Trucking History – March/April 2024
March 1963
“Six Days on the Road” was recorded by Dave Dudley at Kay Bank Studios in Minneapolis. The song originally was released in 1961, but it was Dudley’s version that became a major hit, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. It also made Billboard’s Top 40 and Hot 100 lists and hailed as the definitive celebration of the American truck driver. Perhaps most interesting, Dudley’s version was played during NASA’s third space shuttle mission (STS-3) as a wake-up call.
April 1998
A staff of 87 employees at OOIDA headquarters in Grain Valley, Mo., moved into the Association’s new three-story building just under one year after breaking ground on an expansion. Membership was 39,000 at the time. Today, OOIDA represents more than 150,000 men and women in all 50 states and Canada who collectively own and/or operate more than 240,000 individual heavy-duty trucks and small truck fleets. Its mission remains to serve owner-operators, small fleets and professional truckers and to work for a business climate where truckers are treated equally and fairly.
March 2013
In mid-March, Judge Ted Stewart of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah signed his name one more time in the case of OOIDA v. C.R. England, entering final judgment in favor of truckers. The court awarded the class more than $1.3 million.
The lawsuit over C.R. England’s truck leasing operations first was filed more than a decade earlier and went to trial in federal court in 2006.
C.R. England appealed the ruling within its allotted 30-day window, and a settlement between OOIDA and the Utah-based company was reached in June 2014. The $3 million settlement, including attorney’s fees, was for about 7,000 drivers leased to C.R. England between 1998 and 2006.
April 2020
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, OOIDA sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to address issues that would affect truckers long after the pandemic was over. OOIDA President Todd Spencer told CNBC that truckers needed testing for COVID-19. The Association’s efforts resulted in more than 800,000 masks being distributed to truckers across the country by the U.S. government. LL