Fired Up!
Posted on Sep 24, 2008 - 7:32pm by Wayne Weisser in Trucking
TA in Jessup, MD
I’m done driving for the day and I go in to the Flying J for a decent looking buffet, sit down and I’m watching my hero, Lou Dobbs on CNN. I already have to listen to how Congress is going to fix the economy, (has the Government fixed anything?) About half way through truckers start making stupid comments about going on strike, the best way to do it, what happened in the 70′s, you know, the usual stupid trucker trash talking about what they know the least about.
The guy next to me, he’s turning his truck in on Monday and becoming a company driver. Which is sad, and I may be next. But the loudest idiot in the back says he paid off his brand new 2001 Pete in three years and couldn’t make any money. Uh??? He made enough to pay his truck and trailer off, but can’t make money with no truck or trailer payments because of the fuel prices? This is where I try to keep my mouth shut, even though I could have taken him, unless he fell on me.
I’m going to listen to someone that can’t make it with a paid off truck and trailer and now he’s a company driver, about how I need to support some stupid strike about fuel to support other idiots like himself? Usually, it’s the loudest idiots stirring up trouble that know the least. First of all, company drivers should just shut up about fuel prices and drive their trucks (no offense, but what are you complaining about? Complain about no freight all you want).
I finish Lou Dobbs and my desert and the same loud mouth is by the front door with a small group of idiots going on about how evil CDL schools are. If he’s been driving since the 70′s during the first strike and before dergulation, he didn’t go to a school. In reality, he’s probably only been driving for six months has a loud voice, thinks he knows something and likes to prove he’s an idiot.
The Lockridge Report
All this after I ran across one of those trucking talk radio shows on Sirius the other day. Evan Lockridge has the idiots that organized the protest in DC that were expecting 200 trucks to show up and they had 20. After he was finished I couldn’t handle the idiots calling in and fawning over the guy organizing the protest and telling Evan how great he was, I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m pulling into a truck stop and parking anyway and get on the phone and start dialing after about a dozen tries I get in, give the screener a hand full as she’s typing everything in. After the commercial break, I’m on, I wish I could find a podcast of the show because I have had it with these stupid truckers whining about fuel prices. The main point of my call was they’re protesting the wrong thing, there are too many trucks and not enough freight and even if they did lower the price of fuel, then what? Other things are expensive too. One of the callers before me wanted to become an Owner Operator because he wanted to sacrifice. Uh??? I mention him and how great his business plan was (I don’t think he got the sarcasm on that) and how this is a business and people needed to get the revenue to cover their expenses no matter what the price of fuel.
I don’t think he got it. He’s a journalist that reads about trucking, not his fault. He asked the next caller what he thought about my remarks because I left him speechless. Someone that wasn’t fawning all over him, someone that had a point different from all of the useful idiots and it left him speechless? The next caller kind of agreed saying a strike would give trucking a bad reputation (and that would be different how?), which had nothing to do with what I was saying.
It’s tough enough as it is
I’m not saying it’s not tough out here, because it is, and I’m definitely not saying I’m the great business mind in trucking because I may be bailing out soon myself, but striking for fuel prices? Better yet, the irony of protesting high fuel prices by driving your truck! How many times have we mentioned striking on this site? Dozens, no one with half a brain agrees it’s the right thing to do, even we could get it to work. I might start supporting a strike and a shutdown to get these idiots off the road.
I know Porter and V. Grumpy like listening to the stupidity on these trucking talk shows, but I can’t stand it, besides my dog gets scared when I start yelling at the radio.
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Wise words of Wayne. Always good to read!
I had to snicker about the truck driving schools. I have a friend (who has a friend with a husband that just graduated like two months ago from driving school) who has been asking me fifty million questions about the trucking business. She said her friend is waiting on a local job (I controlled my laughter) where all he had to do was drop and hook all day (again I controlled myself but it was even harder on that one!). Apparently it was taught at this particular school that all you all do is drop and hook all day long. No waiting period involved. So when I told my friend how I had went with my husband and we spent from 7:00 pm one night until about 1:00 pm the next day to get unloaded she just could not believe it because that’s not what he was told. I told her he needed to talk to a driver that had been on the road more than a year and wasn’t trying to sucker the guy in for a driving job. Unbelievable!
Nice to know people still get snowed over on the easy money you can make while not doing a thing (sit and steer).
Wow.
Dammit boy! You got it out of your system yet?
If not, you need to call the morons on the XM171 channel and set them straght/
You’re right. I listen to the idiots. Hell, they’re better than an 8 ball and a six pack for staying awake. Keeps my blood pressure high though
If you hate this stuff on the radio why take the time to not only listen to it but you take time to gripe about it? You need to get a life.
Ok I am a company driver. Oh how we have it made? Forget that bull. We are no different than the independents in that, although we do not have to concern ourselves with the truck cost to a degree we are also seeing our wages getting slashed.
My uncle retired from MATLACK in 1976 and at that time he was making $36,000 a year. Today we have trucking companies bragging top pay at .37 and .40 a mile. If any of you have driven a bit how often do you find yourself standing in between the KGB, Al qaeda, and Poncho Villa? Independents are losing freight, company drivers are seeing pay diminish. Simply put if somehow we do not get a grip on this Freightliner will start building the Senorita Model with a dash in Spanish, Volvo will build the Comrade with the dash in Russian. And I guess Al qaeda will get the Hump Back model sleeper! We might get to drive a car if we can buy the fuel.
Didn’t say you had it made, but fuel prices aren’t the reason. Pay/rates are diminished because of too many trucks / drivers. Schools are pumping out new cdls faster than they can print them.
Even your bigoted comments have a grain of truth in them, in that there are already too many immigrants that the companies have recruited to come to the States on top of all the recruiting the schools are doing. Which has caused the problem without anyone seeing that a problem exists.
It’s not a matter of when, immigration of Russian and eastern Europeans has been going on for years. I’m surprised my Volvo doesn’t already have Cyrillic on the dash.
There is no two ways about it Wayne you’re right, sadly most drivers aren’t bright enough to see the larger picture!