Hello,
I am a woman small trucking company owner with 5 trucks. My husband drives one and has been a OTR for over 20 years. A strike would be nice and we would park our trucks but the industry will not stand together. The fuel prices are bad, the frieght rates are not good and the brokers make too much money but it will take time to change that, and WE do not haul cheap freight. Yet, with the price of fuel it takes 50% of the load just to get it through and then you have some deadhead. OOIDA is a good organization but the also have their quirks. I do not know about you guys but the CSA 2010 has already hurt us. We have brokers refusing to load us. OOIDA stands behind this new CSA 2010 also even though the new system does not help the small man, but did you know some of their lawyers/workers have never sat behind a wheel of a truck. Just finished a DOT audit and everytime you get any kind of log book violation, it is a fatigue ticket. Every time you have one light out regardless of what light, it is a 1 to 3 point violation. Well, all them little ones add up quickly on the new system and even though we passed the audit with flying colors, the scores stand for 3 years and how many of you out there will go 3 years without some sort of violation. Even lights in my personal vechicles can go out just like that and lights go out without warning. We spend some weeks more money on maintenance than we take in and all our trucks have new engines and are newer trucks, it is basic maintenance stuff not major stuff. So when I see people posting things that chastise people for saying they live paycheck to paycheck, OOIDA helps on all issues, and that good luck on the strike, but I will not strike, this is the problem. Owner/operators will be out of business soon if this keeps up and we all will be out in the cold. The fact is government stated that with CSA 2010 they want to weed out about 100,000 owner operators out of business. I have back up skills and a Masters Degree but how many other O/O have back up skills. It is time for all of us to stand together, the question is how and when. This country is in trouble and we as an industry are in big trouble. My business checks read " God Bless truckers, farmers and country." It's time for change. before it's too late. The big companies have contracts with the government and large cooperations, but O/O are the backbone of the trucking industry. United we stand, divided we will fall. God Bless Truckers, God Bless the USA....