"General Public" and a strike. HELP!!!

Yoda makes some very good points. The corruption and greed within other sectors of the economic structure have contributed to the current financial situation of many people, not just those in trucking.

Look at the mortgage crisis. Lenders (and builders) were anxious to move their "product" and devised some creative lending practices that allowed a great many people to make home purchases who in sounder economic times would never, never, never have been qualified to do so. In the "old days" people saved money to make a downpayment and had to prove their credit and typically got a 30-year fixed mortgage. However, in recent years new home purchase options became available (zero down, reverse mortgage, ARM, interest only). NONE of these are designed to build wealth for the purchaser but rather line the pockets of everyone else involved in the sales transaction, often at the expense of the buyer. Now we are seeing a rise in foreclosures, bankruptcies (lenders, builders, buyers) and a significant decrease in new home building.

No new building means demand for lumber is down. If you haul logs, that probably impacts you. Less demand equates to less pay. Yet there are still about the same amount of truckers trying to make a living in this depressed sector of the transportation industry.

No new building also means less demand for related construction equipment and supplies. The same principles of supply and demand are at work in this sector as well.

Trucking is not an insulated sector of our economy and anyone thinking that this country stops if trucks stop running is not seeing the bigger picture. Everyone is looking to produce the most profit with the least expense and that includes truckers, manufacturers, and the general public. Use of rail is an example where transportation costs are significantly below the costs of traditional trucking and is becoming more of a focus for less time critical shipments.

Yet many protestors are placing blame for their inability to make a decent living squarely at the feet of the oil companies and demanding the government "do something about it."

 

Dang Tex... Are you a graduate of the same school of hard knocks? Did we take classes together on the highways of America in the 1970s before dereg? Did you take classes from Professors trip lease and gateway LOL?

Bringing the "General Public" and "Help" into your post is easy, They can contribute to the exposure of those who have precipitated the crisis we are in. Make sure your prosecutors look into all the scam sales deals that allowed people with incomes below the poverty lines to buy $250, 000 homes on interest only arms, while working men and women were subjected to credit card interest resets doubling their debts.

As a Member of the public, look into the voting record of your Senators and Representatives on issues that drove DOWN wages, eviscerated UNIONS, gave amnesty to millions of alien scofflaws ( and tried to again), left the borders open and allowed one way free trade. You can help the trucking industry by banding together in your political districts and demanding better from the government than playing 3 card Monte with the tax structure, selling transportation infrastructure or placing tolls on publicly financed and paid for roads.

Your homeless and fixed income citizens have been and will in the future be even more dependent on you to stop this hyper inflation and revue a responsible government that spends less than it has and builds a reserve for hard times just a a citizen should.

 

good explanation sir, you sound like a great american, perhaps you should consider a career in politics. we need more good people in D.C., you started your business to make a profit, you should do just that and not be ashamed. the point i'm trying make here is that in a free market system, any product or service that is sold is only worth what someone is willing pay. here's an example, just this past weekend i felt like cooking some burgers on the grill. my wife was going to the store so i asked her to get me a tomato. i usually don't buy tomatoes from the grocery store because i don't like the way they taste. she brought home a nice red tomato, but when i sliced it was rock hard and not juicy at all, no taste( i think anyone who hauls produce can tell you how that works) . she then proceeded to tell me that tomato was $2.00, not per pound, per tomato. had she called me from the store and told me that tomato was $2.00 i would have told her to leave it there. it's not that i couldn't afford it, it just wasn't worth that to me. now, if 350 million people start feeling the same way there's going to be a lot of folks out of a job. the grower, shipper, hauler etc... the trucking business will be no different than any other business during this downturn. it's going to be survival of the fittest for sure, and yes i will CONTINUE to pray for you and others like you and for the prosperity of this great nation.

 

If your planning on voting for the lesser of two evils, do you countrymen a big favor and don't vote at all !!!!!!!

 

President Bush might be down playing the seriousness of the collapse of the economy in words, but in deeds he has dropped 30,000,000 dollars of YOUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE INCOMES into a wild scheme to "jump start" this mess they have made.

It is not just a case of a few million people not buying a tomato, Millions and Millions of Americans are suffering from no disposable income as prices of daily necessities rise by triple digit a year inflation rates, credit account interest rates go up, and wages do not. Jobs by the hundreds of thousands are leaving the country while illegal aliens flood the labor markets here taking the tradesman jobs that were the backbone of the lower middle class. The Fed's response is to flood the broke banks with cheap LOANED cash and drive the value of a dollar toward the value of a peso.

As a small business man my main object in life has to be to remain profitable and available for the resurgence of the economy that will come after the crash is complete, Doing this will also keep me and my family out of the bread lines that are now known as food banks where many normally hard working Americans will find themselves looking for enough food to feed their families after paying their rent and utilities.

I have been urging Americans to pray for our country and for it's leaders to get some guidance, so far they seem as clueless as Marie Antoinette.

 

Or do what I am gonna do write in Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama! LOL Or anyone else you see as NOT ONE OF THE EVILS!

 

good luck, and well wishes to you.

i think this pretty much sums it all up, nice post.

 

Qoute'

General Public" and a strike. HELP!!!
As a part of the general public and not a trucker, I really prayed as many others in the general public that the Trucking Industry would come together and form a major strike, bring our country to a complete standstill and generally bring some relief to all of us. At work we talk about it all the time. "A strike by the truckers will hurt short term (1-2 weeks if needed) but long term it will bring about relief to everyone". We had made plans to also support the truckers on strike by staying home from work (even our boss agreed). " end of quote


Not once have you mentioned what you expected a strike to do besides "Bringing our country to a complete stand still.


Please stop using anything brought by a truck for the next week or 10 days and report back... Was your experience of short term pain what you visualized it to be for 300 million people.... Did you engage in food riots when your children had nothing to eat? When the electricity went out were you prepared?

 

well folks I was AT the dc. rally and can tell you now that it did as it was intended to do, the main objective was a meeting with the government officials which 4 of our group was able to do.
Another thing that was personally satisfying to me was seeing for my own eyes the overwhelming support we had from the public, this incident sums it up nicely, an older lady came over and shook my hand and stated "thank god someone is trying to do something about this mess", that one statment and handshake made it all worthwhile for me.
I was also able to witness the fact that you can get more than two truckers to agree on something and while the group wasn't as large as it should have been the ones that were there showed that they had the backbone and stubbornness to persevere even when it got tough and believe me it was a bit trying, a 2.5 mile walk thru the rain no tents although the were suppose to be there an interesting problem when we went to JFK and they "tried' to make people pay to park, a scales that refused to close for the convoy, an accident that shut down all but one lane and a lot of other issues that tried our patience but thru it all we got the message across and in a dignified manner not to mention the fact that them air horns sure woke up DC.