Trucker's strike/slowdown

IF the Independant truckers start their strike and the Company drivers either call in sick or slow down, the effects, IMO, would show up on the grocery shelves and pharmaceutical shelves within a couple of days.

Today might be a good day to get the pantry & the medicine cabinet up to speed.

This is just my opinion on the subject.

I had not heard of any pending strike (been off the loop a bit, recovering from a cataract replacement), but if it goes you are right. As the truckers say, EVERYTHING goes by truck...

I hope you are following the Dr's & "Police Commissioner's" orders and heal correctly and quickly!!!!

I would guess most of us here have a supply of food put away to weather a strike or slowdown.

Not too worried about it.


What are they striking about?

Checked the price of diesel lately? To a trucker that's profit margin, truck payments, mortgage payments and food on the table.

No I have not checked the price of diesel, but I’m very well aware of the price of gasoline. Its high priced as all petroleum based fuel is.


Just checked on this, it seems to me that it’s a pointless strike. It's based on frustration with the fuel prices and offers no fix.

Independent truckers (the main force of people behind this) have large truck payments, home mortgages and the like and don’t have a support structure to help them when they don’t work and will not last long before reality forces them back to work.



They are going to strike to let us know fuel prices are high, Do any of us not know this? NO! I see it every few days when I buy fuel as do all of us.

The strike will not cause any lowering of fuel price.

I understand truckers are frustrated with fuel prices, as most of us are. But all a strike will do is increase prices of items delivered by trucks and build bad will toward truckers, not lower fuel prices.

From a survival preparedness point of view, this will be easy to weather.

I've been hearing a lot of rumors about this, but I really doubt it'll have any effect on daily life. From what I've been reading, it's only the O/O (owner/operator) truckers who MIGHT go on strike, not the big trucking companies. They're protesting the rising cost of diesel fuel which is cutting into their profits. But from what I have read, they charge a fuel surcharge that's supposed to cover the cost of fuel. The truckers who work for big companies don't pay for their own fuel, so I doubt they'll risk their jobs to go on strike. There might be a few late deliveries or delayed shipments, but all a company has to do is go hire someone else.

As for their reasoning, I don't understand either. There's no orgainization that they're striking against, no demands, no clear motivation. They're protest rising fuel cost by not working? I see no direct effect on fuel prices. Seems pretty absurd, they may think their the lifeblood of the country, but I have a feeling it'll backfire and end up just like the immigration protest from last year. Nobody's really going to notice.

I can certainly understand the reasoning here. Diesel is like over $4 a gallon now. Unfortunately a strike will do little more than display their frustration and no one will do anything about the prices.
Maybe if we all called in sick for a week because of high fuel costs, someone would take note. We'll never do it, so....

Here in Eastern SC, the price of unleaded gas has gone up to about $3.20 from around $3.00.

At the same time, diesel has gone from $3.25 to over $4.00 in some areas.

20 cents versus 75 cents maybe they need to pass a little more price increase on to gas users not just stick it to people that use diesel.

The real question we need to ask is why the US Federal Government needs a 50 cent a gallon tax on top of the local and state fuel taxes. They haven't done a thing to produce, transport or even market the fuel they are taxing. Sounds like free money for Uncle Sam if you ask me. Yes, I know it helps to maintain the roads we ride on every day.
The quickest way to remove government waste would be to invent a shovel with a kickstand.

But, I could be a little biased, I am a trucker.

As for the ratio of owner operators (O/O) to fleet drivers, I don't have any figures I can point out, but I drove I-5 for 30+ years, writing a lot of tickets to truckers, investigating their wrecks, etc, and if I remember correctly, there seem to be at least as many O/O as fleet rigs out there, so if they go on strike we will see a difference when we go looking for just about anything. Keep in mind that fleet rigs usually pic up a load at a company terminal, how that load got to the terminal is often by O/O.

What good a strike will do the O/O I just don't know, other than make them not have a paycheck for a while. It has to be frustrating for them, higher fuel costs, no increase in what they are paid to deliver a load from Point A to Point B. Kinda like being retired and never ever receiving even a cost of living increase in your montly check. And I can't go on strike...

Oh, I can completely understand their frustrations about rising fuel cost. What I meant was I don't understand the reasoning behind deciding to go on strike as a form of protest, it seems rather like a temper tantrum that's really not going to have much of an effect in achieving anything.

