While watching CNN today, I saw a small video of truckers protesting the high cost of fuel. Today, many independent truck drivers (owner/operators) are pulling off the roads to protest the high cost of fuel. This is an attempt to either have companies pay more to cover these costs or get oil companies to drop fuel prices.

Do you think this strategy would work?

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"Philosophy is a walk on a slippery rock
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Which companies would pay more to cover these costs? For independant truckers, that is.

High fuel costs will be here to stay, even when more transport is switched to alternate energy. Electric or solar power or hydrogen fuel may be a better option for preventing global warming, but I don't know that they are cheaper.

I can see a possible switch back to more mass transport (i.e. trains) as more cost-effective. And that won't help truck drivers much either.

The truckers are also protesting the surcharge companies are allowed to add on for the higher gas prices, which they get from their customers. The thing is: often these companies are adding on really high surcharges while they're not even paying for the gas, and the truckers aren't seeing a penny of it. Not all companies do it, but according to some of the truckers interviewed today by CNN, it happens alot. Some of them are actually losing money when they get paid for a delivery....... crazy..........

I am still puzzled as to what companies the reference is to. The oil companies? The companies employing the truckers? The companies receiving the goods shipped? Who gets to charge a surcharge to whom and why?

The companies that are hiring the independent truckers. I don't understand the whole of it, but just find it insane that truckers are loosing money to make deliveries. It is just wrong.

I think that our fuel prices are mostly manufactored, and they can come down. There just has to be a way to do it. And I don't know that way....

__________________
"Philosophy is a walk on a slippery rock
Religion is a smile on a dog."

I find it wrong too. If you hire somebody to deliver your goods, the cost of the delivery should be fully covered and that includes what the truckers must pay for fuel. What right do the companies have to take money from people whose services they are purchasing? Sounds real fishy to me.


There is some of that to be sure, but underneath it all is peak oil and climate change and both of those will keep driving prices up. We wouldn't even be developing the Alberta tar sands if oil prices were not going up. And if the government were not subsidizing the whole project. It is not profitable to take separate the oil from the sand until the price will sustain the cost of production.

For the most part, North Americans have enjoyed low oil prices by underpaying third-world producers and subsidizing domestic producers. Such practices mask the true cost of fossil fuels.

Part of this is market norms. Large trucking firms can purchase their fuel wholesale, and this keeps their cost down. In order for independent truckers to be competitive, they match or undercut the cost of the trucking firms. In this day of higher fuel costs, it means a loss for the independents. It isn't right and it isn't fair, something has to give.

__________________
"Philosophy is a walk on a slippery rock
Religion is a smile on a dog."