I am still sitting at the truck stop in NY waiting for them to find me a load. Yesterday's major snowstorm pretty well closed down a lot of shipping, especially for the type of stuff I haul. I spent the day sitting and watching it snow. The truck stop filled up very early in the day as more and more truckers found the roads too dangerous to travel. One truck went off the road and rolled over about 5 miles from here. I never did hear if the driver was ok.

Today it's cold but the sun is shining, the roads are cleared, and yet I sit and wait for the end of my stay here. Despite the slight improvement I've seen in the past few weeks, business is still very slow. Despite the fact that numerous trucking companies and independents have gone belly up, and there are literally thousands fewer trucks on the road,  the competition for what freight is available is quite fierce as everyone struggles to remain in business just one more week.

I am waiting for the end of the company for whom I work. I sincerely hope that we can struggle through this down turn, but every day is looking worse and worse for us. I've tried to do my part by accepting any load they want to give me including those that I would have refused a year ago. Right now any load is better than no load. But unless something breaks for us soon I feel that the end is near for the company. As they have already cut much of the office staff back to 20 hours per week I feel it's only a matter of time before they are forced to start parking trucks and laying off drivers.

I have a lot of senority with the company, but even that may not be enough to save my job if things get too bad, There is also the possibility that I may have to move on if my income continues to dwindle away. The fly in the ointment there is that many, many trucking companies currently have hiring freezes or are laying off drivers so finding another job at this point in time may not be as easy as it normally is in this business.

Traditionally, finding a trucking job is a matter of picking an outfit and making a phone call. Most trucking companies just check your record and, if it's good (as mine is), they hire you over the phone. For someone with my experience finding a driving job should be just as simple as that. But now, at this point in time, I suspect it would not be so. There are thousands of unemployed truck drivers out there right now all scrambling to find a new job.

In the past year more than 1,000 trucking companies have failed. This hasn't happened in over 30 years, and is one of the surest signs of a severe recession which, while I wait for it to end, I fear is only just getting going. The high unemployment and skyrocketing inflation is yet to come. I feel that it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I remember the 70s quite clearly and this feels much as that did. I really don't expect the wasteful, hairbrained ideas of professional politicans to avert what is to come.

Normally trucking is almost recession-proof as even in slow business times goods still need to move. The combination of slow economy and high fuel costs last year hit the industry hard. Fuel has come down quite a bit now but are still far higher than in the past while freight rates are depressed.  I wait for the end of this imbalance but it isn't even on the horizon at the moment.

I feel that the nation, and the world, will survive this current situation, but I think it's the end of life as we have known it for the past 20 years or so, and coming out the other end it will be a different world. Banks, governments, and businesses all over the world will be operating much differently than they have been, or at least that's my expectation. Budgets will have to be tightened and wasteful programs halted, otherwise those governments and businesses will surely fail in the new world to come.

The one thing that I doubt will really change is the politics, although I'd love to see an end to all of the partisanship and the time wasted because of it.

Ah well, life has been hard for the poor and the working class (often one in the same) for 10,000 years and I really don't expect it to change tomorrow. Just some random ramblings as I await the end of my sitting around not maiing any money. Guess I'll just wander into the truck stop and spend some of what money I have left on an over-priced, low quality meal.