I just don't see a connection between going on strike and the end goal. Are they trying to get the oil companies to lower their prices? The government to lower the taxes on fuel? Or the public to demand some sort change? I really don't know what the goal is supposed to be. The only people who are really going to be affected is the public, the same group who has absolutely no power to do anything about it. If they really wanted to be effective, they would need to get complete support from ALL truckers, then there would be some bargaining power.

There is one other group of people besides the public that is going to be effected by this, the truckers are. Their income is going to stop when on strike with no change in fuel prices.

They are going to loose in the short term by not working. But it may also have long term effects on the independents. People that use (hire) independent truckers will probably go with company or fleet trucking companies. After all they need to get products to market. I would also guess some of these people will stay with the company / fleet trucking companies. The independents will loose future income from this strike as they will become unreliable to deliver goods.

"...I don't understand the reasoning behind deciding to go on strike..."

Me either really...

They're also talking about a traffic slowdown to clog the highways.

I don't know how effective it would be (probably not much), but they're at least trying to make a point. The rest of America has been trained from childhood to just grin and bear it, with inflated gas prices as well as everything else.

In Britain, a gallon of gasoline is perilously close to $10.

I wonder how high it would have to get here in the U.S. before people really started to fuss?

Sue

"...to clog the highways..."

Many years ago the independant truckers threatened to just park their rigs on major highways, in the traffic lanes of course, and walk away. Thank goodness that didn't happen, at least where I was working. There are not enough big rig tow trucks available to clean up a mess like that anytime soon...

Another thing to realize too, is the average person might have went through $45 in gas a week and now is spending $55 a week, for many it isn't a big deal.

An owner/operator trucker on the other hand used to be paying say $650 a fill and is now paying over $800 a fill. That's an extra ~$150 out of pocket they have to pay everytime they fill up, which can often be more than once a week. Yet many aren't making much more to make up for that extra money they are laying it. I know most of us wouldn't be too happy if we took a paycut of a few hundred dollars a week.

I'm actually really suprised they haven't started rioting already.

Not to drift off the subject, but my last ticket was on I-5 about 22 years ago. Stopped near Colinga, CA - that's where I eventually had to appear anyway. The Highway Patrol officer was not happy that it took him 12 miles to catch up to me.

Ahh, to be young and dumb again!

OBG - could our paths have crossed before?

It's called an import tariff.

Hmm, if gas prices here reached $10 a gallon, and let's say the president said there was a way to get it back to under $3 a gallon if we were just willing to start drilling up north again, I wonder what congress would say then? Do you suppose we'd be sending drill rigs up north soon after that? You bet we would.

Sound familiar? Anyone remember when Bush tried to get legislation through allowing us to do just that at the beginning of his presidency, and congress said "NO" because the environmentalists said it would wreak havoc on the habitat?

Change is inevitable, you can resist it, but it'll cost ya. We are going to pay the price for our "principles" because we listened to a bunch of chicken littles and did the PC thing. Ain't it funny how much the PC thing always seems to cost us so much more in the long run and accomplishes nothing, yet we keep making the same old mistakes over and over.

We need oil. There's a whole lot of oil up north. We will go get oil wherever oil is. Right now we are willing to pay a high price to keep our principles intact. There will come a point where the cost of oil outweighs the value of our principles. Maybe it will be when gas is $5 a gallon, maybe not until it is $10 a gallon. It is inevitable, Mr. Anderson...

To keep gas at $2.50 a gallon the US government would have to buy gas at that rate - a US government subsidy of the difference between market rate and $2.50. Currently that's $1.50 per gallon (diesel). Alternatively, the US government would have to produce their own supply, such as in the ANWR, and make it available for less than market rate (what China or India would pay for the production). Billions of dollars of government subsidies and/or nationalization of oil production - does anyone think that either proposal has some deliciously sweet irony behind it? Be careful what you wish for, because someday you may surely get it.

