Independent truckers vow work stoppage to protest high fuel costs

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Independent truckers vow work stoppage to protest high fuel costs

By Associated Press, 2/14/2000 12:00

FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. (AP) More than 230 independent truckers in the Philadelphia region have decided to keep their rigs off the road today to protest skyrocketing diesel fuel costs and freight hauling rates that have not kept pace. For example, the truckers' fuel costs have jumped 100 percent in the past year, to $2 a gallon or more for diesel fuel, while freight rates have edged up only 2 to 5 percent in the last 12 years, said Ben Smith, 43, owner and operator of his own tractor-trailer for seven years.

Smith was one of a half-dozen truckers standing at the entrance of a CSX rail container loading yard in South Philadelphia today informing other truckers of the effort to push for higher rates.

''It's all word of mouth,'' Smith said, adding that the effort was showing some results. ''Normally there would have been 100 loads coming out that gate, and there's maybe 20 so far today.''

The truckers, from 65 different companies in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, voted Saturday to refuse to load their trucks until they get a 30 percent rate hike as well as a 15 percent fuel surcharge from customers. ''We simply cannot afford to get in the trucks on Monday,'' said independent trucker Jacquie Medaglia at the meeting in Bucks County. ''We can't afford to run down the highway.''

The action follows trucker protests last week at the statehouses in New Jersey and Rhode Island and a demonstration by hundreds of truckers Friday that slowed traffic to a crawl outside cargo companies' doors in Elizabeth, N.J. The truckers said fuel costs, equipment costs and road and bridge tolls have risen but the rates paid to owner-operator truckers have remained the same since the industry was deregulated in the 1980s. Now, they said, diesel oil prices have gone up about 30 percent in the last three weeks to about $2 per gallon.

''I've been shut down for two weeks, because I can't work for nothing,'' said Larry Binner, an owner operator with Falcon. ''When I started 26 years ago, it wasn't much, but it was a living. Now the prices have all gone up 200 percent.''

U.S. Steel offered a 7 percent rate increase last week, but other carriers have not made similar offers. The truckers decided by an informal vote that the stoppage will continue until all carriers offer a 30 percent hike.

Trucker Bernie Godwin of CTI said he usually pays $300 to $400 a week for fuel but is now paying up to $1,200 or $1,500, depending on the workload. He said the independent truckers' lack of formal organization may have been hurting efforts to get relief.

''We're working twice as hard, and that's why we're all here together, so that companies can't treat us any kind of way,'' Godwin said.

''It's a difficult situation for everybody. The drivers are putting all the risk on the line,'' said general manager Carl Rother of Tryon, a small local carrier. He said fuel prices have risen faster in the Northeast than elsewhere and local drivers have also endured toll increases on the New Jersey Turnpike and on Philadelphia bridges. ''Will this work? I don't know right now,'' he said.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/045/region/Independent_truckers_vow_work_:.shtml

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 14, 2000

Answers

Dang. Thanks Carl.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), February 14, 2000.

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