U.S. TRUCKERS JOBS ON CHOPPING BLOCKS

 By Frosty Wooldridge
September 6, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

Via President Bush and Congress’ “Mexican Truck Pilot” program, American trucking will change: for the worse.

Thousands of Mexican drivers without formal driving standards, without drug testing and without legal passports to identify them to us—shortly will invade America’s freeways.

They lack the ability to write and read in English, jeopardizing safety checks and logbook protocol. To top it off, they lack experience driving in snow and major metropolitan gridlock traffic.

As a former United Van Lines truck trainer and safety officer, I charge President Bush and Congress for contempt of American truckers and American jobs. Of all the lowball frauds Bush perpetrated on American workers—this one takes the cake. Soon, he’ll be telling us that these Mexican drivers “do the jobs that American truckers won’t do.”

Bush won’t reveal how many American lives will be sacrificed as collateral damage on our nation’s highways. How do I know that many American families will be ordering grave markers for their loved ones? Because they will be killed by Mexican truck drivers!

What’s it like driving a big rig? How can a driver keep all 18 wheels rolling for hundreds of miles without a mishap? What does it mean to load and unload thousands of pounds? What’s the difference between an independent versus a company driver?

America moves by trucks. Everything in every household across America arrived by truck. American drivers loaded and unloaded everything from your groceries to your dry goods. Along America’s highways, you see portable parking lots (car haulers), hog haulers, steer haulers, bed bug haulers (furniture), and hazardous material drivers. Twenty four hours a day, the big rigs roll along ribbons of concrete that knit America into a functioning civilization.

How do I know? My math and science teaching job paid meager wages in the early 70s. Try $5,400.00 a year! To supplement this poverty income, I earned a Commercial Driver’s License while trucking with United Van Lines for 24 summers and three solid years in Denver, Colorado. I packed 20,000 pounds of furniture on Monday and Tuesday, drove my brains out—and delivered on Thursday and Friday. If I didn’t find a return load, I rolled my rig back to home base on Saturday and Sunday to load again on Monday. I worked more than 70 hours a week like a beast for a good paycheck. I’ve driven for Single Source Paving and Consolidated Freight. I know trucking and truckers. Drivers must be highly qualified, alert, clear minded and 100 percent perfect 100 percent of the time.

Bush signed the death warrants for untold American citizens with his pilot program. Why? As a teacher, I know that the average Mexican truck driver left school by 6th grade. That means he cognitively thinks like a 6th grader. Would you allow your 6th grade child to drive a 60,000 pound, 65 foot long tractor-trailer? How would he do at rush hour in Houston, Chicago or LA? Would he possess good judgment in a snow storm? Take a guess!

Denver experiences van loads of illegals transported through the mountains every winter in four wheelers with many crashes and subsequent deaths. Can you imagine what 60,000 pounds of tractor trailer does when it loses control on a slick highway because the driver didn’t possess the brains or common sense to slow down or shut down his rig?

Nonetheless, Bush invites Mexican workers into our country who work under the “mordida” known as the “bite or bribe”. It rules in their home country. Thus, drug cartels will enjoy easy access for their drug distribution in false floors. People smugglers will enjoy easy transport for more illegal aliens. Terrorists will offer a bribe to transport them to any city in the USA—along with hauling their explosives!

As Mexican drivers spread across the USA, they will grab loads from independent truckers by charging less per mile. They’ll undercut our drivers, thus slamming them into unemployment lines. Companies will make more money for their executives, while we’ll pay unemployment checks for our out-of-work truckers.

After that, you’ll see black market loads proliferating. In time, ‘mordida’ will become standard operating procedure not only at our weigh stations and ports of entry but on bills of lading and other documents.

As more truckers lose their jobs, you’ll see violence occur at truck stops as out-of-work truckers vandalize Mexican rigs and beat the hell out of Mexican drivers. This won’t be pretty.

Our leaders prove themselves fools or idiots, or both. When I call Bush to account for his actions, make no mistake, I would call any president or congressional representative onto the carpet for such blatant, irresponsible actions.

Bush connived us into the Iraq War. Congress screwed one million Americans out of their jobs in this country by insourcing H-1B and H-2B visas from third world countries. Congress destroyed our manufacturing base by allowing outsourced jobs to China without a veto from Bush. This truck pilot program yields yet another form of insourcing jobs from Mexico that will supplant American jobs.

Today’s American truckers will become yesterday’s drywallers, roofers, construction workers, fast food workers, painters and landscape workers: unemployed! If not unemployed, they’ll be working at wages that make them not much more than slaves.

If you think Bush and Congress wage a war on terror with the humiliation in Iraq, wait till you see their war on American truck drivers in our own country!