In considering how I would address the topic of "Then and Now from The Trucker's Perspective," I decided that it would be important to first separate by category those who might fit into the definition of truckers.

During the period between 1962 and 1975 when I earned a living driving over-the-road, I had no difficulty at all determining the definition of trucker. It was very clearly people like me who drove those trucks and who were in all practical respects the vital link in the chain that kept the nation's commerce moving and growing.

In 1973 when the industry and, in fact, the entire country was hit by the devastating effects of the Arab Oil Embargo and I became involved in the subsequent truck shutdowns and the early stages of the formation of OOIDA, I discovered that others had a much broader definition of who truckers were. State and federal government agency representatives as well as members of Congress and their staffs viewed as truckers anyone connected with the trucking industry including trucking company management and their trade association representatives.

While it didn't sit very well with us at the time, as we visited the various regulatory agencies and congressional offices attempting to gain solutions to the problems, to be told that "truckers" in the form ATA and motor carrier executives had just stopped by with a different view of what the solutions should be. I suppose from their perspective, it was an honest mistake. After all, those people didn't even know what an owner-operator was and they thought independent truckers were a bunch of gypsy vagabonds.

In truth, back in those days many in motor carrier management were truckers who had started as drivers and worked to build their own companies or to move up through the ranks. That's sometimes still the case today, although with most of the large companies and their associations, their executives are chosen or come from outside the industry and even many of those who started out as truckers seem to lose touch with the reality of what it's like to be a trucker.

There's another category that I should mention as well and I guess that would be those folks that are just passing through. They were looking for a job or a career change and the secret somehow got out that you could really make big money driving a truck, and you don't have to work very hard to do it. For those folks, it usually doesn't take very long to discover that trucking just isn't their cup of tea.

Then there's the real truckers. There's a guy that often participates on one of the internet owner-operator forums that I think says it best. He always closes his comments with the statement, "Trucking, the hardest job you will ever love." I suspect many of you here today fit into this category and this is the category of trucker I will address my comments to. Defining this category is considerably more complicated and an accurate definition is probably beyond my qualifications anyway.

I can talk about some of the symptoms, though, because I know many real truckers and I would like to think that I am one myself. My symptoms are that even after 27 years, I still miss driving over-the-road. Giving up my truck to work full time for the Association was without a doubt the most traumatic experience of my life. And, especially during the early years of the Association, I thought many times about giving it up and going back out.

Other symptoms are that even when you're not trucking, you're either talking about it or thinking about it. You could talk for a full day and never break the surface of the stories (all true, of course) about the experiences you've had. Whenever someone else comes up with a story, you can immediately think of at least two that will top theirs. People that don't know trucking seem boring and are hard to relate to. They seem to have led very sheltered, uneventful lives.

If you really have a serious case, like some I know, you might spend 40 or 50 years driving those damn things then turn one into a camper and spend your retirement years driving around the country seeing the sights. If that still doesn't satisfy the urge, you can buy an old truck and restore it to original condition and maybe even load one up on a trailer and enter some pulling contests.

I guess the fact is that for real truckers -- trucking isn't a job, it's a way of life. Non-truckers think of days and weeks on the road as tedious monotony. Real truckers think of this as their natural world with something new and interesting over every hill and at the end of every trip. When they are on the road, they can't wait to get back home and when they are home, they can't wait to get back on the road.

Non-truckers wonder why anyone would put up with working 16 hour days and 90 or 100 hour weeks; spend days, weeks and sometimes even months away from home; and, put up with aggravations from traffic, shippers, receivers, overly aggressive cops and untold other things. Real truckers see this as their job, their hobby, their pastime and their challenge to overcome. They can't imagine getting bogged down in some 9 to 5 job going nowhere but back and forth to the same work site and job everyday. Bottom line is if you are in fact a real trucker you never really get over it. It's incurable.

While there have been many changes over the decades, these basic realities of a trucker's life are the same now as they were then and they aren't likely to change significantly in the foreseeable future. The fact is that without the real truckers who have been and are willing to dedicate themselves to this work, this world would be a very different place and most of the things that people take for granted in their everyday lives wouldn't be available or perhaps wouldn't even exist.

So what are the differences between then and now from a trucker's perspective. I know there are many here that can go back considerably farther than I can with personal hands-on experience and my hands-on experience changed to a very different perspective in 1975 when I took on (or was drafted into taking on) the huge responsibility of representing the interests of professional truckers before the government and other industry interests. While that has caused somewhat of a disconnect from the hands-on world, it has given me the advantage or opportunity to view a much larger picture that includes an intimate perspective on the legislative and regulatory processes that impact truckers' daily lives.

