INSIDE THE TRUCK CAB: Truckers face increased competition, lower incomes

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INSIDE THE TRUCK CAB

Truckers face increased competition, lower incomes

BY: BECKY BRATU AND CAMERON STEE LE

Robin Steely’ s used Freightliner truck is his “ season pass” to see the country. In his 19-

year career as a truck er he has gone deep sea fishing, seen M ount R ushmore, walk ed the

same Black H ills that Craz y H orse once roamed, and attended more high-proile sporting

events than he can count.

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“The best part is seeing the country. I ’ve seen, I’ve been, I’ve driven all 48 [states],” he said. “Just seeing the country abroad

is unbelievable.”

A Nashville, Tenn. native with a disarming smile and a diamond-studded left ear, Steely decided to satisfy his travel lust when

the local music company he worked for went out of business. He bought his own truck and has hauled freight ever since.

But now he says he would get out if he could.

“Right now, it

’s rough. The economy is rough. If I could find something around the house that paid I

’d go do that. Park this[truck] in the yard right now and go do that.” Then he offered to sell his truck to a camerawoman.

A combination of wanderlust and the need for a stable income draws all kinds of people from all over the country to trucking.

But the income isn’t as steady as it once was. The deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980 may have quadrupled the

number of truckers on the road, but it sliced their incomes.

Most truckers in the late 1960s made about $60,000 a year. Today, the average is barely more than half that -- $35,000, according

to the American Trucking Association. The recent recession has added insult to injury, forcing many truckers to drive more

miles and retire later than they had planned.

Most truckers fall into one of two business models: the owner-operator, and the company trucker. Owner-operators buy their

own cab and get their own contracts. Company truckers are paid on a wage per mile basis to work for one trucking company,

which sets up contracts with different shippers.

Owner-operators can make a lot more than company truckers, but expenses and risks are a lot higher, too.

It’s now more affordable than it used to be for a trucker to start his own business as an owner-operator. Before the recession hit,

a trucker could buy a new rig for about $120,000. Now that same truck costs only $90,000.

But life as an independent owner-operator isn’t free from financial stress. Everything from fuel to oil changes to repair work

comes out of the trucker’s pocket. Steely said he recently had to pay $4,000 to fix his truck and get it back on the road.

Those are costs that company drivers don ’t have to worry about. The company covers all operating expenses and provides

its drivers with in-truck communication satellite devices that tell drivers the most effective way to get from one place to another.

Big companies such as J. B. Hunt and Schneider pay their drivers the top-tier rate of about 45 cents per mile. With the economy

the way it is, more truckers prefer to work as company drivers. As businesses with reduced output are cutting downtheir distribution costs, owner-operators, who are paid by the load, suffer.

Steely said business has never been worse in the almost two decades he ’s driven as an owner-operator.

“What I’m seeing is that everyone has to cut costs,” Steely said. “I’d say one of the top four costs of your company is your

freight, and they’re trying to cut it down, cut it down, cut it down, and they’re driving it down pretty good.”

Ray Chism, an owner-operator from Memphis, Tenn., found a way to cope with the economy while doing his part to protect

the environment. Using cooking oil from restaurants like KFC, Chism makes his own bio-fuel once a month, when he

returns home. The week he spends at home is enough time for him to make enough fuel to last him for a substantial part of

his journey.

“If I can make my own fuel for a dollar-five a gallon, then I ’m gonna win,” Chism said.

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Owner-operator Robin Steely talks about the amenities insidehis truck cab.

Truck driver Tammy Pendleton describes the satellitecommunication device installed in her truck, which she uses tonavigate the roads.

The American Trucking Associations

Owner-Operator Ind ependent D rivers Association


http://www.truckline.com/Pages/Home.aspx

http://www.ooida.com/

http://www.ooida.com/

http://www.truckline.com/Pages/Home.aspx



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©2009 by Bratu, Coupe, Statton and Steele




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Tammy Pendleton might not have 19 years of trucking under her belt, but she ’s still gone far. She can remember

exactly what she was wearing when she was last in California. It was January and she was standing in a strawberry

patch, in shorts and taking in the incredible sight of the snowy mountain tops on the horizon.