Because you know that Exxon or Imperial Oil isn't going to sell ANWR production solely to the US and solely for a discount - not without an additional subsidy to make up the difference between $2.50 and what they could be paid for it (or for what it costs to extract - ANWR is no cakewalk). This of course would be on top of their billions of dollars annual of US government subsidies, recently renewed. I don't think increasing US production via ANWR would have more than an incremental impact on gasoline prices, because it would have only an incremental impact on the global oil supply. Because its the global oil market that ANWR would produce for, and the global market that the US market *always* purchases from. True since the advent of OPEC. And who always will have the money to bid up and buy the ANWR production on an open market? China - thanks to a couple decades of trade imbalances in their favor, Americans buying up their consumer goods production. Chinese goods, moved off the ships and around America by those O/O truckers who are now protesting the high cost of diesel gasoline. I sympathize, my brothers.

We have met the enemy, and he is us...

Similar to not tapping into ANWR, the use of oil from the oil sands in Canada has been restricted by the U.S. Congress.

Section 526 of the Energy Bill signed into law in January, I think, states that the U.S. government will not purchase transportation fuel from nonconventional petroleum sources that have higher life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from production and combustion than equivalent conventional fuel.

That means that the US military, the postal service, government fleets, all of it - can’t use tar sands oil. Or oil shale. Or coal to liquids.

So, the U.S. military cannot buy oil from a source that is both one of the most secure and has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. The oil from the oil sands in Alberta may cost more, but the amount of oil in them is trememndous. Still, the U.S. Govt. has said it does not like this oil. So, instead, we need to buy it from sources in nations not as friendly to our views, and transport it further distances.

That may be...but...

Right now there is big controversy over 2 pipelines being built which will export over 1.5 million barrels of Bitumen a day from Alberta oil sands to the US to be converted into Crude...that's 1.5 million more than we're exporting now (which is a significant amount).

I feel compelled to add that in 2005 Canada only produced 1 million barrels of Bitumen a day.

Whatever oil lives below ANWR does fall under US jurisdiction, and honestly I don't know how anyone expects to price the production from any proposed oil fields. The usual 'free market' (ignoring the billions of US government subsidies for the moment) approach would be for private oil companies to bid for the concession, and extract the oil and sell it to the highest bidder. If I'm not mistaken that concession bidding has already taken place, several producers are chomping at the bit to get at ANWR. The point of my email was if you wanted to guarantee $2.50 per gallon gas for Americans, you have to price that into the concession somehow: a guarantee that the US would buy every drop of the production at $2.50 does nothing, nearly any bidder on the open market will make the same guarantee. So if you want an oil company to go to the expense of production, you need a price guarantee, and that price guarantee should be approximately how the free market for oil will value it at.

Leaving aside also whether any amount of production could guarantee $2.50 gas: the US consumes far more oil than ANWR can produce, so we have to buy more expensive oil along the way. You could incrementally lower the price of gas through additional government subsidies, or forcing the ANWR concessionaires to limit their sales for US consumption. The first I could see from the current Administration, they have proven an excellent source of free money for the oil companies, but not the second. The next Administration, maybe things swing around the other way - no subsidies, but limits on where they could sell it. (BTW when Hilary or PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. make some controversial decision around oil production and policy, have a heart and try to remember the catastrophic results from the current Administration's policies - those hundreds of billions were spent in your name, and from your pocket). Either way, it interferes with the vaunted operation of the free market for oil, to little or no effect.

I was going to mention the massive US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, that can arguably be related to our nation's strategic interest in protecting a fair chunk of our chosen oil supply (Saudi), but that trillion dollar boondoggle verges on the political and I personally doubt it only has to do with protecting oil, so I'll shut up. Pretty quick the whole situation just gets me angry these days.

Americans have already shown the oil companies and the government that it will sit still for inflated gas prices, and inflated everything-else prices.

If we started big-time drilling in ANWR today, sucked out all the oil, and were able to refine/use it in an ecologically sound way, do you think that the price of gasoline would drop? Or even not go up?

They don't HAVE to drop the price! For them, it isn't high enough yet.

Sue

Well, I never said we'd actually get gas back down to $3.00 or so a gallon, only that when the price gets much higher than it is, it will be a lot easier to use that as an enticement to circumvent the already weak environmental restrictions. Whether or not we reap the economic benefits or it all goes to China is, as you say, a matter of marketing. Right now it looks like China has a bigger stack of chips than we do, and unless we intend to start defaulting some of our markers abroad, we are only going to continue heading downslope. From a planning perspective, I think it would merit consideration as to logistics for transportation for the average joe, either to buy ever smaller, more fuel economic vehicles, or else to co-locate to someplace within walking/biking distance to/from work.

