Fuel, Fuel, Fuel, When You Take a Hold at our Cahoonies…

The hot topic on trucking talk radio these days, everywhere in North America, is the rising cost of fuel and the turn down of many customers to pay a fuel surcharge in order to help the industry with these increases and the ones to come.

The word is out about a strike in the trucking community but, the only ones that can do a strike are the unionized drivers and this is towards an employer that refuses to negotiate a working contract. The correct words to use by owner operators and non-unionized drivers would be a voluntary stopping period by solidarity. It could be a day or more, why not! Many rumours are that this could happen on April 1^st, unless this is an April Fools day joke. I hope we will see a strong solidarity among the industry.

For the ones that don’t get their fare share of compensation for the high priced fuel, many are going to say that they need the income, so little it is. To loose one day of income is nothing compared to the losses you may have in a very short period of time if nothing is done to correct this situation.

It is not to our governments to take action on this matter. They can help us by taking down some taxes they get from the sales of fuels but our Honourable Ministers of Finances are all smiles with these new revenues coming in to the provinces. The higher the price is, the more money comes in from the percentage of the taxes. Personally, I saw this past week my first fuel bill with four digits between the dollar sign and the decimal point. Will we soon have to deal with a credit officer at the fuel desk instead of a cashier?

Before I took the decision of parking my tractor, my fuel costs were over 65% of my gross income. After many talk with the carrier I was leased with to adjust my fuel surcharge, and the same amount of no’s I got, I pulled the tractor beside the house and I decided to look at the snow melt on it. I currently drive as an independent driver for a small carrier I know in my area.

Many won’t be making the line at to renew their plates in Quebec on March 31^st and many are going to park some trucks nose to the fence until the crisis ends. How long is this crisis going to last?

I can’t tell because I don’t have a crystal ball. The one I used to predict the fuel would be at the $4 dollar mark before the end of summer was wrong. It happened before spring has settled in. As long as there are some carriers, small or large, that is going to haul freight at a cut rate, as long as the trucking association and the Owner-operator association won’t do a spectacular thing toward customers that still think that revenues are plentiful, this crisis will last.

Unless, and I am purely speculating, this is economic terrorism?

For the time being, why not do it this Tuesday and use a modified version of a popular racing phrase: “Gentlemen, do not start your engines!”