Precious Commodities

Now is the time for all good fleet owners to come to the aid of their owner-operators. If you don’t find a way to help them through this fuel-price crisis, you’ll prove to them what they’ve thought all along in their more cynical moments-that they’re pawns to be moved around the trucking chess board as it suits you. That all your talk about creating a “family,” a “team” of people all working toward the same goal, is just a load of hogwash.

Worse yet, you’ll prove to every prospective owner-op and company driver that this industry can’t provide a decent living, that it doesn’t give a damn about its foot soldiers, that a career in trucking isn’t worth pursuing. Think you’ve got a driver shortage now? Fail to act on the owner-op’s behalf this minute and you’ll see a shortage that will never end.

Pardon me for being pedantic, but you’ve got to think long here. Absolutely, owner-operators need help now, but it’s the long-term implications here that should concern you. Your own long-term survival may be at stake, too.

This fuel crisis will pass, as others have before, but some of its effects may be permanent. I’m reminded of two moments in our recent history. Not fuel crises, but explosions of owner-operator discontent.

The first was in 1980 or so when a few Kingsway owner-ops came to me with their tale of woe. We met surreptitiously on a Saturday afternoon, because these guys feared reprisals if any of the brass-including Teamster leadership-knew that they were “going public.”

Money was an issue, but respect also was on the list. They weren’t allowed in the driver’s rooms at company terminals, for example, and they always ended up with the worst loads on the worst roads in the worst weather.

The result of that first meeting, followed by several more that drew in guys from other fleets, was the creation of “ITAC”-the Independent Truckers Association of Canada-with a fuzzy mandate that didn’t include collective bargaining but might have looked like it did. ITAC accomplished nothing in the end, fizzling out after one very raucous meeting in which one faction proposed blowing up the Nipigon Bridge in Northern Ontario to make a point. The moderates left, the organizing passion dissipated.

But the issues didn’t go away, nor did the anger. It took another 10 years to surface again, with the shutdowns and slowdowns of 1990. The anger by then had intensified, and the organization had improved to the extent that border crossings were closed and the federal government’s interest was thus aroused.

I found it almost bizarre at the time to see that better training of new recruits was on the list of concerns. In the end, despite the injection of some federal dough and the creation of a couple of trucker associations, little changed. On the West Coast-and this is mirrored today-fleets reached an agreement with drivers and owner-operators on new pay arrangements, and then many of them welched on the deal.

The only thing that was really accomplished was an acceptance of the idea that better training and education were useful priorities.

Today, another decade later, the anger remains but there’s also desperation and a deepening despair. As I write this, three weeks into February, the television and radio newscasts are full of truckers threatening to park their rigs in the face of impossible fuel-cost hikes.

But what they’re saying-every last one-is that they’re making the same money now as they were 10 years ago. A buck a mile is altogether too common. As if inflation didn’t exist, let alone the present price of diesel.

It’s not especially good press, but it might just convince the odd shipper that his refusal to pay a temporary fuel surcharge is grossly unfair.

A few weeks back I listened to Freightliner Corp. president and CEO Jim Hebe say something extraordinary, and it seems germane here. Fleets, he said, had “better start thinking about doubling drivers’ pay if they’re going to improve this industry’s long-term viability.”

Fat chance, I thought at the time.

And I still think that way, but Hebe is right. It’s obvious that owner-operators can’t exist, let alone prosper, on a dollar a mile or even $1.20 today. Now, two bucks a mile isn’t in the cards, I know all too well, but something like that ought to be a target.

The thing is, trucking at large is under-valued, so such a target is in everyone’s interest. What can fleet owners and managers do right now? More than anything else, make it plain that you’ll fight to help your owner-operators survive by doing whatever it takes.

First off, pass on to them any fuel surcharge funds that you manage to extract from your customers. Make sure they know how to wring 7.5 miles out of every gallon of fuel instead of just 5.5. Don’t accept freight that doesn’t pay the way.

And be prepared to create some kind of contingency fund to keep your owner-operators afloat, even to the point of making a truck payment or two for the best of them.

I repeat, think long.