I am planning on becoming a teleworker in the next few years, mainly so that I can stay on the farm and work my other job, which will be running the farm, but also because 90% of what I currently do can be done from any location, including home. That ought to save me on fuel costs. Now all I have to do if find a 20 mule team to pull the combine so I am not pouring precious gasoline into mechanized farm equipment.

Welcome to the last phase of the industrial age; globalization. If there's one resource China and India still dominate, it is cheap manpower. We could probably cut our highway construction costs in half if we could employ a thousand chinamen at the Chinese market labor rate with picks and shovels in place of one track-hoe. Come to think of it, didn't we build a railroad that way?

I'm with you porkchop. I drove for a couple years as a company driver and my SO is an OO. We're going broke. So broke that I'm looking at returning to driving as a co driver just so we can make ends meet.

Just to give some of you a little added perspective. He and I just sat down while he was home last week and figured out that at the current fuel prices it's costing him an average of $0.80 per mile JUST for fuel. Running 3k miles a week that adds up.

I don't think there's going to be a huge "strike" that happens but I was talking to him on the phone earlier and he said I-40 is backed up because all the trucks are going slow. A slow down is different, stuff still gets delivered, it just takes longer. He'll be home tomorrow and isn't going back out for a couple days so ...

A new poster. Welcome to the forum. Stick around.

Welcome Newguy!!!

Welcome to the forums Newguy and stay a while.

Lee

If the gooberment would quit taking their cut gas would be that expensive, or would it?

And welcome Carol, too!

Sue

Last I heard, the government cut is about 87 cents a gallon.

If you really want to see where the price is being driven up from, go to the source. Yes, the big oil companies get their cut of course, but for some reason everyone is ignoring the fact that OPEC has been jacking up the price for the past two years fairly steadily.

China ain't helping matters any either.

Of course, according to the network news anyway, US oil companies are showing record profits. Gee, I wonder where those profits come from???

Dragonfly - Welcome to the party! Jump in with both feet and have fun.

Yes, the oil companies certainly aren't going to give up their cut, and as the dollar falls, everyone's gluttany increases.

Just wanted to point out it isn't only the oil companies that are ramming it to us.

Gets news coverage.

Welcome Carol. Pull up a chair and sitdown.

Hi Carol,

Welcome to the ETS Forum and nice Barton quote.

Mike

Thanks folks. Ran across this site and been lurking for about a month. Finally decided to register and when I saw this post I couldn't help but add my $0.02 worth.

I think a large part of the reason why gas isn't going down is because America (for the most part) hasn't slowed down or shown any desire too. We're spoiled rotten and want what we want when we want it. Granted this doesn't apply to everyone but to enough people.

And personally, I think the only people who are going to suffer for stopping are the people who are stopping. The large trucking companies aren't going to allow their drivers to stop/slow down to the level that it would make an impact.

Besides (in the attitude of major Americans) why should oil companies sacrifice their profits just to satisfy the minority? (I don't agree with that but .... who am I?)

Welcome Newguy!

"...The large trucking companies aren't going to allow their drivers to stop/slow down to the level that it would make an impact..."

I hope that you are right, but the other day on the news I heard a stat that, if correct, might have an impact on what you say. They said that 90% of the trucks in this country are owner/op. That being the case, we will see an impact, since the other 10% for sure can't haul everything...

Like usuall news isn't very accurate. The most accurate estimations I see are about a 50/50 split between owner operators and company drivers.

I've not heard a thing about any strike or slowdown on the CB yet this week so it must be not happening around here.

Is anyone seeing any extra empty shelf spaces in stores yet?

If not, maybe the statement about there only being 3 days supplies in an American city at any given time needs to be reevaluated!

The supermarkets around here have fully stocked shelves, not even any rumors of shortages. Price increases yes, shortages no.

Pete

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/co...exclusives#=rss

Business Week says there is not gas shortage.

It is my understanding that the truckers are asking for the tax portion of the total fuel price to be lowered or suspended for a while.

Pete

I would say at the most maybe it's a 50/50 split. And you have to take into consideration those OO's who can't afford to stop. If they stop they'll loose everything. Trust me, my bf and I are getting closer to that point every day.

I'd estimate that anywhere from $0.30 to $0.90 per gallon is nothing but taxes (federal and state). That adds up when you have to pump a couple hundred gallons.

