BRANFORD, CONN -- At 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night -- or just about anytime -- there are 75 giant, exhaust belching monsters parked at the TravelCenters of America truck stop off Interstate 95's Exit 56.
Many have their engines running and truckers inside sleeping or watching TV; cooking or talking on unlimited cell phone plans; playing video games or working on laptops to set up the next load.
The Branford TA has been in the news because of the slaying of an itinerant moving industry laborer found dead in a truck on April 17. But beyond that, it is "the office" for thousands of truckers from across the country.
As the nation slogs its way through a recession, truckers find themselves spending more time parked at the TA -- as well as at Milford's Pilot and Secondi Brothers truck stops and hundreds of others -- and less time making money on the road.
On Wednesday, there were trucks at the TA with license plates from at least 32 states and two Canadian provinces.
On the day the body of Dale Lynn Anderson of Redlands, Calif., was discovered, a moving truck from a Tacoma, Wash., had been waiting at the TA for 15 days for a job to take its Florida-based crew home. The driver, who ate cold sausages out of a can, said money had run low and the crew had used up about half a tank of fuel -- at $900 a tank -- keeping warm at night while they waited.
Manufacturing has slowed. Fewer people and fewer goods are moving. That means more trucks than ever are parked for longer periods of time between loads.
Pinched on all sides, the truckers have to contend with higher diesel and insurance prices, increasing tolls, higher living expenses and more challenges than ever at a time when the peraEUR"mile price shippers are willing to pay is often lower than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
"It's bad," said Bob Cota, a Nashville trucker who has driven since 1950 and said, "I made more back then per mile.
"In 1960, I was making $1.10 to $1.20 per mile -- and fuel was 50 cents a gallon!" said Cota, who stood in TA's lot talking to a Florida trucker on Thursday while his wife, and partner, Karla, worked the Internet on a laptop inside the truck to try to match them up with a load to pay their way home.
Some of the companies wanted them to transport a load for 60 cents or 70 cents a mile.
"I'm not going to run for 60 or 70 cents a mile," Bob Cota said. "It costs me 40 cents a mile just for fuel. I'll take it empty before I haul at 70 cents a mile!"
WATCHING EVERY CENT
Even finding a parking space is a challenge.
Rob Doden, a Rockport, Mass. trucker who was parked at the TA Wednesday night, only gets home to his wife and four kids about three days a month. He said that since the economy has slowed, "there's no parking in the Northeast -- so as soon as you find a place, you take it," even if it's a couple of states away.
Five years ago, truckers made "enough to make a living," he said. "Now, you borrow against next week," he said.
"It's a horrible situation," said David Owens, president of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, based in Hendersonville, Tenn. "Probably the worst thing that can happen to a truck other than an accident is to be stuck away from home for a day, two days or however long without producing any revenue. It's just the worst thing that can happen -- and unfortunately, when freight gets like this and the price per mile gets like this," it's common.
"Unfortunately, it's a reflection of a lot of the difficulties we face as a country," said Owens, whose association works with small, independent, long-haul truckers to help them lower expenses. "Up where you are, there's a tremendous imbalance of consumers versus manufacturers," he said. "There's a whole lot of things being shipped up there and not a heck of a lot coming out.
"Even if you got $1.80 to get up there and you can't move the truck out -- and you've got to move it 200-300 miles away just to get a load -- it's a problem," Owens said.
Clayton Blase, a spokesman for the American Trucking Association in Arlington, VA, said that right now, "total freight is down 15-20 percent from 2005 because of the recession, and house moves are down more than that.
"So (truckers) can expect to see longer layovers," he said.
Those troubles have also affected companies that cater to truckers, including TravelCenters of America.
During the last three months of 2008, "the significant slowing of the U.S. economy" caused TA to experience "a 14.0 percent decline in fuel volumes for the 2008 fourth quarter as compared to the 2007 fourth quarter," the company wrote in a recent press release posted on its Web site. "For the year ended Dec. 31, 2008 ... TA experienced a 15.0 percent decline in fuel volumes as compared to the year ended Dec. 31, 2007."
BIDING THEIR TIME
Doden, who has made his living on the road for five years, was delivering a load of goods to Boston on Thursday. But the way it works in trucking is that "most of us have appointments," and the receivers won't let them in early, he said. So he expected to be parked until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Thursday before leaving for Boston.
