The Truth - Can You Handle the Truth?
The Truth Is Out There If You Really Want The Truth!
―My Comments―
I have witnessed some very dismal changes in trucking during the thirty-five years that I drove. I started driving a truck in 1968 while married to a truck driver. I began to support myself driving a truck in 1973. I have documentation and journals that span about twenty years of my career. My intention has been to write an expose about what is really going on in this industry. However, it is hard to write a book while working 100 to 120 hours a week while you’re working. It is also hard to stay focused when free falling between jobs if you have the courage to do “civil disobedience;” and try to stand up to the trucking industry bullies who are stealing the constitutional rights of every truck driver in America! Now age seems to be catching up with me and I seem to have lost my drive, energy and motivation. It is also hard to stand up for your constitutional rights when the “men” are busy giving their constitutional rights away because they are afraid that their peers will think “they just ain’t man enough to handle trucking”, if they try to think with the Head on their shoulders instead of the one between their legs! This is a male trait that I have witnessed for years. I never saw anything written about it until recently when I had a reading assignment in my English Composition II class. I had to read:
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. This story was published in “LITERATURE and the WRITING PROCESS” Seventh Edition by Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day and Robert Funk. Published by: Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 www.prenhall.com/mcmahan
This story is about the Vietnam War. It talks about the different things that the men carry with them in battle.
“They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing ─ these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment… It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.
―My Comments―
When I read that paragraph I recognized immediately what I have witnessed time and time again in the trucking industry. Some guy would come in after working 16 or 18 hours and he would be ready to go home. The dispatcher would want him to do one more quick run. At first the guy would say he was tired and ready to go home but the dispatcher would ridicule him and insinuate that he wasn’t much of a man if he was too wimpy to take this little run. That is all the dispatcher needed to do, just make a reference to the guy’s manhood, immediately the guy would stop arguing, standing up for his rights and agree to take the run! No matter how many times the guys give in and take one more run, to prove their manhood, it never proves anything. It creates a never-ending cycle. After awhile the guys break and then they are ready to kill the dispatcher. Some how it gets twisted in their brain and they think if they kill the guy that is ridiculing their “manhood” that that will prove their manhood. At least that is what it looks like to me. I have heard several stories about drivers breaking and killing their dispatcher. I even heard about one driver driving his truck through the dispatcher’s office. Guess that is why it is not uncommon to see dispatchers behind protective glass today. Because I have always used the head on my shoulders and tried to stand up to, the bullies of the Trucking Industry, they tried to destroy my reputation. They didn’t want me to give anyone else the idea that they not only have the right to stand up for their rights, but they have a duty as American Citizens to stand up for the Rights that our Constitution promises us. Therefore, I realized that I needed a way to prove that this is not my imagination, I do not have a chip on my shoulder, I am not a troublemaker and I am not lazy. (At least I was not lazy when I was younger. Now that I have retired I seem to be making up for all the years of sleep that I lost while working as a truck driver.) I began to collect articles that actually reveal what is going on. One article by itself can be overlooked if you don’t know what you are looking at, but when you have a collection it begins to make the picture clear. I have decided to share a few of these articles here.
The Edmond Sun · Sunday, July 18, 2004 · Page 8 · Section A News article from the Associated Press titled: Once special, Sunday becoming like the rest of the week Last week, the Virginia legislature fixed a loophole it accidentally created when, attempting to abolish old “blue laws,” it gave workers the right to take Sundays off as a day of rest. In the few days that the loophole was on the books, employees around Virginia started telling their supervisors that they wouldn’t be coming to work on Sundays.
―My Comments―
This is a sample of what the people want and what they would do if corporations did not control our legislatures!
Truckers News · June 2004 · Page 12 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates that truck-involved fatalities may drop below 5,000 for the second year in a row.
―My Comments―
How many soldiers have died in the war? The last I heard it was around 1800 more or less. Why is it that nobody notices the body count when it involves trucking?
