On April 1, in a wave of defiance, truck drivers began taking the strongest form of action they can take: inaction. Faced with $4-per-gallon diesel fuel, they slowed down, shut down and started honking.
Outside of Chicago, they slowed and drove three abreast, blocking traffic and taking arrests. They jammed into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; they slowed down the Port of Tampa, where fifty rigs sat idle in protest. Near Buffalo, one driver told the press he was taking the week off “to pray for the economy.”
The truckers who organized the protests — by CB radio and Internet — have a specific goal: reducing the price of diesel fuel. They are owner-operators, meaning they are also businesspeople, and they can’t break even with current fuel costs. They want the government to release its fuel reserves. They want an investigation into oil company profits and government subsidies of the oil companies.
70 percent of the nation’s goods travel by truck.
“We can no longer haul their stuff for what they’re paying,” said David Santiago, 35, a trucker for the past 17 years.
The actions of the first week in April were just the beginning. There’s talk of a protest in Indiana on April 18, another in New York City, and a giant convergence of trucks on DC on April 28.
