While I support this 100% it really isn’t feasible. Owner operators are usually leased to a larger company. Even though many don’t have forced dispatch it is not to your advantage to turn down aload, both financially and your standing within the company. Very very few, if any, OO’s gypsy every load anymore. Small companies with 50 trucks usually have contracts to get commodity X from point A to point B on a regular scheduled basis. If company A doesn’t do it they are in breach of contract and there is Company B C D and E ready to step in and do it. This is no way the major companies, Swift, J. B Hunt, Schnieder, to name of few are going to go along with it
Trucking is regulated by agencies that don’t have a clue about what the industry is all about. Hours of service regulations that don’t make sense is just one example. Safety ratings, licenses, permits, on road inspections, idling regulations and on and on. Now there is pending regulation about GPS and on board electronic logging. Trucking has a legitimate b*tch with government regs but it is such a cut throat business no one stands together.
That fact is that if 20,000 trucks strike there are 40,000 waiting to take those loads.
Big difference between the bikers and the truckers.
I agree with Cork. This strike is a non-starter.
I drove for Comcar in the 1990’s between National Guard gigs. Every summer, in July like clockwork, there was talk of a great wonderful wildcat truckers strike.
The union drivers laughed. The company drivers kept quiet and went on driving. The owner-operators yelled “Go on and strike, more freight for me!”
It’s a lot of smoke, that’s all.