A short time back, we received a call from a trucker about a problem on the Indiana Toll Road.

The trucker paid $23 to run the length of the road, but received a receipt for just over $6.

One of the truckers listening had a thought: Is this an IRS problem?

I think it might be.

In any business I’ve been associated with, that receipt would in fact represent what went into the computer – and the books – of the private company operating that highway.

Any time what you earn and what you report are different – well, if that’s not an IRS problem, I don’t know what is.

Of course, they would also have some method to balance their cash drawers at the end of the night. But what’s to stop a toll employee from pocketing the extra cash? The drawer would balance with the receipts just fine at that point.

Of course, that’s pure speculation. But in any case, there’s an accounting and honesty problem going on here. And trust me, we intend to look into it.

The economic stimulus package – or as lawmakers call it, the recovery plan – just signed into law by the president has a big infrastructure component.

But where that will eventually be spent is still a bone of contention.

The emphasis has been on so-called “shovel-ready” projects – those that have been planned, cleared, examined, set up and are ready to go and generate jobs NOW.

But the fact is, many American highways could use some of that money. So why is it that the stimulus (I’m sorry, recovery) plan isn’t going to fill some potholes or smooth out some of our more notable washboard pavement?

It all goes back to those “shovel-ready” projects. Rough roads aren’t likely to get the stimulus money unless a project to smooth them out was already ready to go.

What they’re trying to emphasize in this package are projects that put Americans to work now – projects that were ready to go but, due to a lack of funds or some other reason, were held up. Things that would require workers now, who would get paychecks now.

However, the new six-year highway bill is coming up soon. And so it’s a good idea to remind your representatives about the conditions the roads you travel – plus, offer them some good examples of why more highway trust fund money needs to be spent directly on pavement, where it was intended to go in the first place.

OK, so normally, I wouldn’t put something up on this blog off an ad. But this was so perfect – and so on target.

This was from an ad on Page 113 in the February issue of Land Line Magazine. And I had actually not seen it yet, until I was alerted to it by an OOIDA member who called about it.

It’s so cool, I felt compelled to share it with all of you.

So here it is, for folks who didn’t see it in the magazine. The Top 10 reasons NOT to join OOIDA.

Drum roll please...

Number 10 – My dispatcher told me “it doesn’t get any better than this,” and I believed him.

Number 9. If I collected all the money brokers owe me, I’d be in a higher tax bracket.

Number 8. I learned all I need to know about leasing rules from my motor carrier.

Number 7. I believe law enforcement is motivated solely by highway safety.

Number 6. I like paying more taxes and fees than I really need to.

Number 5. I believe Congress always passes the best possible laws for the trucking industry.

Number 4. My telephone psychic says I shouldn’t worry about what’s going on at the DOT.

Number 3. I took a vow of poverty.

Number 2. I like being treated like a second-class citizen.

And the Number 1 reason NOT to join OOIDA is:

Trucking is a great profession; I wouldn’t change a thing.

We reported on the program a while back about an effort in Colorado to require trucks or other vehicles to pull over and get out of the way if they’re impeding the progress of several other cars.

The measure is particularly targeted at large vehicles such as RVs, which can have real difficulty moving up steep grades in the state’s mountain passes.

But the measure could require trucks to pull over on inclines where getting moving again could be anywhere from slow and difficult to dangerous.

One example is a stretch of highway near Denver. It’s a 10-mile incline running up into the mountains.

How many times would you have to pull over on a 10-mile incline?

And as you pull off and get back on, aren’t you creating a situation where an accident is more likely? How will some of our less skilled four-wheeled friends deal with trucks pulling on and off a highway on a steep incline?

This isn’t about safety. This proposal is about people who don’t want to be inconvenienced when they’re driving the Beemer up to Vail or Aspen for the weekend.

And that’s a lousy reason to change a highway safety law.

The federal safety regulations are clear: CDL holders are required to be able to speak, understand and communicate in the English language to at least a basic level.

That’s the regulation. But the reality can be quite different.

One trucker after another has raised a question that goes to the heart of the problem: Why does the FMCSA allow this to happen? Why do they let states give CDLs to people who can’t communicate in English, if the regulations say they have to be able to?

The fact is, under our system, the states have the right to carry out certain functions of government, and the feds can’t really tell them what to do. Issuing driver’s licenses is one of those things.

Normally, the way the feds get around that is to threaten to take money away from the state. For example, if you don’t pass this seat belt law in your state, then we’ll deny you a percentage of your federal highway funds.

The state still has the ultimate choice. But the feds have leverage to get them to do what the feds want.

