Independent Truckers See End of the Road

Robert Griffith stops for a photograph at a truck stop in Platte City, Mo., Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008. Trucking's owner-operators, the self-employed drivers who haul everything from Hummers to hay, are suffering. Many say they're running on the edge of bankruptcy, about to disappear unless they get help. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner) (Orlin Wagner - AP)

A Baird & Co. research report said the one positive note is the likelihood of more bankruptcies could eventually push freight rates up for the survivors.

Truckers, who felt unappreciated in the best of times, say they feel even more marginalized now.

Rumors of a nationwide truck strike are a nearly annual occurrence _ but this year an effort in January generated more talk than usual on MySpace and the Sirius Satellite Radio show "Freewheelin.'"

"If you eat it, drink it, wear it ... sit on it, if it is anything other than the air you breathe, an American truck driver made it possible!" wrote trucker Joe Misilewich of Norwich, New York in an e-mail. "Don't forget it! Without truckers, America is nothing!"

Nanette Jenkins Rudd, 40, a third-generation trucker based in Mapleton, Ill., kept her five trucks off the road the week of the strike.

"I pray that this strike is successful, so that we only have to stop rolling for a week _ and not forever," she said.

Like other truckers, she's hoping for government help. "The government stepped in and helped the farmers when they were in trouble," she said. "Why? Because the farmers feed America, the farmers put food on the table. But who do you think delivers that food?"

Truckers say they want caps on diesel prices, or tax credits for truckers, as well as increased regulation for the middlemen who broker truck loads.

While independents struggle, the large public trucking companies seem to be on a different road. Their stocks have, for the most part, climbed since January.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. and YRC Worldwide Inc., with more than 10,000 truck tractors each, buy everything from fuel to tractors in bulk. The big companies buy thousands of gallons of diesel at a time on the commodities market, then store at their depots; Griffith buys his at truck stop pumps, where prices increased 38 cents a gallon over two days last month.

Independent truckers are increasingly dependent on freight brokers, middlemen who match shippers with drivers one load at a time, taking a cut for themselves. At one of the country's largest brokers, Landstar System, Inc., revenue from brokered loads was $881.57 million in 2007, more than double what it was four years before. But the company said it paid less for transportation in fiscal 2007, while its revenue per load was nearly flat at $1,612.

Jim Gattoni, Landstar's chief financial officer, said payments were lower because volume was lower. Drivers carrying brokered loads from the company earn between 80 and 90 percent of the value of the freight they carry, he said, depending on the weight and complexity of the load.