An atrocity against organized labor was committed on Labor Day

[jmowreader]

Remember seeing these trucks, grandchild?

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=

Know why you haven't seen one in a long time? Well, sit on my knee and I'll tell you.

Consolidated Freightways (CF) was founded in 1929 as Consolidated Truck Lines. Over the next ten years they grew into the biggest trucking company in America. During their growth they found that no truck maker could build the truck they needed for their business, so they changed their name to Consolidated Freightways in 1939 and opened their own truck manufacturing plant in Portland, Ore. The trucks they made were called "Freightliners" and that company, now owned by Daimler, is still in business.

CF, of course, was organized by the Teamsters Union under the National Master Freight Agreement.

In 1983, during Reagan's reign of terror, CF's parent company formed a non-union subsidiary called Con-way. Over the next few years, the parent company of both lines (it was called CNF) did two things that killed CF: they gradually moved all the profitable routes, or "lanes," from CF to Con-way, and they saddled CF with Con-way's debt.

Then the inevitable happened: all drivers were instructed to join in a conference call on Labor Day 2002, in which they heard this message from CNF's CEO: "Thank you for dialing in. I have some sad news. Your employment is terminated immediately."

This had two effects on the economy. The most obvious is the seven thousand truck drivers, plus mechanics, dispatchers, freight brokers, yard hostlers and all the other people you need to run a trucking company this big, who were so unceremoniously fired. The economy was still in the crapper a year after 9/11, and freight volumes were down. The more significant one was the effect on every other company in America: CF was the third-largest trucking company in the US. Removing seven thousand rigs from the nation's transportation infrastructure was one of the reasons the economy has taken so long to truly rebound. (Another impact was this action's effect on the used-truck market. These guys dumped seven thousand usable tractors and probably 15,000 usable trailers into the resale market, which was already down because people weren't buying trucks after 9/11. As with anything else, the price of a used truck is determined in part by scarcity - the more trucks available for sale, the cheaper they get.)

And now you know.

http://socialistworker.org/2002-2/421/421_12_CF.shtml

[Lugnut]

1. K&R! n/t

[leftstreet]

2. DURec NMFA repped 500,000+ in the 70s

Now less than 75k

[hfojvt]

3. interesting

but I thought truck drivers were still in demand, and still made decent money.

[jmowreader]

4. Part of what you say is true

There is plenty of demand for truckers...but pay isn't nearly as good as they claim it to be. The "you can make $40,000 your first year" thing they sell trucking school with is pretty much bullshit.

How to figure what you make: A driver can, pretty consistently, run 125,000 miles per year if he's got a halfway decent dispatcher. Your first year, you will probably make 25 cents per mile. That comes to $31,250 if you get the 125,000 miles.

Right now you're thinking, "$31,250 per year is not bad money." No, it's not if you've got a kitchen and can cook everything from scratch. Truckers don't have that luxury; you are going to eat out a LOT because, unless you do shit like heating up soup on top of your engine while you're showering, you have no way to cook. And you almost certainly don't have a way to store fresh foods - the refrigerators they sell in truck stops will run your battery down in four hours.