It has been almost two years since Pendleton traded her housewife apron for an air-ride-equipped 18-wheeler that

she’s since driven through at least 40 states.

“If you don’t mind being alone, it’s good,” Pendleton said. “I come across around the corner up in New York and

saw Lake Eerie and the blue sky, and the blue lake, and then snow out on the ice. It was just the most beautiful

thing I’ve ever seen.”

But life on the road is tough for truck drivers, and even more so for a woman driver. Pendleton says she feels she

needs to watch her back more because she’s a woman. Her sparkling eyes have gotten her into tight situations a

few times already, once while she was delivering a load to a customer.

“This guy says to me, he says, ‘You have the prettiest blue eyes.’ And I said ‘Thank you,’ and he said, ‘You know,

those would look really good in a jar on a shelf somewhere.’

“I’m not joking,” she said, shaking her head.








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Pendleton thinks women truckers face resentment from their condescending male counterparts, but she said that

the situation has gotten better as more women have entered the industry.

Pendleton’s trucker boyfriend taught her how to drive a truck and helped her get a license. She’s grateful for the

lessons because she doesn’t think getting a commercial driver’s license was as hard as it should be. Pendleton said

she went to trucking school for three weeks and got only an hour of driving time.

“They’re just pushing people through,” she said.

Other professional truckers agree that obtaining a truck license is not difficult.

“It’s a six-week process," said Chism. "But I mean you can find anybody that, you know, owns a truck that is

willing to spend a couple weeks with you to show you how to shift the gears, blah, blah, blah, and, you know. You

can take it from there.”

Male or female, truckers say the lessons and special license required of truckers don ’t prepare them for the reality

of life on the road.

Pendleton has learned through trial and error where it’s safe to stop and where she’s likely to encounter “spooky

characters.” She starts her day before sunrise and tries to be in her truck and ready for bed before dark because

she doesn’t want any trouble. She learned not to open her truck door at night after being solicited by a surprised

female prostitute who quickly halved her price.

Other truckers have learned to tune out those nighttime knocks. But it ’s impossible to ignore other concerns, such

as the tougher competition in the industry, especially since the economy tanked.

In 2001 The Industrial and Labor Relations Review found the average trucker worked 62 hours a week with only

nine days vacation a year. Those hours equal one and a half full-time jobs, according to the review, an academic

journal published by Cornell University.

That means less time at home with family. Dissatisfaction with the amount of time truckers are able to spend with

their families is a leading cause for high turnover rates in the trucking industry, a Transportation Research Board

study found in 1998. The research board is a private, nonprofit institution, operating under the National Research

Council.

Steely’s desire to be permanentlyhomeward-bound is further

enhanced by his longing to be with

13-year-old son. A rising star as the

quarterback for his local middle

school, Steely's son uses Facebook

and email to brief Steely on game

recaps, schoolwork, and the life of a

Nashville teenager.

The old days of the CB radio,

celebrated in countless trucker

songs, are gone. A Verizon wirelesscard plugged into his laptop

computer connects Steely to his

Rockbridge Reporter Becky Bratu goes "inside the truck cab" with Tammy

Pendleton, a woman trucker.

Truck driver Darrell Lewis talks about the crash he was involved

in on a congested interstate.




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Robin Steely's son longs to be a long-haul trucker like his father. But the

owner-operator hopes his 13-year-old quarterback completes his education

instead.

(HELEN COUPE/ The Rockbridge Report)

son. Other on-the-road comforts

include a satellite radio, which he

uses to listen to FOX News and

NASCAR races.

Steely’s truck is also equipped with a

fax machine and a printer that help

him keep track of his orders and

organize his business. The cab has

all the amenities of a small

apartment, including a refrigerator, asmall TV set and a microwave oven.

Pendleton uses the microwave oven

in her truck cab to make her

favorite on-the-road snack: Easy

Mac.

Steely even brings his son with him

for week-long trips when he is on

his school breaks. That means

Steely has to rearrange his cab so

that his son can sleep on the twin

bed’s top bunk, an area he usually

uses for storage.

“I gotta dismantle everything up there,” he said, laughing.