These changes, of course, can be either good or bad for truckers. They can occur without the knowledge of those who don't make the extra effort to keep themselves informed and they can have profound effects that can last far into the future.

I am sure many of you remember the days when trucks were required to have a separate license plate and a couple of other permits for almost every state they traveled through. Each state, of course, wanted to be sure they got their piece of the action in taxes and fees. There wasn't much concern on the part of state bureaucrats that it actually cost the industry as much or more to comply with some of these requirements than the expense of the fees and taxes themselves.

Many truckers now aren't even aware of the jumbled confusing mess that had to be complied with back in those days. All the license plates tags and permit stickers that had to be hung on the truck or the huge permit book that had to be carried in the truck with as many as 2 or 3 permits for each state. Probably even very few who faced those ridiculous requirements are aware of how difficult it was or how much time and work went into changing that system.

We first had to convince the federal government to get involved. We then had to get working groups from several different agencies (each administering their own separate requirement) from every state. We then had to convince them of the outrageous burden these combined requirements had on the industry, and then develop more reasonable alternatives. This was a long, time consuming, frustrating process that spanned many years but it was finally accomplished and those systems are now only a distant memory.

Truck size and weight requirements are another major area of change and few are likely to recall that there was a time when each state was allowed to set its own truck size and weight limits. Truckers were faced with the dilemma of either operating at the lowest limit for the states they would be traveling through or going out of their way to avoid the weigh stations and enforcement then paying the fines when they were caught. Of course, some of you might recall that in those days the penalties might only be a box or two of whatever you were hauling.

Changing that system was also a major battle that was finally resolved when the federal government was convinced to mandate uniform truck size and weight limits. We are unfortunately now beginning to hear the call from some industry representatives under the misguided impression that you can make more money hauling bigger loads that size and weight requirements should be returned to the jurisdiction of the states. They are making this plea because they have not been able to convince the federal government to allow the increases and feel they can make more progress on a state-by-state basis. Uniformed? Short memory? Or just stupidity?

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the presence here today of a very special group of people. OOIDA's current Board of Directors, as well as one of our past board members. All of our past efforts as well as what we will be able to accomplish in the future, are due in large part to the dedication and commitment of these and many others who are not here with us today who have volunteered their time and energies over the past three decades to go the extra mile to stand up and fight for the rights and interests of all professional truckers. Their commitment has had a tremendous influence on the current environment for professional truckers.

That influence, although often subtle, in barely noticeable stages and often more significant for the initiatives that were blocked and didn't happened than for those more noticeable changes that we would all like to see occur, has none the less caused a very profound difference in the environment we do have as opposed to what we would be seeing without their efforts. Because of that ongoing commitment, I am totally confident that the strong voice they have and are continuing to build to speak on behalf of professional truckers will have an even more profound effect on the future environment that professional truckers will work under.

One of the most noticeable things that hasn't changed over the years is the hours-of-service regulations. First developed and implemented in the mid-1930s at a time when the fantastic highway system and sophisticated trucks we now have couldn't even have been imagined, those same regulations with only very slight modification are still in place today. They have become an aberration in today's trucking environment.

It is widely believed, and I am one of those believers, that strict compliance with these outdated requirements can actually cause more of a safety concern than they correct. Drivers are essentially forced into an artificial 18-hour daily cycle rather than a 24-hour cycle that the rest of society operates on. This causes them to be required to rest when they are not tired and to work when their body is telling them they should be sleeping.

It appears that we are very close to finally seeing some changes to these regulations. The changes, however, are coming at a time when non-truckers will have a great deal of influence over what those changes will be and this causes us a great deal of concern. Motor carrier management for the most part would like to be able to get more hours out of truck drivers. Government and various so-called safety groups would like to limit working time to eight hours a day and truckers, of course, would like to get the government out of the business of telling them when they must go to sleep. They would like the flexibility to be able to sleep when they are tired and work when they are rested which is how it should be.

Trucking equipment, as I mentioned, has become much more sophisticated over the years but here too, some important components have substantially lagged behind the technological ability to make improvements. The reason, of course, is because improvements are too often driven by economics rather than practical need. Truck brakes are a good example.

I recently gave a speech before the International Truck and Bus Safety Research and Policy Symposium in Knoxville, Tennessee. I open my comments with a quote from an article in Traffic World magazine.