So why is it that the states aren’t enforcing this one safety rule?

As I understand it, no state has ever lost any of the money it receives for truck enforcement because a state didn’t enforce a federal truck regulation.

And in one case, a state even reached an agreement in court not to enforce this particular regulation, after being sued over it.

This is a real problem. When states have tried to tighten up on this, opponents of English-only testing try to portray it as a matter of prejudice.

Let me state this as clearly as I can. This is not about your right to speak whatever language you want. It is not about how you speak to your family, to your minister, to your neighbor.

This is about how you communicate with other truckers. It is a safety regulation, just as a rule that all pilots speak English is a safety regulation.

If you’re going down the road unaware that your truck is on fire, when another trucker calls on the CB to alert you, I want you to be able to understand the message.

When an inspector is under your truck and he says “do not move or you’ll crush my head,” I want you to be able to understand that.

When you’re moving down the road and there’s a sign that says “bridge out,” or “low bridge, 10 foot clearance,” I want you to able to read it.

That is a matter of safety. I want you to be able to speak any language you like. But when you drive a truck, the ability to speak English is an issue of safety, for you and for everyone else involved.

We’re all troubled enough about trucks based in Mexico coming over the U.S. border and operating here.

But some folks are just as upset about where those vehicles start out from.

A trucker called in recently to tell us that once again, he was seeing a group of trucks – badly maintained, long past their prime and far less than road worthy – being readied for shipment to Mexico to be used in freight hauling there.

This is a story we’ve heard many times before, and it’s been confirmed as well.

And it’s one of the reasons why it’s a bad idea to simply allow trucks based in Mexico to run free on U.S. highways without requiring them to meet the same safety regulations all of you do.

The trucks our industry rejects – the ones that are so hopeless that they’re not worth repairing to the point of roadworthiness – are shipped out of the country to nations where the safety regulations aren’t as strict.

And Mexico is one of the main destinations.

If folks in Mexico are OK with those trucks on their roads, that’s their business. It’s their country.

But this nation has a different set of rules, stricter rules, rules designed to keep everyone involved safe.

Once a truck is declared unsafe for use on our highways, it shouldn’t be allowed to run just because it came across a border.

That statement doesn’t even deal with the lack of fairness in allowing foreign trucks privileges and considerations in this country that U.S. trucks would never receive. But that’s another conversation.

Recently, Land Line Magazine’s Keith Goble came on the show to describe how New Jersey lawmakers may force truckers to either clear snow and ice from the tops of their vehicles, or face a fine.

It’s a plan that has a lot of holes in it. And one of the big ones is that the state says it will, in the future, build devices to help truckers clear snow and ice off the tops of tractors and trailers. No such devices exist in New Jersey now.

How exactly do they propose for truckers to remove the snow and ice without some kind of system or machine to do it?

What New Jersey proposes is to start fining truckers who don’t meet the requirement, and then use the fine money to build the machines.

That strikes me as dishonest. If you think the machines are needed, install them. Then at least you have a just case to make about passing out tickets.

But with no options to clear that material, you’re asking truckers to risk their lives climbing about on a trailer roof that probably was never designed to support human weight, and doing it in the worst weather possible, increasing the chance of falling to the pavement fivefold.

Let’s get real. This is a fund-raising scheme. If they were honest, they would pass a tax to pay for it. But that would require courage.

It’s easier for them to sell the idea of fines to the public, because then they can blame big bad truckers who broke the law.

I got a call on the diesel comment line the other day from one of our members in Alaska wanting to know why we never talk about diesel prices in Alaska. Fair question. I have to admit that no one had ever asked me before. So I gave it some thought.

When we talk about truck driving in the U.S., we tend to think of the lower 48 states. The continental U.S. Alaska and Hawaii sort of get shoved off to the side in their own little boxes, much like on a map.

That’s not to say we have anything personal against Alaska and Hawaii. Lord knows I’d love to visit both places. Who wouldn’t want to eat fresh pineapple in Alaska or see a grizzly bear in Hawaii? Or something like that.

The reason we don’t cover Hawaii is obvious. There’s no interstate trucking in Hawaii. So far, nobody has been able to build a bridge long enough. My first thought was to say the same thing about Alaska, but that doesn’t hold up. Separated though it may be from the lower 48, Alaska is still connected by a land mass known as Canada. There are roads going to Alaska and you could certainly make the drive if you wanted to.

