Truckers: Their Own Worst Enemy?

Running over your own feet.

If you’ve been to a gasoline station, and you’re not a billionaire or an investor in the oil industry, you’re not happy. Prices have skyrocketed, and nobody is happy about it. It’s not hard to understand why truckers, who are affected more directly than any of us, are really, really mad about the price of diesel fuel. I can even understand why they want to call attention to their plight, maybe gain some sympathy from the general public. So what brilliant idea did they have to accomplish their goal?

They decided to piss off as many of us regular motorists as possible!

Yes, some brainiac with way too many hours behind the wheel decided that playing games on the road, blocking traffic, slowing down to twenty miles an hour and causing traffic jams, would make the rest of us fond of truckers. Never mind that over the last couple of decades truckers have become far less popular already, in large part due to quickie schools that offer barely adequate training, as well as company policies that force truckers to drive irresponsibly and endanger fellow motorists. Now those truckers who need a change of air in their heads have decided to make themselves even less popular than before.

Do they really think that will be effective at making the oil companies lower prices? How many people in the general public will get angry at the oil companies instead of the truckers directly causing traffic issues?

We’d all like to see gas prices start a downward trend. I’ll admit I don’t know how best to accomplish that goal; with oil companies owning so many politicians and too many people gullible enough to keep supporting those politicians, the answers don’t come easily. Pitting truckers against average citizens, however, disrupting traffic and making our lives even more difficult, is not a solution.

Now, if the Washington DC Beltway was clogged with thousands of trucks and the lives of everyone in DC were interrupted, that might get the point across. Slowdowns elsewhere just make truckers into enemies of the people.