I stopped at a truck stop recently and picked up some trucking magazines. I noticed some new products being advertised today that were not in trucking magazines while I was driving. ― There was an advertisement for a product to bathe without water! Why would these products be necessary if truck drivers were getting to shower on a regular basis? There was also an ad for a collapsible, portable shower so the driver can bathe inside the truck cab. At least with this product someone has realized that even though the boss wants the truck to run 24 hours a day, the drivers might actually want a shower! With this product one driver could drive while the other driver showers.
Truckers News · June 2004 · Page 16 Public Citizen, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, and Parents Against Tired Truckers brought suit against the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration over the agency’s hours-of-service rule, which became effective Jan. 4, 2004. Public Citizen argued that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration should issue a new rule because the current rule does not accomplish the agency’s goal of improving safety. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the American Trucking Associations, which had filed a brief supporting the agency, argued in support of the current rule.
―My Comments―
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the American Trucking Associations are on one side of this suit while Public Citizen, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, and Parents Against Tired Truckers are on the other side of this suit. I wonder why the laws regulating trucking are not enforced? It could not possibly be that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is in bed with the American Trucking Associations. Surely, that is just a delusional thought!
RoadSTAR · October 2003 · Page 74 · Letters (A driver wrote in requesting information on the hours of service.) “My normal work week is 77 hours and that is a light week. Mostly it is between 85 and 96 hours. Am I in compliance? Peterbuiltmitch”
―My Comments―
There are 168 hours in a week. I estimated that my NORMAL workweek, before my spiritual journey gave me the courage to refuse to work this way, ranged between 100 and 120 hours. And, that was before the companies started trying to force me to not take my showers!
RoadSTAR · October 2003 · Page 77 · Letters
A driver wrote in saying that he had been driving 11 years and was grossed out by the decline in driving skills and the personal hygiene of the drivers.
―My Comments―
I’m surprised this one made it into print! However, he did make it sound as if he believes that the individual drivers are at fault. He did not mention that this is caused by the Trucking Industry that is pushing the drivers too hard. And, how can you expect to turn out a Professional Driver with just six weeks of school training? When they started the Trucking Schools, we thought they were a joke. It was a joke. It was a bad joke on truck drivers! We used to be worth a dime a dozen, now; we are worth a “Penny for Twenty!”
The Trucker · June 23 - July 6, 2004 · Page 42 · Opinions
Lazy pigs dragging professional truckers down with them, again · Eye on Trucking by Jami Jones - Editor “Truckers are taking it on the chin in the national media over urine bottles again. This time the Utah Department of Transportation is taking truckers to task over the disposal, or lack thereof, of urine bottles and zipper-style bags of feces. The Associated Press has picked up a story out of Utah where the UDOT higher-ups are squarely laying blame for the human waste containers lying alongside the interstate at the feet of truck drivers. “Along with the usual highway litter, bottles of urine are routinely discarded at the trucker’s brake test area at Parleys summit on Interstate 80,” the AP article reported.” She goes on to quote a driver who says that he has seen the same thing in other states. That it is common for drivers to relieve themselves in plastic bottles in the cab, then throw the containers out the window. She goes on to mention the stereotype of truckers being filthy individuals. And, says that it is hard to counter this when all a person has to do is walk around a truck stop parking lot.
―My Comments―
For anyone who has not had the experience of walking around a truck stop parking lot, let me tell you that it reeks like a urinal! Unfortunately, there have always been drivers who acted like dogs and watered the wheels of their trucks rather than walk to the bathroom at a truck stop. But this did not make the entire parking lot reek until after 1985 when the trucking companies began to push the drivers to keep the truck moving 24 hours a day! In my early years of driving, it was still possible to step out of the truck at a truck stop on a crisp, cold morning and get the smell of diesel fuel. A smell that still holds a lot of nostalgia for me! After 1985, even I was forced to compromise and start carrying a big-mouthed gallon jar with me to cut down on the times that I needed to stop for the call of nature. I was conscientious and emptied my jar at the rest areas when I was forced by nature to use something better than a gallon jar! This phenomenon of using jars to replace a bathroom stop did not start until trucking companies began to schedule their runs so tight that we did not have time to stop to shower, or eat hot meals in a truck stop, if we could afford a meal, or obviously, take time to stop for the bathroom! Today most drivers carry ice chests or small refrigerators and try to make homemade meals in the cab of their truck because they are not paid enough to cover the high prices of eating out and they cannot take the time to stop for a hot meal break. They must figure out something that they can eat while driving down the highway or while waiting to load or unload their cargo. That part of the story I understand too well. The part that is inexcusable is the fact that the drivers are throwing their waste out on the highway so that other people are forced to clean up after them. Even that may have something positive to it. Perhaps it will draw attention to how drivers are being treated.
