OOIDA on the road – August/September 2022
At the start of the summer, we all might have thought that this was going to be the COVID-19 recovery summer. Like the Summer of Love in 1967, this one was going to have a name.
The economy seemed ready to recover. Restaurants reopened, and the truck shows came back.
This far into it, though, it isn’t as clear as all that imagining how this summer will be remembered.
Will it actually end up being remembered for the sky-high diesel prices? Or how about the summer truckers got overtime? The dog days when the speed-limiter-proposal zombie returned? Maybe we will think of it as the sun-baked days of uncertainty.
Marty Ellis, as he has steered the OOIDA tour trailer across the U.S., has reported hearing professional over-the-road drivers understandably concerned about the cost of diesel and getting paid enough to stay in business. They’re worried about having expensive emission reducing technology foisted upon them, not to mention the seeming panic to embrace driverless trucks, highway safety be damned.
It has been heartening, Ellis said, when drivers take advantage of the opportunities provided them by OOIDA and the legislative process to tell lawmakers what’s what. “Boy, that was easy,” drivers told him when they went to FightingForTruckers.com to comment on high Unified Carrier Registration fees, to oppose the speed limiter mandate, to repeal the overtime exception for truck drivers, and to lobby for more truck parking.
This might be the summer of possibilities, if we can each of us take the responsibility to educate our lawmakers.
Ellis likes hearing from other truckers what they are experiencing on the road, and he has copies of Land Line Magazine and some other resources for professional drivers. Stop by the OOIDA tour trailer to swap stories. LL