Claim: Truckers are poised to strike over rising fuel prices.
MIXTURE OF TRUE AND FALSE INFORMATION
Examples:
[Collected via e-mail, August 2005]
Good Morning Friends,
I have spoken with a few independent truckers in the past
Unlike the contrived oil and gasoline shortages of the early seventies, the US is not in the position of turning open the spigot and allowing the oil and refined products to flow. Because of the hurricane, the lack of new refineries, and the lack of an ingenious national energy policy, these shortages are real and will be exploited by the Teamsters Union. Every domestic refinery is producing gasoline and home heating oil at maximum capabilities, and combined with the shut down of the refineries in the Gulf due to the hurricane, along with the inability to pump crude oil from the Gulf region, there will be serious shortages for approximately two months. This is a serious National emergency!!!! There have already been long gasoline lines in the South this Labor Day weekend, as many with whom I have spoken from that region have stated to me that in some areas of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida, gasoline is already being rationed. These individuals are being allowed only
Wal-Mart has announced that their entire fleet of trucks will stop moving good and services effective Tuesday,
Terry......Teamster Union Member
[Collected via e-mail, August 2005]
Are you aware American's are considered greedy? - Saudi Arabia 2005 target price for selling oil was $21 a barrel. Currently, they're selling oil at almost $70 a barrel, while their cost of producing that barrel is just
Consider this E-mail a WARNING...Truckers unions losing patience with the Federal Government and the U.S. Oil Companies... truckers are advised to watch for signs of terrorist activity (AP). . .Under pressure, major freight carriers strike early agreements with Teamsters
88,000 unionized truckers are getting the brunt of fuel costs, the major Truckers Unions and drivers has had about enough of getting ripped off. With truckers unions and drivers claiming unreal fuel expenses the unrest and shift is beginning to give birth to a National Truckers Strike.
There have been some severe strikes in years past and the talk is complete shut down. Even the owner operators will park their rigs and go out and even work at menial jobs just to survive. The cost of operation
has been eating away their truck payments. One comment was said at a local, "I wonder if the banks have big enough parking lots to hold the repossessions"
The anger has begun to intensify with drivers and the Truckers Union which is directed towards Federal and Oil Companies.
August 17th 2005 a small nucleus of Tanker and Trailer drivers begun to organize in Alabama. It is said three Unions have started to react with the drivers and are threatening to strike for lower fuel prices or else. It has elevated to a fever to contact and encourage their counterparts in other States throughout the nation to strike, Nationwide.
If this threat begins to take form, there are preparations that MUST be started NOW. The trucking industry is the prime provider for pretty much everything we have and enjoy in our home. One major item happens to be our FOOD, then our Fuel, medical supplies, clothing, housewares, building materials, emergency supplies when disaster happens, it goes on and on and on. Get the point, this fuel expense is beginning to take its toll.
It is vitally serious and important for you to increase your immediate food supply, purchase can food items, canned meat, (most of these canned items have a shelf life of
THIS IS A WARNING IN ADVANCE. Inform your friends and families include the elderly. You are asked to send this to anyone and everyone. This threat is real, do nothing now and you will find out.
[Collected via e-mail, March 2008]
I drive a delivery truck, and stopped at a truck stop off of
Origins: Various e-mails about a looming independent truckers and Teamsters union strike began arriving in inboxes everywhere in the last week of August 2005. However, at that time there was no mention of an impending nationwide labor action on the Teamsters web
site, nor was there an announcement from
In March 2008, rumors once again began to circulate that truckers would stage a strike on
Every 5-cent increase in the price of diesel results in an estimated $1,000 increase in truckers' annual expenses, and in March 2008 independent truckers began talking about staging a one-day nationwide trucker shutdown on
A trucker's strike may be looming on the horizon. Many independent over the road truck drivers are fed up with rising fuel and insurance costs and are looking into organizing and trying to join together to take rigs off the road and that would mean shortages at supermarkets, convenience stores and if it was carried out to the extreme, eventually at every retail outlet in America. Everything that gets delivered to a retail store in your city or town is eventually delivered by a truck, and if it were highly organized a strike could paralyze the economy.
Whether such a shutdown will take place, how widespread participation will be, and how effective such an action will be in ameliorating truckers' rising fuel expenses is something that will only be known in the aftermath.
There is precedent for independent truck owners and operators banding together to strike over rising fuel costs (although the word "strike" is being used here not in its familiar sense of an action waged against employers to force better wages, benefits, or working conditions for employees, but a work stoppage intended to paralyze industry and thereby force a change in government policy). In February 1974, four months after OPEC had declared an oil embargo against the U.S. and other western nations over their support of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a group known as the Owners/Operators Independent Drivers Association of America staged a national strike to protest the spiraling costs of fuel, fuel shortages, and reduced speed limits. (In response to the OPEC oil embargo, President Nixon had signed a bill imposing a
Last updated: 26 March 2008
Sources: |
Bunkley, Nick. "To Protest Fuel Costs, Truckers Plan Idle Day." The New York Times. 29 March 2008 (p. B3). Byrd, Gene. "Trucker's Strike Looming: Fuel Cost Protest in April, Real or Hoax?" The National Ledger 24 March 2008. CNNMoney.com. "Gas Prices Rise." 28 March 2008. The Quad City Times. "Whispers Grow of Nationwide Truckers Strike." 26 March 2008.