Stopped at a truck stop to deal with, um the usual emergency. Stayed a few minutes to call my wife. There was a guy sitting at a table next to the only working phone. (I believe I've mentioned what cell-phone ubiquity has done to pay-phone ubiquity).
He congratulated me on having a load. Nothing new there. Sitting waiting for somewhere to go wasn't that uncommon before the present unpleasantness. So I prepared to offer the necessary sympathy while waiting for the missus to pick up.
As it happened, his story was a bit more involved.
A fair number of owner-operators jump though the legal hoops that allow them to act as their own freight brokers. Some of them then end up buying extra trucks and hiring people to drive them. Basically create a two- or three- or however-many-truck fleet. My new acquaintance had been hired by such an entrepreneur.
About three days ago he'd been at a dock, waiting to be loaded, when someone knocked on the door. With papers.
Seems his employer's truck and trailer were being repossessed.
He'd been sleepng in the TV lounge here for two nights now, and was looking forward to one more. Come tomorrow, a friend is suppoed to be passing through, and will give him a ride home. He is meditating on what he'll do to the guy he was working for.
I read the other day that about 450 trucking companies have gone out of business in the past year. Experts said that wasn't going to help the freight shortage much, because those 450 companies hauled less than 1 percent of the freight in the country. Apparently a lot of them were sort of like the principals in this little drama.
It's the people on the margins that take the first hits, in war or recession or anything else.
There are advantages to being a corporate drone, I guess.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment