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MASSARO: Trucker strike might lack traction

By Gary Massaro, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published March 31, 2008 at 9:03 p.m.
Updated April 1, 2008 at 2:03 a.m.

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Charlie Quail pauses after fueling and washing the windows of his truck Monday at Commerce City's Sapp Brothers truck stop.

Photo by George Kochaniec Jr. / The Rocky

Charlie Quail pauses after fueling and washing the windows of his truck Monday at Commerce City's Sapp Brothers truck stop.

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If you're making book on the proposed long-haul truckers' strike, here's some inside information. Some will strike. Most won't.

That's the lowdown from talking Monday to truckers at the Sapp Brothers truck stop.

For one thing, truckers are as organized as a herd of cats. They're like farmers. They can't agree on anything. As one good ol' boy plow-puller once told me: "Farmers'd rather go to hell separately than to heaven together."

"You can't get two of us to agree on the color of the sky," said Brian Knott, 36, of Omaha.

Knott had just unloaded pipes from his flatbed and was hoping for another load to take on. Knott won't be striking. He's either going to haul home an empty trailer or pick up a load and work. "I've got to haul," he said. "I've got bills to pay. A strike sounds great. But you don't get paid for it."

Truckers are feeling angry and helpless as the cost of diesel fuel goes up and up and up - to nearly $4 a gallon. It costs more to buy a gallon of diesel fuel than more highly refined premium gasoline.

Bob Wilson used to be a long-hauler. Nowadays, he sells used semis.

"I got out when fuel went to a $1.89 a gallon. I thought it was crazy then," he said. "Now, a trucker's whole paycheck going out and part of it coming back just pays for fuel. It's not just fuel. Parts are going up. Tires are going up."

The only thing not going up is wages, he said. "It was a good life," said Wilson, 44, of Thornton. "But it's the same as anything else. You work 10 times as hard to buy the same stuff."

Truckers are making about as much as they were in the late '80s, said Mike Virtue, 78.

Virtue is a semi-retired trucker. He's a sourdough from Alaska via Pennsylvania who lives in Denver in winter to work part time as a trucker. He'll keep hauling, same as any other day he has work. He won't strike. "It ain't going to happen," he said.

Sonia Nickerson used to be an owner-operator. Now she works for someone else. She said talk of a strike is just that - talk.

"Company drivers - what are they going to do if they shut down and the boss says they've got to run?" she said. "They'll run."

But she understands the frustration. "All the money's going back in the tanks," she said.

Charlie Quail, 56, of Colorado Springs, is feeling the pinch. But he'll keep driving.

"A strike is stupid. It ain't going to do no good," Quail said.

One trucker vowed to strike.

"I can't afford not to," said Carl Dees, 58.

He had driven from Denver to Albuquerque to El Paso to Minneapolis and back to Denver. He was paid $4,100. "I put in $3,200 worth of fuel," he said.

Dees was a coal miner in his native Utah until the mine closed. He has been driving a truck since 1984.

"My home, where I have property, is supposed to be in Utah," he said. "I live out of that truck, wherever that truck is parked."

He said the strike probably won't do anything for truckers.

"One time I sat for 19 days," he said. "And the rest kept running."

His wife, Mary, had finished a coffee break - that was it, coffee. No doughnuts. No sandwich. What she and Carl eat, she prepares in a microwave in the cab.

"We live in that truck," she said. "We live off the truck. And we can't even afford to eat a meal in this restaurant."

massarog@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5271

Comments

  • April 1, 2008

    8:33 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Retread writes:

    The USA as a whole needs to shut off ALL gas and fuel buying for a couple of days. Then it might mean something, until then we can all take it where the sun don't shine...

  • April 1, 2008

    9:21 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    justadadathome writes:

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