America is slow to catch on…
I have been talking about it on radio for the last two years. The graffiti has been on the wall since gas was $2.70 per gallon back on aught six. Truckers are on the brink of financial ruin. Their insolvency is attributed to a reality that we all suffer, that of high price of petrol.
The trucking industry is the barometer and the ultimate limiter for gasoline prices. The price of gas will go no higher than the trucking industry endure. Even with vouchers for gasoline rebates privately owned and operated semi rigs are sinking through the thin ice of our strained economy.
It used to be that truckers would meet at truck stops to eat, and the conversation would be broad spectrum...sports, family, new car, new shinly fenders for the semi, hunting down that special toy on Christmas...but for too long now the truck stop conversation is too often simply and solely about survival. Truckers are no longer consumers of anything other than deisel and truck stop food. They have no discretionary money.
Today across America, truckers protested in a variety of ineffective ways. Slowing traffic, blocking traffic, gathering in front of capital building steps, you know, the usual “Theater” of protest thing. And it is all for naught.
If the truckers want to send a message that is heard loud and clear, they need to go big, and go long. One day of hap hazard protesting, even with media coverage, will be forgotten as soon as the media vans pull away.
Here is how you get Americas attention. Park your truck in your own driveway and do nothing with it other than perform catch-up maintenance, polish it up and make it pretty, and hopefully schedule loads for when you come out of the driveway to again haul freight. How long do you park it? One month.
It will take a month for America to fully realize, both the common man and our fearless leaders just how important trucking is to our every day lives. Oh, it’s one thing to abstractly place yourself in the shoes of the truckers, it is one thing to abstractly align yourself with the argument about how important trucking is; however, it is entirely another to go without just about everything that can be thought of that we use in our daily lives.
When Americas stomachs are empty for a week…no make it two weeks, and when there are no more disposable diapers and big people toilet paper, when there are no more razor blades and the men all start to look like Grizzly Adams, when the meds don’t make it to the pharmacies…when there is no gas I the underground tanks at the gas station, when the ambulance cannot reach you because the attendants could not buy gas for their own cars to get to work, when the nurses cannot get to the hospitals, when the surgeons run out of new scalpels… well you see how it goes.
But less than a month is useless, because America is slow to catch on.