The Trucker · June 23 - July 6, 2004 · Business USF shuts doors at Red Star terminal · by Jerry Breeden
This is an article about 15 office workers who demanded to be represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, at the Red Star regional terminal at Philadelphia. Red Star had 2,000 employees at this terminal when the 15 walked off the job May 21.
Red Star’s response was to close down the entire Red Star operation. “DiStasio released a statement saying “this is a terrible development for our more than 2,000 employees and for the customers who depended on them. The Teamsters’ actions … were devastating to Red Star’s business. In this economic environment, where just-in-time delivery is the norm, not the exception, any irregularity in transportation services puts all Red Star customers at risk.” The Teamsters responded by calling Red Star’s shutdown as a “callous action on the part of a $2.3 billion corporation.” They went on to say that “It is irrational and reckless for a company to close its entire Eastern operations because 15 office workers tried to organize a union.”
―My Comments―
I highlighted the phrase “just-in-time delivery is the norm, not the exception.” because just-in-time delivery is just a “code” for “SLAVERY!” IN MY OPINION. SLAVERY must be mighty profitable for a $2.3 billion dollar corporation to shut down their Eastern operations rather than give up their iron fisted control over their employees! Again, that is my opinion. My opinion is based on my personal experiences with the trucking industry.
I have more articles but this ought to be enough to give anyone who has enough interest in this situation to do any research, the knowledge that they too can figure out the truth about what is going on.
―My Comments―
I have witnessed some very dismal changes in trucking during the thirty-five years that I drove. I started driving a truck in 1968 while married to a truck driver. I began to support myself driving a truck in 1973. I have documentation and journals that span about twenty years of my career. My intention has been to write an expose about what is really going on in this industry. However, it is hard to write a book while working 100 to 120 hours a week while you’re working. It is also hard to stay focused when free falling between jobs if you have the courage to do “civil disobedience;” and try to stand up to the trucking industry bullies who are stealing the constitutional rights of every truck driver in America! Now age seems to be catching up with me and I seem to have lost my drive, energy and motivation. It is also hard to stand up for your constitutional rights when the “men” are busy giving their constitutional rights away because they are afraid that their peers will think “they just ain’t man enough to handle trucking”, if they try to think with the Head on their shoulders instead of the one between their legs! This is a male trait that I have witnessed for years. I never saw anything written about it until recently when I had a reading assignment in my English Composition II class. I had to read:
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. This story was published in “LITERATURE and the WRITING PROCESS” Seventh Edition by Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day and Robert Funk. Published by: Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 www.prenhall.com/mcmahan
This story is about the Vietnam War. It talks about the different things that the men carry with them in battle.
“They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing ─ these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment… It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.