To be honest, I've always had a "hankerin" to be more self-sufficient and what-not. After driving a big truck for a couple years... my eyes have opened alot wider and I see alot more about people in general that truly doesn't appeal to me.

And after the catastrophe's that have happened over the past few years I've come to realize also that an extremely small portion of people are prepared. Everyone is so busy trying to "keep up with the Jones'" that they don't/can't see beyond today.

Anyway, for those who haven't realized it yet, I'm gal not guy :P

Well okay - all for it, if they can tell us how to repair the federal highway infrastructure without any income, which currently comes from the fuel taxes. You turn off the spigot, the money has to come from somewhere else. No money, no repairs, no income for concrete pourers, engineers, asphalt companies etc etc who are engaged in building and maintaining the highway system.

If the counter-argument is that the grid can be kept up just on the reduction in fraud / waste that could be frigged out of the system, well, no I'm not with you anymore. Concrete and asphalt costs are going up too. Nothing comes cheap, and roads certainly don't come for free.

One thing I don't understand is why is it only the O/O truckers going on strike? If it really was about fuel prices, wouldn't the trucking companies also be feeling the pressure also? It should be affecting everybody equally. Do the trucking companies get some sort of bulk discount on fuel that O/O truckers don't? And if that were the case, it wouldn't matter what the price of diesel was, they're always going to be on the short end of the stick.

Rather than going on strike, why not just charge more to cover their fuel costs? Like I mentioned before, a strike is ineffective unless there's some company or corporation losing money over it. Just refusing to drive isn't going to hurt anyone in the short term except themselves. This is all just thinking outloud, because talk of a strike seems to have died down pretty quickly.

Odds are the companies have a volume discount. They also have long term contracts with major late delivery penalties. If the customer is a Just In Time operation, they may only have hours worth of materials in house to keep the factory operating if the delivery is late for any reason.

Most definitely. But around here we also have a DOT that is building a whole new four lane road instead of adding a couple of lanes to an existing interstate. IIRC They're justifying it by trying to say they want to get people to fly into the Tri-Cities & drive 100 miles to Gatlinburg rather than fly into a larger airport (Knoxville) that's <30 miles away. Maintain the roads we've got for a while & quit building roads we don't want or need.

I was looking around for the breakdown of gasoline, but couldn't find anything more recent than April 2007.

HowItWorks says 50% of the price is the cost of the crude oil, 28% is the cost of refining, 8% is the cost of distribution and marketing, and 14% is taxes.

Today in my town, gas is $3.50/gallon ($3.499 if you buy a hundred gallons), so that would be broken down (if these precentages are still accurate):

Crude oil: $1.75
Refining: .98
Distrib/mktg: .28
Taxes: .49

Plus a few cents for the station owner.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/gas-price1.htm

Sue

US gas price temperature map

Gas tax breakdown by state

Lowest around here is $3.09

contents of a barrel of crude

When we had a fuel strike a few years ago in the UK, it took about a week for me to notice supermarket shortages. Then it was fresh bread - presumably they'd run out of flour.

(80% of the cost of UK fuel was tax, and truckers can drive onto mainland Europe where the tax regimes vary, so the political situation was a bit different to the US.)

"When we had a fuel strike a few years ago in the UK, it took about a week for me to notice supermarket shortages."

All it takes around here is for the news media to say there is a windstorm coming with 60 mph gust expected, and the stores are stripped of bottled water (lots of wells around here), charcoal briquettes, disposable diapers, toilet paper and canned dinners (beef stew and ravioli), and selected other stuff in just a few hours.

One of the main problems is that if the power goes out, the stores usually stay closed, and you can't get anything.

The small supermarket near me goes on generator for basic lighting, the checkers use handheld calculators, store employees wander through the store telling customers that meat is $1/pkg and all the ice cream is free.

Sue

With the rash of stormy weather we had this weekend, we finally lost power last night. I lit all the oil lamps and sat in the warm glow of petroleum light, until the temp in the house started to climb. I eventually cut back to just having two lamps lit. Opening the doors and windows did nothing to cool the house down, as the outside temp and humidity were no better.

Once the power came back on, bot AC units kicked in, and I went back to finishing watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I still have an orange tree full of oranges out back. Will they ever get ripe enough to pick?

Was a good excuse to sit on the back porch and smoke my pipe in the dim light, listening to the rain and the thunder.