But Steely isn’t complaining. He says he jumps at the chance to spend time with his son. And that does not

happen as much as he’d like.

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Steely said he used to be able to spend more time at home, but the sour economy has forced him to take to the

road for longer periods. He used to spend a week on the road before returning to Nashville for a weekend’s rest.

Now he’s driving for two to three weeks at a time just to make a profit.

It will be a month before he sees his son again.

“I’ve missed ballgames and his life in general,” he said.

Like Steely, Pendleton has a 13-year-

old son who stays at home in

Tennessee, cared for by his

grandmother.

But because Pendleton’s company

doesn’t allow its drivers to travel

with minors, she gets to see her son

Dustin only when she goes home,once every two weeks. She says it’s

difficult to be away from him, but








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Tammy Pendleton keeps a photo of her son and her fiancé on the dashboard

of her b ig rig. (BECKY BRATU/ The Rockbridge Report)

they try to talk on the phone every

day.

And, thanks to her trucking job, the

little family that used to struggle to

get by every day can now afford

whitewater rafting and camping

trips. But Pendleton knows she

would never advise Dustin to go

into trucking.

“I would tell him I would rather

him go get a good education and

something stable and not as lonely,”

she said. “The hardest part about

this is that it is so lonely.”

Steely agrees. He wants his son to

go to college and get the education

he never had. But his son, not put

off by a long-distance dad, wants to

follow in his father’s occupational

footsteps.

Like Steely, Wayne Black became a trucker out of sheer love for the open road. But unlike the Nashville trucker,

Black, originally a New Yorker, doesn’t find the long-haul life all that lonely. An independent man, Black goes

home, but not to see family. Instead, he trades in his 18 wheels for two and hits the road on his motorcycle.

The biker tattoos covering his arms are misleading, because Black, a blood donor and pen pal to third-graders, is

anything but a tough guy. He cherishes the freedom of traveling cross country, but chastises truckers who

disrespect the industry. The risky road practices of those drivers -- illegal parking, speeding and inattention -- give

trucking a bad rap, he said.

“They don’t realize they’re taking someone’s life in their hands by running down the road four feet off a little car

or even another truck,” said Black.

For Pendleton, the loneliness of life on the road makes her see little future in trucking. Her heart is always

homeward bound, looking forward to being with her son and her boyfriend, who recently proposed to her.

Pendleton proudly flashes her diamond ring, a prized family heirloom.

She insists it’s not an engagement ring, but a confirmation of their strong commitment and devotion to each

other. She tries to contain her excitement, because she’s been married before. Dustin’s father divorced her after a

13-year marriage, and she was barely getting by when she met the truck driver who would become her boyfriend.

But Pendleton doesn’t only miss spending time with her son and boyfriend at their home in Tennessee.

“I miss my son, and I miss being home, but the thing that I miss the most is being able to jump in that shower

anytime you want to,” she said.

Although Pendleton says she’s not a girly girl, she says she still wants to feel like a woman while on the road,which has so far proven to be difficult.




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“I had my nails for a while done because I wanted to be a little feminine out here being a truck driver, but you

can’t really stop and park at a nail salon to get your nails done in that big truck,” she said.

Darrell Lewis, an owner-operator who is a devout Christian first, doesn’t let small parking lots keep him away

from Sunday sermons. For Lewis, his truck cab has been his home-on-the-road and Bible-study-on-wheels for the

past 21 years.

Lewis specializes in hauling hazardous materials such as chlorine and paint, a dangerous job for sure, but a far cry

from the days when he transported gasoline.

An accident that spilled 5,000 gallons of gasoline and ruptured his inner ear forced him into six months of

rehabilitation. He tried to go back to his old job hauling loads of gas, but anxiety attacks finally got the better of

him. He switched to the lesser danger of transporting chemicals.

Not risk-free, but then long-haul trucking never is, no matter the load.

“Trucking is trucking, you know what I’m saying? We all have to be safe, it doesn’t matter what we’re hauling,”

Lewis said.

“We can all die whether we’re doing cotton candy or chemicals.”

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INSIDE THE TRUCK CAB: Truckers face increased competition, lower incomes

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