Posted on 04/26/2009 6:49:18 AM PDT by raybbr
BRANFORD — At 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night — or just about anytime — there are 75 giant, exhaust-belching monsters parked at the TravelCenters of America truck stop off Interstate 95’s Exit 56.
Many have their engines running and truckers inside sleeping or watching TV; cooking or talking on unlimited cell phone plans; playing video games or working on laptops to set up the next load.
The Branford TA has been in the news because of the murder of an itinerant moving industry laborer found dead in a moving truck on April 17. But beyond that, it is “the office” for thousands of truckers from across the country.
As the nation slogs its way through a recession, truckers find themselves spending more time parked at the TA — as well as at Milford’s Pilot and Secondi Brothers truck stops and hundreds of others — and less time making money on the road.
On Wednesday, there were trucks at the TA with license plates from at least 32 states and two Canadian provinces. On the day the murder of Dale Lynn Anderson of Redlands, Calif. was discovered, a moving truck from a Tacoma, Wash. had been waiting at the TA for 15 days for a job to take its Florida-based crew home. The driver, who ate cold sausages out of a can, said money had run low and the crew had used up about half a tank of fuel — at $900 a tank — keeping warm at night while they waited.
Manufacturing has slowed. Fewer people and fewer goods are moving. That means more trucks than ever are parked for longer periods of time between loads.
Pinched on all sides, the truckers have to contend with higher diesel and insurance prices, increasing tolls, higher living expenses and more challenges...
(Excerpt) Read more at nhregister.com ...
This is one of the things that pushed my mother into early retirement.
Time away from home not making money doesn’t pay the bills on either end.
“Pinched on all sides, the truckers have to contend with higher diesel and insurance prices, increasing tolls, higher living expenses and more challenges...”
I am pretty sure that the reason for this is GW’s tax cuts for the rich. /sarcasm
Is this in the Northeast?
Your mother was a truck driver? That’s a tough job.
Imagine that this is one year from now.
And imagine that all of these truckers are the ones who deliver food to your local grocery stores.
And imagine that they are sitting idle because of a manufactured “energy crisis” that is forcing the government to “take control” of “the obvious failure of the free market to provide basic transportation.”
We are there, folks, in that fascist state.
Stock up.
This is a good post. No doubt there are thousands of little stories like this around that tell the true tale of the Bush-BamBam economic failure in leadership, little or none of which will be much noticed by the press.
“Pinched on all sides, the truckers have to contend with higher diesel and insurance prices, increasing tolls, higher living expenses and more challenges”
...”higher diesel” prices?! Those are way down. “Insurance prices”?! BO will fix that. If this is in the NE, you can’t find another part of the country with more tolls than the liberal infested NE! “Higher living expenses”?! Just wait until “cap and spend”. What the hell does “more challenges” mean? Is that like saying “hope” and “change”?
Too much supply (trucks and truckers) and too little demand. These times cleans out the lower end of the trucking spectrum.
“Your mother was a truck driver? That’s a tough job”.
...I’ve noticed more women driving trucks. Saw a gorgeous brunette about 35 getting out of her truck a couple of weeks ago. Lots of women drive as a team with their husbands too.
If you’re single and fresh out of high school or college, then trucking is the best way to go.
I have a friend who was an owner operator for years but he and his wife didn’t have kids so it was pretty much OK till the costs associated with the truck forced him to sell and drive for the buyer.
He got tired of that and became an airline pilot for comparable money without the stress of traffic on the road.
Branford, CT is just east of New Haven on I-95 ... going towards New London. The northeast, with the heavy concentration of population, is primarily a consumer area. Even in the best of times truckers are challenged to find loads back out of the region. What few loads are available barely pay expenses the rates are so depressed ... truckers have to make their revenue going into the northeast ... it's bare bones getting out. Many truckers will deadhead hundreds of miles in order to keep their equipment in play. Many owner operators refuse loads into the New England.
He went from trucker to airline pilot!?
Interesting. But how long did that take and what did it cost him?
Funny you should link the two. One of the recent quotes by Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger is that being an airline pilot nowadays is just like being a truck driver, and that he wouldn’t recommend it as a career choice.
I guess the “Ice Road” truckers and the “Haul Road” truckers will be seeing a plethora of desperate competitors barging into their territory soon.
Another stereotypical story. Modern diesels, with few exceptions, don’t belch smoke anymore. Trucking companies and truckers that don’t adapt to market conditions shrivel and die.
If you are idling your engine and burning $2.00+ a gallon diesel you need to get out of that bad habit really quick.
Companies that are serious about cost-savings, as is mine, install auxiliary heating/cooling units to keep drivers comfortable during down time.
