Roses & Razzberries – May 2021
ROSES to truck driver A.J. Gray, a Canadian trucker who went above and beyond the call of duty to return a lost dog to its owner. And when we say “above and beyond,” we mean he drove 5,200 kilometers across Canada to return Zoey to her owner, Chelsea Moss-Harris, after they became separated seven months earlier. CBC News reports that Moss-Harris and her family had decided to relocate to New Brunswick but flight restrictions meant they’d have to pay thousands of dollars to fly Zoey back with them. They ended up leaving Zoey behind with a family member.
Once they got settled, they connected with Gray via the Pet Transport Canada Facebook Group. Gray had run toward the East Coast coming up and said he’d be happy to bring Zoey home. He set out in mid-February and texted updates and pictures of Zoey along the way. Zoey was reunited with her family a few days later, and Gray shrugged the whole thing off, saying “She was no trouble at all. She slept mostly the whole way.”
RAZZBERRIES to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont for once again treating trucks like rolling piggy banks to pay for his state’s transportation needs. The good news is that in this year’s budget proposal Lamont finally abandoned his yearslong push for tolling as a funding mechanism. The bad news is he somehow managed to come up with an even worse plan. He is now proposing a vehicle miles traveled fee that would be imposed exclusively on trucks. In a speech announcing his budget proposal Lamont even went so far as to say truckers should pay the fee because they cause most of the damage to Connecticut’s highways.
Trucks bring everything your state needs to survive, and let’s face it – they kept this country rolling over the past year during the pandemic. And now you want to force them to pay more for the privilege of driving in your state?
Thanks, but no thanks.
RAZZBERRIES to lawmakers in Wyoming who are once again trying to find a way to add tolls to Interstate 80 across the state. A bill introduced earlier this year would call for the state Department of Transportation to come up with a plan to toll the 400-mile interstate. OOIDA, of course, is opposed to tolling in general, but it’s even worse when they try to add tolls to roads that are already built.
This isn’t the first time Wyoming has tried this. Previous efforts have failed to get support in either chamber of the statehouse. Here’s hoping this one suffers a similar fate.
ROSES to truck driver Ty Mauzerolle of York County, Maine, for helping save the life of a 9-year-old boy in Arizona last June. The story made headlines earlier this year when it was revealed how the mother of that boy tracked Mauzerolle down to thank him. WCSH reports that Mauzerolle happened upon the scene of a crash in which the boy’s father had been killed and found the boy screaming in pain in the passenger seat. He got the boy out of the car and called 911. The boy was too scared to get a shot from the paramedics, so Mauzerolle offered to give him his Nintendo Switch if the boy took the shots.
That did the trick.
The boy’s mother, Shaina Apodaca, wanted to thank the driver but had no idea how to reach him. So she found information contained in the Switch that said he was in York County, Maine, and reached out to the sheriff’s department. Three days later she had tracked him down and delivered her thanks.
ROSES to Polly Trottenberg, President Biden’s nominee for deputy secretary of transportation, for doing what so many politicians and people in authority before her have failed to do – acknowledging the problem of driver retention. During her confirmation hearing earlier this year, Trottenberg was asked if she would commit to working on the so-called driver shortage. Trottenberg said she would work “not only on driver recruitment but also driver retention. I know one of the challenges in the trucking industry is that drivers often come in and get trained and then it is hard to retain them.” Exactly what OOIDA has been saying for years. It’s good to see it acknowledged by someone in a position to potentially do something about it. LL