A five-day road check at U.S. Highway #1 in Woodbridge, VA found that nearly 20 percent of the trucks inspected were in such bad shape they had to be taken off the road.

I went on to mention that the most alarming part of the story was that the majority of the vehicles were placed out-of-service for defective brakes. And that this was a truly shocking statistic that should cause a great deal of concern and spur strong efforts to correct this dangerous problem.

I then mentioned that in 1962 when that story was actually printed, I was only 23 years old and just starting my career as a truck driver. I then made the point that the really shocking reality is that in the forty years since that story and despite the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in commercial vehicle enforcement, today's statistics for brake out-of-service violations are essentially unchanged. I asked would it not have been a much wiser investment of resources to develop improved braking systems that were less prone to defects and maintenance problems.

This really brings us to the most significant change that today's truckers are faced with in comparison to a few decades past. That is the level of commercial vehicle enforcement truckers encounter in traveling the highways. Hundreds of millions of dollars are now being invested every year in inspection and enforcement activities focused exclusively against truckers. That old song that as part of its lyrics said "the ICC Is checkin' on down the line" referred to a reality at that time but compared to the army of specialized enforcement personnel that truckers are faced with today, that was a mere drop in the bucket. The simple and limited number of weight stations that truckers used to encounter have today become multi-million dollar highly sophisticated, well maintained weighing and inspection stations at every state line in the nation. Roving patrols of specially trained officers roam the highways with the sole purpose of targeting truckers for inspection and enforcement.

I made the point in my speech at the Safety Symposium that there was a definite downside to this overwhelming focus of enforcement activity. That is the negative impact it has on good, hardworking professional drivers who find themselves targeted for special enforcement as though they were criminals or flagrant lawbreakers. The decision of many professional truckers to simply leave the business is having a negative impact on highway safety because they are being replaced by inexperienced, untrained drivers in an atmosphere of lower than acceptable compensation and reduced hiring standards.

If this is allowed to continue, the driver work force of tomorrow will be far different than the work force of the past and present. These enforcement activities are partially a result of lobbying activities of the safety groups I mentioned previously. But also, and unfortunately, a result of the misguided efforts of some within our own industry who through their trade association have developed the philosophy that "safety is good business" and the most visible way they can demonstrate that they are good, safety-minded citizens is to demand more enforcement against drivers out on the road.

Mandatory drug and alcohol testing is another significant requirement confronted by today's truckers that truckers in the past did not experience. This requirement was without a doubt the greatest intrusion into the rights and freedoms of professional truckers ever to be perpetrated. Truckers are forced to go through the degrading and humiliating process of random drug testing on a constant basis and often at multiple times during the year without probable cause in order to prove they are not drug users. Besides being an affront to human dignity, this is also a very costly process and those costs are often born one way or another by truckers themselves.

Another disturbing difference that I hear mentioned frequently by many long-time professional truckers is that there seems to be much less of an atmosphere of comradeship among truckers than there used to be. I'm sure at least to some extent this is true. There are many factors that have likely influenced this change. There are also other factors that may make this change seem greater than it really is. For one thing, the numbers in that category I mentioned previously of those drivers (or as some would say "steering wheel holders") just passing through, are far greater than they have been in the past due to economic conditions in the industry and hiring practices of some motor carriers. These folks usually aren't around long enough to develop any kind of feeling either for the industry or for their fellow drivers and the actions of some do damage to the reputations of everyone.

One factor that makes it seem worse than it really is is the CB radio and the opportunity for instant communication. Unfortunately, while this is a great communication tool, it also provides a forum that allows the anonymous expression of thought and opinions from some folks who we would otherwise choose to ignore. With just a few of these idiots dominating the airwaves, it's easy to gain the impression that their numbers are far greater than they really are.

I guess I probably haven't covered the then and now subject very thoroughly for you. But that's because I really don't see much difference in the basics from a trucker's perspective. There have been many changes over the years in equipment, in highways and the driving environment and in the makeup of the industry. Many of the previous well-known industry names have disappeared to be replaced with new names and sometimes less desirable business practices. The industry is, of course, now deregulated and predatory competition has replaced an environment of routes, services and rates that were once tightly controlled by regulation and in many respects this has been very damaging to the industry.

From the real trucker's perspective though, things haven't really changed that much. It's a hard life. It's work that few can do well and it takes a special breed to grow to love it. As the man said, "Trucking - the hardest job you will ever love."

Thank you.