―My Comments―
When I read that paragraph I recognized immediately what I have witnessed time and time again in the trucking industry. Some guy would come in after working 16 or 18 hours and he would be ready to go home. The dispatcher would want him to do one more quick run. At first the guy would say he was tired and ready to go home but the dispatcher would ridicule him and insinuate that he wasn’t much of a man if he was too wimpy to take this little run. That is all the dispatcher needed to do, just make a reference to the guy’s manhood, immediately the guy would stop arguing, standing up for his rights and agree to take the run! No matter how many times the guys give in and take one more run, to prove their manhood, it never proves anything. It creates a never-ending cycle. After awhile the guys break and then they are ready to kill the dispatcher. Some how it gets twisted in their brain and they think if they kill the guy that is ridiculing their “manhood” that that will prove their manhood. At least that is what it looks like to me. I have heard several stories about drivers breaking and killing their dispatcher. I even heard about one driver driving his truck through the dispatcher’s office. Guess that is why it is not uncommon to see dispatchers behind protective glass today. Because I have always used the head on my shoulders and tried to stand up to, the bullies of the Trucking Industry, they tried to destroy my reputation. They didn’t want me to give anyone else the idea that they not only have the right to stand up for their rights, but they have a duty as American Citizens to stand up for the Rights that our Constitution promises us. Therefore, I realized that I needed a way to prove that this is not my imagination, I do not have a chip on my shoulder, I am not a troublemaker and I am not lazy. (At least I was not lazy when I was younger. Now that I have retired I seem to be making up for all the years of sleep that I lost while working as a truck driver.) I began to collect articles that actually reveal what is going on. One article by itself can be overlooked if you don’t know what you are looking at, but when you have a collection it begins to make the picture clear. I have decided to share a few of these articles here.
The Edmond Sun · Sunday, July 18, 2004 · Page 8 · Section A News article from the Associated Press titled: Once special, Sunday becoming like the rest of the week Last week, the Virginia legislature fixed a loophole it accidentally created when, attempting to abolish old “blue laws,” it gave workers the right to take Sundays off as a day of rest. In the few days that the loophole was on the books, employees around Virginia started telling their supervisors that they wouldn’t be coming to work on Sundays.
―My Comments―
This is a sample of what the people want and what they would do if corporations did not control our legislatures!
Truckers News · June 2004 · Page 12 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates that truck-involved fatalities may drop below 5,000 for the second year in a row.
―My Comments―
How many soldiers have died in the war? The last I heard it was around 1800 more or less. Why is it that nobody notices the body count when it involves trucking?
I stopped at a truck stop recently and picked up some trucking magazines. I noticed some new products being advertised today that were not in trucking magazines while I was driving. ― There was an advertisement for a product to bathe without water! Why would these products be necessary if truck drivers were getting to shower on a regular basis? There was also an ad for a collapsible, portable shower so the driver can bathe inside the truck cab. At least with this product someone has realized that even though the boss wants the truck to run 24 hours a day, the drivers might actually want a shower! With this product one driver could drive while the other driver showers.
Truckers News · June 2004 · Page 16 Public Citizen, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, and Parents Against Tired Truckers brought suit against the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration over the agency’s hours-of-service rule, which became effective Jan. 4, 2004. Public Citizen argued that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration should issue a new rule because the current rule does not accomplish the agency’s goal of improving safety. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the American Trucking Associations, which had filed a brief supporting the agency, argued in support of the current rule.
―My Comments―
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the American Trucking Associations are on one side of this suit while Public Citizen, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, and Parents Against Tired Truckers are on the other side of this suit. I wonder why the laws regulating trucking are not enforced? It could not possibly be that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is in bed with the American Trucking Associations. Surely, that is just a delusional thought!
RoadSTAR · October 2003 · Page 74 · Letters (A driver wrote in requesting information on the hours of service.) “My normal work week is 77 hours and that is a light week. Mostly it is between 85 and 96 hours. Am I in compliance? Peterbuiltmitch”
―My Comments―
There are 168 hours in a week. I estimated that my NORMAL workweek, before my spiritual journey gave me the courage to refuse to work this way, ranged between 100 and 120 hours. And, that was before the companies started trying to force me to not take my showers!
RoadSTAR · October 2003 · Page 77 · Letters
A driver wrote in saying that he had been driving 11 years and was grossed out by the decline in driving skills and the personal hygiene of the drivers.
―My Comments―
I’m surprised this one made it into print! However, he did make it sound as if he believes that the individual drivers are at fault. He did not mention that this is caused by the Trucking Industry that is pushing the drivers too hard. And, how can you expect to turn out a Professional Driver with just six weeks of school training? When they started the Trucking Schools, we thought they were a joke. It was a joke. It was a bad joke on truck drivers! We used to be worth a dime a dozen, now; we are worth a “Penny for Twenty!”