"If I show up at 10 o'clock tonight, they're going to kick my ass out of there," said Doden.
What does he do to pass the time?
"Play video games in your truck, watch TV, stuff yourself with (junk) food," he said.
Darrel Jacox, a mover from Scotts Bluff, Neb., had been stuck at the Branford TA for five days. He expected to be there for at least four more days last week while he waited for a Missouri Mayflower agent to hook him up with a load home, and also while his brother, Lloyd, flew home for the funeral of his 5-month-old granddaughter.
That left Darrell Jacox to pass the time with his two Australian cattle dogs, Shadow, 4, and Bandit, 3, who he was playing with on a thin strip of lawn.
"I like seeing the country," Jacox said. But "this has been a bad year. The way the economy has been is the worst I've ever seen."
Truckers at the Branford TA -- one of 233 truck stops that TA, the largest truck stop operator in the country, operates -- have it better than most. There's a Super Stop & Shop steps away off Leetes Island Road. There also is a nearby Friendly's.
Both of those facts are fortunate, since the TA's prices generally are more like those of a convenience store than a grocery store. TA, which became a publicly-held company in 2007, also eliminated its full service restaurant in a renovation a year earlier, replacing it with a Popeye's Chicken, a Subway sandwich shop and a Starbucks.
Connecticut's other two TA truck stops, off Interstate 84 in Southington and off I-84 in Willington, are both significantly larger than the Branford location and have fast-food and full-service restaurants. All three also offer truck repair facilities, emergency road service, pay showers, TV and video game rooms and a small, coin-operated laundromat.
Doden was one of several truckers who expressed concerns about safety and security at truck stops, including the TA, although several also said they didn't think security would have made a difference in the case of Anderson. He was found dead on the morning of April 17 by a trucker who had let him sleep in the back of the truck days earlier and had thought he had left at least a day earlier.
While some truckers see themselves as a brotherhood, Doden said that's not his experience. "The drivers don't look out for each other. They're scared," he said. "There should be" better security in truck stops, "but there won't be" because of the money involved, he said. Doden wasn't sure how much longer he might drive. "I've got to figure out what I want to do when I grow up," he joked. But he said he didn't think the money truckers make was worth the personal price they pay. "Most of these guys are divorced -- six times over," he said. "I still have a wife who likes me and four kids," aged 18, 15, 11 and 5.
HUSBANDS AND WIVES
But not all truckers leave their spouses behind.
Tom Till of Augusta, Ga., who has driven since 1973 with a 14-year break at one point to raise two daughters, has "Tom" painted on the driver's side of his big red, white and blue cab and "Jennifer" painted on the passenger side. For the past few years, his wife of 32 years, a former nurse, has been beside him just about 24 hours a day.
"I do the paperwork and the general duties," which include cooking and cleaning, said Jennifer Till. She was stopped with her husband on Thursday afternoon and expected to be there until sometime Friday.
"We have to be pretty good friends," said Tom Till, who estimated that as many as 20 percent of the trucks on the road may be husband-and-wife teams. He also said there is an increasing number of solo female truckers. Despite the economic challenges, they both like what they do.
"It's not boring," said Tom Till, who owns his truck, can take a vacation when he wants and often hauls equipment for traveling trade shows. "You're always going to see something. I get to see the country." They even get to visit their two daughters in Georgia and Colorado Springs, Colo.
But it's been tough lately.
"Years ago, you could drive and make a living," said Tom Till, whose truck reads, "POWMIA -- Bring 'em home ... or send me back" on its grill. "Now, if you want to drive and own your equipment, you've got to be a businessman."
Beverly Harris, who lives on Florida's Gulf Coast, has been part of a team with her husband, Ron, for 11 years. They're hauling staging equipment for World Wrestling Entertainment and last week were getting ready to head to Providence for a show on Saturday.
The Harris' cab also is one of the few on the road with a full living quarters behind it -- including a shower, a TV, a microwave/ convection oven, an electric stove and most other comforts of home. She used to like trucking, but not so much anymore.
"It's becoming a trial," Harris said. "The government's in your pocket all the time. Everything's gone up except the pay. They keep cutting that."
But "this stuff just gets in your blood," she said. "There's not a lot to do. You make more money in this business than you do ... working in a grocery store or flipping hamburgers."
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