Truth is, the main reason we don’t cover Alaska is because the sources we use – the Energy Information Administration and ProMiles – don’t track pricing information in Alaska or Hawaii. There are other sources – such as Triple A’s price tracker – that do track prices in Alaska. But I don’t use that one because they track prices at convenience stores and other outlets, whereas ProMiles focuses exclusively on truck stops and thus gives a better picture of what truck drivers are more likely to pay for fuel.

Incidentally, once I did start looking into the price of fuel in Alaska, I found that it was about a dollar higher than everywhere else. I’m not sure yet why that is. Alaska is a pretty decent oil producer, so you would think prices there would be lower. It may be lack of refining capacity or delivery expenses. I’m not sure, but I’m looking into it.

In the meantime, to Brad from Alaska, thanks for the call. I do realize that Alaska is still part of the United States. I guess I just need to be reminded every once in a while.

Not all trucks are created equal.

Well, now that I’ve borrowed a phrase from our nation’s founding document, let me explain. We often say we have one set of rules for many kinds of trucks. But the fact is, in some areas of regulation, some trucks are treated differently.

Sometimes it’s justified. Sometimes it isn’t.

With truckers that are longer than the federal standard, or that exceed 80,000 pounds, we require permits. They are not treated the same.

There are real reasons for that. And there’s a real difference between a few trucks permitted to do something, and every single truck on the road doing it.

Our highways are designed today to carry an 80,000-pound load. They can occasionally handle larger loads. But if we made every single load on the highway that much heavier, then the roads would deteriorate more quickly.

And the permit fees – they do two things. In part, they’re supposed to compensate the state for the extra wear and tear on the roads caused by a larger load.

And they also limit the number of those loads to a level the pavement can handle.

Again, we all know that some loads by their nature are going to be larger or heavier than the standard 80,000 pounds. If you are hauling a bridge support or a piece of heavy construction machinery, and it weighs more than that, it still has to be moved.

But that’s different than, say, a load of groceries going to Wal-Mart.

In that case, the only reason to have a larger or heavier truck is to reduce the number of truckers, to cut the labor costs of the large motor carriers.

Under that plan, you’d be expected to haul more. But believe me, you wouldn’t be paid more.

This plan is portrayed as a fuel saver, as a “green” idea that will reduce emissions, as a cure-all to the ills faced by our industry and the world.

It isn’t. And don’t be fooled into thinking it is.

There is no basis for changing a safety regulation just so we can help a private business cut its cost. That’s bad policy, and it shouldn’t be done.

An e-mail funny I recently received from a friend:

“Due to recent budget cuts and the cost of electricity, gas and oil, as well as current market conditions and the continued decline of the U.S. economy, The Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.”

Did you know that 90 percent of truck drivers are thieves? Me neither. But apparently that’s what one truck stop assistant manager told a trucker who called me recently with a suggestion for a RAZZBERRY.

It’s a RAZZY all right, to say the least. The man who called me said all he did was ask the assistant manager in question why the truck stop needed to see a trucker’s driver’s license before they would turn on the pump. After the idiot gave his answer, the manager came over and tried to cover for him, but it was too late. The words were out and the damage was done.

What kills me is that this came from a truck stop. Truck. Stop. Notice the word “truck” right there. That means this is a business that caters to truck drivers. Maybe not exclusively, but almost certainly in the majority. So what on earth would possess this genius to say this to a paying customer? And most likely within earshot of other paying customers?

I just don’t get it. I won’t name the truck stop here because I, unlike the folks who run it, am above that sort of thing. That, plus I don’t want to get sued.

I wrote a blog awhile back about the increase in calls I was getting from drivers complaining about poor treatment at truck stops. I’m sad to say the calls keep coming. My advice to anyone who has an experience like this at a truck stop is simple: Don’t go to that truck stop anymore.

There are a lot of places to buy fuel in this world, and that’s something these pinheaded truck stop managers need to be reminded of every now and then.

When the French peasants were starving because they couldn’t buy bread, Marie Antoinette (the king’s wife) supposedly said, “Let them eat cake!”

Historians disagree as to whether Marie actually said that.

But what’s undisputed is that Marie is alive and well today and working as the spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police.

Her new version of “Let them eat cake” is “Let them get a room.”

She’s referring to all the truckers who are kicked out of the state’s rest areas after two hours and who have no place to bed down for the night.

Duh…why didn’t the truckers think of that?

Just park the rig in front of the Ritz (watch that canopy clearance), whip out a wad of cash (who needs a credit card?), and snuggle under the silk sheets in the Presidential Suite.

