Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Until the beginning of this month, Americans seemed to have nothing to say about their ongoing economic ruin except, "Hit me! Please, hit me again!" You can take my house, but let me mow the lawn for you one more time before you repossess. Take my job and I'll just slink off somewhere out of sight. Oh, and take my health insurance too; I can always fall back on Advil.

Then, on April 1, in a wave of defiance, truck drivers began taking the strongest form of action they can take - inaction. Faced with $4/gallon diesel fuel, they slowed down, shut down and started honking. On the New Jersey Turnpike, a convoy of trucks stretching "as far as the eye can see," according to a turnpike spokesman, drove at a glacial 20 mph. Outside of Chicago, they slowed and drove three abreast, blocking traffic and taking arrests. They jammed into Harrisburg PA; they slowed down the Port of Tampa where 50 rigs sat idle in protest. Near Buffalo, one driver told the press he was taking the week off "to pray for the economy."
Truckers Protest, the Resistance Begins By Barbara Ehrenreich
What this accomplishes I don't know, other than slowing down & annoying thousands of drivers cocooned in their Kamakiris while blabbing on cell phones & fiddling with their cockpit technology. But we do know that the current price-per-gallon isn't driven by scarcity at the wellhead or demand at gas station pumps.

Comments:
On April 25, 2006, I posted this at my Bar and Grill, only this time the trucks were in Miami.
 
I read about the protest and then thought about how many freight trains could haul what those truckers could haul, but at a fraction of the fuel usage and damage to our roads and our environment.
 
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