In New York, three men convicted of a series of violent truck hijackings were sentenced to between 26 and 55 years in prison on Monday, April 27.

Two of the three were convicted of pistol-whipping a driver and stealing a tractor-trailer with perfume and other merchandise worth half a million dollars.

The man identified as the ring-leader, 36-year-old Angel Diaz, got a 37-year sentence, but won’t be able to start serving it until he serves a separate, 15-year term for attempted murder in an unrelated case.

In Georgia, a man who allegedly stole a bobtail truck on Tuesday, April 28, and led spolice on a six-county chase – while the truck’s rightful driver hung onto the back of the cab – was scheduled to be arraigned today. 27-year-old Milo Demetris Banks faces multiple charges, including kidnapping, theft and fleeing police.

He allegedly stole the truck from a Kroger parking lot near Atlanta, and truck driver Torrey Lang jumped on the back in an attempt to stop the theft. In live television coverage, the 33-year-old Lang could be seen hanging on outside the cab as Banks drove along Interstate 75.

Police used stop sticks to blow out several of the truck tires, and Banks gave up after a struggle.

A police officer was hit by a ricocheted bullet that was accidentally fired by another officer. Lang suffered minor cuts and scratches when he jumped off the tractor as it was slowing to a stop.

--by Reed Black, news anchor

Land Line Now

When we talk about apnea, or the hours of service, or the hazmat endorsement process, or highway funding or any other trucking issue, the obvious question comes up: How do we solve this?

The answer is more simple than most folks think.

You have to get involved.

That means voting in every single election. It means looking at a candidate’s whole record – not just the part they put in their TV ads, but all of it, good and bad. And it means acting appropriately at the ballot box if your representatives – federal, state or local – have done truckers wrong.

But I’d add this: You need to call the folks in office now, and call them often. Let them know what you think of the measures they’re considering, and what measures and issues you think they should consider.

Share your personal experience on trucking issues; you’re the industry expert, and you need to give them the benefit of your knowledge.

As I said, if you’re not satisfied with your members of Congress, you should use your vote appropriately. But don’t threaten the folks who hold those offices now. If they are listening, that will put the conversation to an end, and pretty much make them forget what you said.

We have to work with the folks there now. Even if you think they’re the wrong people for the office, the fact is they’re the people in that office. Their number one priority is to stay in that office. And they will do what they need to in order to keep voters happy.

After all, voters are the ones who hire or fire them. They know that, and you don’t need to remind them.

But if they hear from a thousand truckers that they want something done, and all of those truckers are active voters, then they’re likely to act.

Remember, they can tell if you vote, but not who you vote for. Use that.

Get to the ballot box, call your members of Congress and the state legislature, make your voice hear, and we can make a difference for everybody in this industry.

I think by now, I’ve heard about every possible opinion and observation about Minnesota’s fatigued driving evaluation checklist. But a few of them stand out.

One big one is that this list ignores the realities of trucking. It’s still pretty obvious to me that they’ve never even talked with someone who drives a truck.

But another one, a bigger point, is the invasion of a trucker’s personal privacy.

They officer in charge said that they want to determine whether you’re doing things in your sleeper besides sleeping.

Well, guess what. Take out the word sleeper, and put in the word home. For a lot of truckers, that is home.

What I do in my home is no one’s business but mine. And I think the same should be true for a trucker in their sleeper. This is simply too much of a reach for a government that’s supposed to work for the people.

The Supreme Court once defined privacy as “the right to be left alone.”

It’s about time Minnesota followed through on that idea, and left trucker’s private information and private space the heck alone.

Recently we gave a fat, juicy, mustachioed RAZZBERRY to mustachioed reporter John Stossel of ABC’s 20/20 for a lopsided report he did awhile back on public-private partnerships.

In case you missed the RAZZY and/or the report, here’s a recap: “Hi, this is John Stossel. Public-private partnerships are a good thing and all other opinion on the subject is shortsighted and wrong, including yours.”

So if we already gave Stossel a good RAZZ-ing for his (un)evenhanded journalism, why am I bringing it up again? Because I have more ammo. And it’s just fun.

The new ammunition came the other day in the form of an earnings report from Macquarie. You probably know Macquarie best as the owner of the Indiana Toll Road. The company also owns the Chicago Skyway, the Dulles Greenway in Virginia, the South Bay Expressway in San Diego, and is currently in negotiations to buy your driveway and the path leading from grandma’s house to the garden out back.

Macquarie may want to hold off on those last two, because the news from the earnings report wasn’t good. Indiana, Dulles and South Bay were singled out as three of the company’s worst performers, with Indiana easily topping the list. Those roads saw less traffic than a one-way, dead-end street. Paved with nails.

Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but the point is, traffic was down significantly. And why? Macquarie pointed to the bad economy and harsh winter weather, but there was another culprit lurking behind the scenes. Toll increases went into effect on all three of those roads in January. Coincidence? Not likely.

One report I saw quoted an Australian analyst as saying that Indiana and San Diego were basically worthless for Macquarie. So what does a company do with an asset that is worthless when it’s locked into a 75-year contract with, say, Indiana? I imagine we might find out before this year is over.

Which brings me back to Stossel. He strutted around during his report, talking as though public-private partnerships held all the answers to our transportation funding problems. Stossel said one of the biggest benefits of public-private partnerships is that the roads are maintained at virtually no cost to the taxpayer. Um, John, who do you think is paying the tolls on those roads?

Well, according to the Macquarie report, nobody is, so maybe he was right on that one after all.

How should we fund our highways?

Federal officials will soon consider that very question. And there’s a good possibility that at least some of them will want some new kind of tax to help fill up the highway trust fund.

However, other issues should be considered first.

For years, the government has squandered the funds that truckers and other highway users have given them.

We’ve seen huge sums of money swept away on bike and hike trails, pretty flowers at the roadside, parks, museums, pushed into the general fund – where it could be used for who knows what – and just about anyplace else the government wants to send our money.

These funds were set up as a dedicated tax, a user fee, a tax to pay for roads, supplied by the people who use them.

OOIDA has made the point several times that the fuel tax is still the most equitable way to fund highways.

But we’ve also said over and over to lawmakers, media, and others that until we reform the way we spend the highway money we have now, we’re very, very reluctant to stand behind increasing those fuel taxes, much less adding any taxes on top of it.

It’s a simple stand, a moral and ethical stand. And with the new highway bill being put together right now on Capitol Hill, it’s a vital stand, one that could protect truckers from being saddled with additional, redundant and unnecessary fees.

It’s more than your wallet at stake. It’s a principle. And it’s one we don’t intend to back away from.

Recently, for the first time, I participated in packing day.

My job was to stick clear-plastic-covered address labels onto each large cardboard box as they moved down the assembly line.

A label might say:

SFC Ryan Hendley

HHC 82^nd CAB

Bagram Air Field

APO AE 08772

Afghanistan

The donated boxes (from Zarda and Two Men & a Truck) come flat and are opened up and taped at the far end of five long tables that are placed end to end.

Volunteers on both sides of the tables begin loading them with items paid for by the truckers who donated to the “Truckers for Troops Telethon.”

One set of volunteers puts socks, lip balm, Frisbies, self-heating cocoa and talcum powder into the box; then they quickly shove it down the table to the next station.

The process repeats itself as books, candy, toiletries and letters and drawings from kids are added.

Eventually, the box comes to me – weighing 50 to 60 pounds and chuck full of practical and entertaining things.

I slap on the address label and shove the box over to the volunteers whose specialty is adding packing material on top…closing and taping the box…and moving it to the banding machine, which cinches each box up tight in plastic strapping.

There are probably 15 or 20 of us on the assembly line down in the garage.

There’s laughter and the usual grab-assing.

But mainly, there’s a bunch of people working hard to quickly construct, load, label and secure more than 100 boxes—each one with enough items for a whole squad of soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq.

It’s a neat process.

It’s neat to be part of packing day.

When we talk about truck parking, we tend to stress the shortage of spaces. Even though truck traffic is down, we still have some places in this country with far fewer spaces than are necessary to accommodate the truckers passing through.

Safety and security in those spaces is a new aspect to the situation, especially in the wake of two incidents, one of which led to a trucker’s death.

However, when we talk about the shortage, it’s not just a matter of less pavement than we need. Some places that do have space won’t let truckers use it.

So why is that? Some truckers think the problem lies with the drivers themselves – and the fact that some of them, frankly, are slobs.

I’ve heard several times over the years about parking lots where people literally opened the door, dumped out their trash – and worse, their human waste – without even bothering to walk 20 steps to a trash can that is there just for that purpose.

I’ve also heard of parking lots strewn with a combination of toxic crud that would frighten the socks off the head of EPA’s SuperFund.

OK, so those folks who say drivers are part of the problem have a point.

But let’s remember, this is a minority of truckers.

Ask yourself, are you that way? I’m betting most of you aren’t.

What I’ve found over time, observing myself and talking with other truckers, is that a very small number of folks acting irresponsibly can make a very, very big mess.

And I’ve found, not just in this situation, but pretty much in any aspect of life, that when a big mess gets made by a few people in a group, the whole group gets blamed.

And that, my friends, isn’t how things are supposed to work.