In fact, let’s all sing along with that Irving Berlin classic:

“Come, let’s mix with Rockefellers

Walk with sticks or umbrellas

In their mitts

Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

So, while Marie’s comment may, at first glance, seem callused, indifferent, condescending, dismissive, stupid and a real slap in the face…

…I suggest we all say, “Thanks Marie, we needed that” as we eat our cake at the Ritz.

I’m about sick and tired of apnea. And I’m betting you are, too.

But we need to continue to press on this topic. If we don’t, this very real illness will become the instrument some medical officials will use to shove a host of unnecessary and even counter-productive regulations down our throats.

First, let me say this. I take sleep apnea very seriously. I have it. I was tested for it. With the help of my doctor, I treated it. And I have it under control.

That’s true for many truckers as well. One called to tell me that he has three CPAPs – the machines used to treat the illness. He uses one at home, one in his truck, and he has a third he takes both places, in case one of the others fails.

This is a trucker with a long record of safe driving – like so many others who are in the same situation. I spoke to one just the other day who has apnea – and 4 million miles without causing a single accident.

Why do these people need any further interference from the government? They have both clearly taken the illness seriously, and are treating it more than sufficiently.

But some in the FMCSA’s Medical Review Board think they should have to continue to report to the government about the illness and the treatment. And those same people want new CPAPs with a card in them to enable that invasive, privacy-destroying process.

Why? What compelling safety need is so important that they should have to report the medical information in that machine? What is so important that they should have to give up the machines they have now, which are working fine, and buy new ones?

The honest answer is this: There is no safety factor at work here. As Tom Weakley of the OOIDA Foundation pointed out on our program, no research links apnea with wrecks.

Fatigue – which includes not only apnea but all forms of fatigue – is a factor in only 1 out of 20 wrecks that involves a truck. In most of those, it’s not the primary or sole cause, but just one of many factors. And we should not forget what federal statistics tell us: that 4 out of every 5 of those accidents aren’t even the truckers’ fault.

If we are concerned about solving that small portion of truck accidents, then let’s do something that really affects it.

How about cutting back on the 30 to 40 hours a week truckers spend on unpaid, uncompensated work?

How about doing something about loading and unloading, which can extend a trucker’s hours far beyond what’s involved in driving a truck, but which pays that trucker nothing?

And how about having some scientists actually spend time with truckers in their environment. How can they make judgments about what happens in a truck and how that affects the trucker when they’ve never been in one, never hauled a load from point A to point B, never seen the factors that can affect them in their day-to-day working environment?

How about dealing with 95 percent of accidents that involve a truck instead of the paltry 5 percent that involve fatigue in any way?

Some truckers have apnea, a known, treatable illness.

Most of those have worked with their doctors to determine a course of treatment, and through that have controlled that illness.

It’s not an illness that’s unique to trucking. It’s not a safety problem. It’s not something that requires this kind of attention.

It’s a private matter. And that is where it should end.

We know that doctors with an interest in the sleep industry think every single trucker who weighs too much should be tested for sleep apnea.

But more interesting to this industry is the number of carriers who – for their own reasons – seem intent on supporting that cause.

They may think they’ll eliminate higher-paid truckers, or those who cost more in terms of health benefits. However, they’ve ignored another aspect of the situation – a fly in their ointment.

And that’s this: Sleep apnea is specifically covered The American with Disabilities Act

So if a trucker has apnea, and requests an accommodation under the act, the employer is required under that law to make one.

Let’s start with the basics. The ADA applies to employers with more than 15 workers.

Here’s what the federal equal opportunity employment commission says on its Web site about the act and covered disabilities: “An employer is required to make a reasonable accommodation to the known disability of a qualified applicant or employee if it would not impose an ‘undue hardship’ on the operation of the employer's business.”

Reasonable accommodation may include, but is not limited to:

· Making existing facilities used by employees readily accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities; and

· Acquiring or modifying equipment or devices, and adjusting or modifying examinations, training materials, or policies.

Reasonable accommodation can also include job restructuring, modifying work schedules, or reassignment to a vacant position.

But note that earlier wording – “making existing facilities used by employees readily accessible to and usable by persons with disabilities.” You know, like equipping your truck with an APU to provide power to your CPAP.

Also, “acquiring or modifying equipment or devices” – sounds like adding an APU to that truck again.

As I said, the idea of using BMI, or body mass index, to test for apnea – and the focus on apnea itself – is being used by some carriers as a way to get rid of older, more experienced drivers who cost more salary and who cost more on insurance.

Well guess what, folks?

If that trucker has sleep apnea or a high body mass index, you better not try to use it to get rid of them.

And if that trucker requests a reasonable accommodation, then you better get yourself in gear and provide one. Because the law is on that trucker’s side.