The Trucker · June 23 - July 6, 2004 · Page 42 · Opinions
Lazy pigs dragging professional truckers down with them, again · Eye on Trucking by Jami Jones - Editor “Truckers are taking it on the chin in the national media over urine bottles again. This time the Utah Department of Transportation is taking truckers to task over the disposal, or lack thereof, of urine bottles and zipper-style bags of feces. The Associated Press has picked up a story out of Utah where the UDOT higher-ups are squarely laying blame for the human waste containers lying alongside the interstate at the feet of truck drivers. “Along with the usual highway litter, bottles of urine are routinely discarded at the trucker’s brake test area at Parleys summit on Interstate 80,” the AP article reported.” She goes on to quote a driver who says that he has seen the same thing in other states. That it is common for drivers to relieve themselves in plastic bottles in the cab, then throw the containers out the window. She goes on to mention the stereotype of truckers being filthy individuals. And, says that it is hard to counter this when all a person has to do is walk around a truck stop parking lot.
―My Comments―
For anyone who has not had the experience of walking around a truck stop parking lot, let me tell you that it reeks like a urinal! Unfortunately, there have always been drivers who acted like dogs and watered the wheels of their trucks rather than walk to the bathroom at a truck stop. But this did not make the entire parking lot reek until after 1985 when the trucking companies began to push the drivers to keep the truck moving 24 hours a day! In my early years of driving, it was still possible to step out of the truck at a truck stop on a crisp, cold morning and get the smell of diesel fuel. A smell that still holds a lot of nostalgia for me! After 1985, even I was forced to compromise and start carrying a big-mouthed gallon jar with me to cut down on the times that I needed to stop for the call of nature. I was conscientious and emptied my jar at the rest areas when I was forced by nature to use something better than a gallon jar! This phenomenon of using jars to replace a bathroom stop did not start until trucking companies began to schedule their runs so tight that we did not have time to stop to shower, or eat hot meals in a truck stop, if we could afford a meal, or obviously, take time to stop for the bathroom! Today most drivers carry ice chests or small refrigerators and try to make homemade meals in the cab of their truck because they are not paid enough to cover the high prices of eating out and they cannot take the time to stop for a hot meal break. They must figure out something that they can eat while driving down the highway or while waiting to load or unload their cargo. That part of the story I understand too well. The part that is inexcusable is the fact that the drivers are throwing their waste out on the highway so that other people are forced to clean up after them. Even that may have something positive to it. Perhaps it will draw attention to how drivers are being treated.
The Trucker · June 23 - July 6, 2004 · Business USF shuts doors at Red Star terminal · by Jerry Breeden
This is an article about 15 office workers who demanded to be represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, at the Red Star regional terminal at Philadelphia. Red Star had 2,000 employees at this terminal when the 15 walked off the job May 21.
Red Star’s response was to close down the entire Red Star operation. “DiStasio released a statement saying “this is a terrible development for our more than 2,000 employees and for the customers who depended on them. The Teamsters’ actions … were devastating to Red Star’s business. In this economic environment, where just-in-time delivery is the norm, not the exception, any irregularity in transportation services puts all Red Star customers at risk.” The Teamsters responded by calling Red Star’s shutdown as a “callous action on the part of a $2.3 billion corporation.” They went on to say that “It is irrational and reckless for a company to close its entire Eastern operations because 15 office workers tried to organize a union.”
―My Comments―
I highlighted the phrase “just-in-time delivery is the norm, not the exception.” because just-in-time delivery is just a “code” for “SLAVERY!” IN MY OPINION. SLAVERY must be mighty profitable for a $2.3 billion dollar corporation to shut down their Eastern operations rather than give up their iron fisted control over their employees! Again, that is my opinion. My opinion is based on my personal experiences with the trucking industry.
I have more articles but this ought to be enough to give anyone who has enough interest in this situation to do any research, the knowledge that they too can figure out the truth about what is going on.
posted by Emma Beverage @ 3:25 PM