As for eating vienna sausages, that is just ignorant. Plug in Coleman coolers provide an econmical alternative to the
truck stop diner. It’s all a matter of mind over laziness and bad habits.
Trucking remains a good paying steady income for this college graduate for the foreseeable future.
We’re living the pages of Atlas Shrugged.
You could make a good TV movie out of that.
And here I was thinking one had to be a former “Top Gun” to get a job in the airlines.
Do tell, I was under the impression that modern truck stops, had plug-in air-conditioning ducts and electricity.
Just judging the results by sight alone, the average truck-driver diet and lifestyle just looks so outrageously unhealthy.
You have to read to the end to get that information, which I'm surprised the journo-activist included, after starting the article with "75 giant, exhaust-belching monsters". Emotional loaded wording on the part of the reporter is not journalism.
“Do tell, I was under the impression that modern truck stops, had plug-in air-conditioning ducts and electricity.”
Sure, for several dollars an hour, and rising. Unless the company is paying, who can afford that?
A decent sleeping bag is only around $30-40.
Exactly right, The terms reporters use about trucks drive me crazy.
Exhaust belching, Soot spewing , you would think they are more dangerous than
the un-occupied SUV.
I just finished reading that yesterday, for the second time in about 30 years.
It’s positively uncanny how the premise of the book is paralleling what is happening today.
The author grew up in the Soviet Union. She is reflecting what she learned there.
Since the leftists are in charge here now, it is understandable that what is happening here is the same as she saw there.
As far as truck stops are concerned, here is my advice:
The buffets are usually overpriced and have rather bland tasting food. My assumption is that the truck stops assume that the individual would eat twice what a normal person would eat and does not have much of an affinity for taste. If one were to eat at a truck stop, your best bet is to order off the breakfast menu (which is usually served 24/7). Truck stops can have great breakfast items, but their dinner and lunch features generally remind me of school cafeteria quality.
What usually sets off a leftist is size envy. The resent big trucks, big SUVs, big TVs, big houses, big families. They really hate Texas. Everything is big there.
I got a lot of loads out of Conn and R.I. Once hauled a periscope for the USS Asheville nuclear sub from R.I. to San Diego. Had to cheat like the devil on the books.
Liberals will like that. It will give them another opportunity to tout their publicly funded rail systems and other trillion dollar Green Solutions on the taxpayer dime to "solve" the emergency.
Imagine that this is one year from now.
And imagine that all of these truckers are the ones who deliver food to your local grocery stores.
And imagine that they are sitting idle because of a manufactured “energy crisis” that is forcing the government to “take control” of “the obvious failure of the free market to provide basic transportation.”
We are there, folks, in that fascist state.
Stock up.”
How about the severe new restrictions that Kelifornia has put on deisel trucks?
Lots of owner-operators cannot afford to make these mandatory changes.
Wonder how long it will take for Kalifornia to get really hungry for foods grown elsewhere.??
can a poster please explain why truckers have this mentality that they "own the interstate."
"On average, a typical 80,000 pound GVW tractor-trailer truck pays $13,889 per year in truck highway taxes according to the above data. A hypothetical auto owner driving 20,000 miles per year at 25 mpg, and paying $100 in registration fees, ends up paying about $397 per year. So on average, looking at federal and state taxes, a tractor-trailer combination trucks pay about 35 times what a typical auto would pay based on national averages."
Source
Now, as you were saying?
>>>”On average, a typical 80,000 pound GVW tractor-trailer truck pays
>>>$13,889 per year in truck highway taxes according to the above data. A
>>>hypothetical auto owner driving 20,000 miles per year at 25 mpg, and
>>>paying $100 in registration fees, ends up paying about $397 per year. So
>>>on average, looking at federal and state taxes, a tractor-trailer combination
>>>trucks pay about 35 times what a typical auto would pay based on national
>>>averages.”
>>>Now, as you were saying?
Paying more taxes does not give one more “rights” than anyone else on the road. Nor does it give one permission to behave as if they have more “rights” on the road either.
The poster was asking for a reason for the mentality.
Using 4000 pounds for the weight of typical passenger car and 120,000 miles as the typical annual truck mileage, the passenger car owner is paying over 3 times the tax per pound-mile rate of the tractor-trailer operator.
It is never the trucks as far as I can see. If you are behind a truck, it will be very hard for you to keep up with them, they do get slow with a full load going up hill, just go with the flow. Stay behind them and you will get very good gas milage.
Parts of it are heavy going and you also have to bear in mind that it was written in 1957.
Having said that, Rand was startlingly prescient.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.