THANK YOU ROADKING.COM!

MILE MARKER # 18

Coming off my first week back from a family Phoenix vacation, did I know, it would be a promising one. Or, what I like to call them "The Grizwald Family Vacations". Luckily, the only thing that was missing was my brother-in-law (AKA Cousin Eddy). I feel your pain Clark! It didn't start out promising coming back from middle 80's temps to a March snowstorm. Then Monday, my garage door cable broke and set me back $110.00. As the week progressed, things got a little better. To start with, I received a nice comment from a guy in New England about this blog site. He has been searching the web on how to get started in trucking for some time, and got overwhelmed and confused. He commented on how I presented a start up trucking career, and said that he got most of his information all on Road2Trucking.com. It was nice to hear, because that was my intent and goal to provide understandable information without being too opinionated.

Thursday:

I was eating lunch and a man got out of his pick-up and approached my rig. He introduced himself, a layed off Union carpenter, and began asking me questions about getting started in trucking. I shared some brief information, but I wrote on a piece of paper Road2Trucking.com and gave it to him and said "This is how you get started". He politely thanked me for my time and was on his way to a computer. That's what this is all about, recruiting truck drivers one at a time. That's the goal here.

Today:

Today was the day the topped the week! I was in my 4-wheeler on the way to my rig, and decided to stop at the TA truck stop for some trucking literature. I quickly grabbed the March/April issue of RoadKing, and ventured off to work. While eating my Subway melt, I started to read my RoadKing magazine and came across an article that really interested me. It was called "Beyond the CB - Drivers Creative Communication On The Web". I read that article thoroughly, and then grabbed a pen to write down the six featured trucker websites and blogs. I wanted to check them out when I got home. I wrote down the first five and the realized that the sixth one was Road2Trucking.com. That was mine! I had no clue! I had a weird feeling. I thought, just to reap the rewards of more traffic to this site was huge. I would like to take the time to thank each and everyone of you that visited this blog, and ROADKING for acknowledging my writings. Writing is my therapy. That's http://roadking.com/ What a way to end my bleak starting week! Thanks again and drive safe!

PARK EM IF YOU GOT EM

MILE MARKER # 17


With the slow economy and rising diesel prices, trucking is becoming a tricky business. As I was driving my truck today, I seen a tractor /trailer parked on the side of the roadway with a sign stuck in the ground in front of it. It read "I used all of my profit to make this sign - PARK EM!" I guess I didn't really think about the fuel prices that much, being that I am a company driver. When I read this sign and seen another parked truck, it got me thinking for the next two hours that something needs to be done! It is time to adjust the load rates for the love of God! Enough is enough! I just don't think that is going to happen anytime soon until the giant companies quit hauling freight at 1980 rates. Then I was thinking, what could the owner-operators do? Unfortunately, I couldn't think of anything that would work now days. It needed to be done years ago. I believe if the owner-operators got together and shut down (some don't have a choice), those loads would be consumed by the big outfits that haul for a crap rate. The big guys are not going to shut down. It's a pretty sad situation, but the O/O's might eliminate themselves in today's world.?.? Some of the big outfits have set contractual diesel pricing. Some others add a fuel surcharge, which is small percentage of the shipping cost. The owner/operators do not have that kind of luxury to off set the surging diesel prices. They have to deal with the prices at every fuel stop, in return, making a less profit. The trucking world is changing in a big way. On the LTL side you have UPS buying Overnight and Yellow Transportation buying Roadway and Holland. On the trailer load side the same thing is happening. They are buying up all of the small guys to make a big company to be competitive with the other big outfits. When this is all said and done, shippers are going to end up with a few big companies to haul their freight. The diesel prices and cheap freight are just added problems that need to be addressed, along with the housing foreclosures, job pay, and credit card debt. We just can't keep up anymore! Listen to the news, everybody is ready to snap! But don't worry, your rebate check will be here in May. That will solve everything!