site, the calls and e-mails poured in.

I heard from CNN in Atlanta as well as small-time radio stations across the nation. I hung up the phone after listening to a dozen new messages and had four more come in during the few minutes I was tying up the line.

The potential impact of this thing is tremendous, and people are beginning to notice.

The call for a drivers’ shutdown started small — with an owner/operator who hauls cattle in Missouri. The trucker, Dan Little, posted his plans to shut down on his Web site, and someone brought it to our attention at the Times.

Now it’s been brought to the attention of thousands, and Little’s plan to park his rig, beginning April 1, has truckers lining up across the nation to join him.

Several non-truckers wanted to know how they could help the drivers, and some people said they would park their passenger vehicles in a show of solidarity.

A clear majority of the people I heard from were sympathetic to the drivers. They said that they understand it is increasingly difficult — impossible, in many cases — to continue to operate a trucking business when most or all of the profits are going into fuel.

Here are just a few readers’ comments:

“I’m all for capitalism and free trade, but not reckless profiteering by oil companies.”

“Everyone should call in sick April 1.”

“(The drivers) should park for a week or two and see if Congress and the president come up with any ideas when there’s no bread on the shelves.”

“Are the rich having some sort of contest to see just how much they can squeeze from each and every one of us?”

“I just drive a pick-up, but on April 1, I won’t use it.”

“Shut ’er down!”

But not all readers were sympathetic to truckers. Several called the plans for a shutdown “irresponsible.” Others pointed out that everyone, not just truckers, is paying the high fuel costs.

A few said that truckers who aren’t making it are failing because they’re lousy business people.

But those in the driver’s seat — independent drivers like Dan Little — are further frustrated by the naysayers who he says don’t seem to understand how badly the pump prices are hurting them.

For instance, Little pointed out, our $50 fill-ups may seem intolerably high to many of us, but consider what it’s costing him: more than $1,200 to fill his truck, which then gets about 5 miles to the gallon.

Other truck-driving critics say it’s time to shut down the trucking industry, anyway. They say that trucking is a poor way to transport goods, and America should rely instead on railroads.

Little would like to know how that might happen.

“Where is this magic set of railroad tracks, leading to every grocery store and Wal-Mart in the country?” he asked. “Even if you could ship everything on the rail system we have, which would be impossible, how does it move from there?”

Little has said that the last thing he wants to do is hurt the country that he loves. Truck drivers are some patriotic folks, he pointed out. But many feel backed into a corner by the threat of bankruptcy.

“All I know is that I have to take a stand,” he said. “My livelihood is at stake.”

As I was finishing this column, Betty Cornette called from Louisville, Ky., and said that her truck-driving brother has had to call it quits because of fuel and insurance costs.

She made this prediction: “Everybody’s going to have to suffer before they understand what’s happening to these truckers.”