The federal government and the State of California are hell bent on making trucking as we know it unprofitable. From Christopher Wilcox at aier.org:
I’ve been a truck driver for over 20 years. I suppose I always knew I would be, ever since that career day in the third grade when among all the kids dressed like doctors and baseball players, there I stood dressed like Jerry Reed from Smokey and the Bandit. Pop culture in the 80s painted the picture of truckers as rugged men, wild and free, burdened by nothing except their own wanderlust. That romanticized version of the American truck driver still lingers in the back of my mind, but in recent years the burden of government regulation has proven to be greater than my desire to see what’s over the next hill.
Oppressive regulation in the trucking industry has been around almost as long as the iconic chrome bulldog on the hood of Mack trucks. Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Motor Carrier Act (FMCA) of 1935 during his first term. This gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), an agency originally formed to regulate railroads, the authority to regulate the burgeoning business of moving goods by tractor-trailer. The ICC ultimately decided which companies could haul certain goods, for whom, where, and what they could charge. The ICC even decided if new transportation companies could enter the market by requiring eager upstarts to prove their services were “needed.”
The only exemptions to these laws were in the agricultural sector. FDR and his horde of central planners did not want to cause an increasein food prices during a time when many Americans were already struggling to put food on the table. Nevermind the tacit admission that the FMCA would raise prices on all other goods. This exemption had its own unintended consequences. While independent drivers, commonly referred to as wildcatters in driver slang, were not subject to the price floors previously mentioned, they were limited to hauling only agricultural goods. This limitation caused a significant logistical dilemma for wildcatters delivering in industrialized parts of the country, and is largely responsible for the mythos of the outlaw trucker we all know today from music and film. Whether in an old country song from Red Sovine or Kurt Russell’s character in Big Trouble in Little China, such renegades are almost always hauling agricultural goods.
When diesel was 99 cents a gallon I moved from Georgia
to Idaho, driving a 27′ rental truck. I was nearly killed at
least once a day by stupid people in cars. When I got over
the Rockies I was getting fuel at a truck stop. Had to
walk over to the trucker next to me and shake his hand.
Try it some time.