If we need stricter enforcement of littering laws, that’s one issue. And it’s a good issue.

However, it doesn’t eliminate the real issue: The government enforces very strict limits on truckers’ time, and when they have to rest.

At the same time, there are more truckers than there are parking spaces.

If the government wants to enforce these time limits, I think they have to give attention to the fact that it is literally impossible in some places to obey that directive.

The government long ago established that it has a role here. At the same time that President Eisenhower established the interstate system, the government established a national system of rest areas, which it calls “safety rest areas” – a phrase that acknowledges their function.

Truckers pay the lion’s share of the taxes that cover the cost of those rest areas, just as they pay the lion’s share of all road taxes.

When I pay for something, I want a certain level of service in return. If I don’t get it, I take my business elsewhere.

Unfortunately, when the folks I’m paying are the government, I don’t have that option. That’s why citizens have the right to ask their government to change its ways, and do a better job of serving the folks who pay the bills.

It’s in the Constitution. Really. Look it up.

Truckers have these rights, just like any other citizen. And it’s time truckers started to insist that their rights be honored as well.

What is fatigue? The question hangs at the center of a controversy brewing in Minnesota and Indiana.

The two states are taking a stab at defining what that word means – and taking action based on their definition – through use of an interview and the associated Fatigued Driving Evaluation Checklist.

The checklist was created by Capt. Ken Urquhart, a District Commander with the Minnesota State Patrol in the Commercial Enforcement Division.

Urquhart has been part of Commercial Enforcement since 1997, roughly 12 years. Three years after he joined, he was named the commander of the division.

In the interest of fairness, we wanted to give Capt. Urquhart the chance to respond to some of the concerns others had raised about the checklist, and the process that checklist is part of.

So we called the captain for a talk.

At times, Urquhart was explanatory, at times defensive of his division’s system, at times evasive, or even combative.

But in talking about how he first became involved in the state’s anti-fatigue efforts, he got straight to the point.

“Well, this started quite a long time ago. I personally got involved in this long before we rolled the program out here. In fact, I was attending a command and leadership program through Northwestern University. And one of the options in the program is to do a research project. I did my research project on driver alertness and put together a lot of research on that, and I got quite interested in it. Of course, in the division here, one of the regulations that is in place – and has been in place a long time – is in Chapter 49 CFR. If the driver is too ill – not paraphrasing, of course – if the driver is too ill or fatigued to operate the commercial vehicle safely, then they’re subject to an out of service order, or enforcement.”

At one point, Urquhart said he was working with researchers to find some test or technological tool that could help his officers determine whether fatigue is present.

“We conducted a joint research project with our center for transportation studies at the University of Minnesota to look at were there any technologies that might be able to assist us in making these determinations at the roadside. We evaluated a couple of different technologies through their human factors lab, and weren’t able to come up with any of them that could be conclusive for us to use as tools.”

He said he then moved toward development of the process used now – the process that involves the use of the checklist.

Urquhart said that process was developed using research. However, when asked what research was involved in developing the process, or how it was developed, Urquhart instead contended that the list alone is not used to determine fatigue.

“Well, really, what you’re looking at there is a very small part of our program. So it’s, all that you’re looking at there is an indicator list that our enforcement folks use to record their observations. We don’t use that as the tool to, or any one of those items on that list, to make their decision, so to speak, on whether a driver may be alert enough to operate … their vehicle. And I think that’s been a misnomer from time to time. I’ve got calls from motor carriers, and they go, what does this specific item on the list mean? Well, any one item in its entirety means nothing in itself.”

Urquhart went on to describe how a combination of factors could determine fatigue – such as a sleeper berth that looked as if it had not been used.

But when pressed further, instead of noting what specifically on the list – or what interview questions or answers represented on the list – could put a driver out of service, he instead pointed to cases where fatigue was obvious, even without the use of any list.

Urquhart: “One of the indicators may be if the driver falls asleep while we’re interviewing them, which happens quite often. They’ll be in our vehicle, and we’ll be interviewing them, and they’ll go to sleep.

LLN: “You say that happens quite often?”

Urquhart: “Yes. Or I’ll give you another real-life response. For instance, why were you driving in the fast lane? Well, I was really tired, and I was trying to drive with one eye closed and one eye open to try to get some rest and drive at the same time.”

LLN “Well, you said quite often. I mean, you’re an experienced officer; you’ve been out there in commercial enforcement. How often is quite often? Can you give us a rough percentage?”

Urquhart: “Well, far more often than you want to see happen when they’re operating those kinds of vehicles.”

Urquhart didn’t indicate how the list or the interview associated with it enhanced the ability of an officer to determine whether someone who fell asleep in their patrol car was fatigued.

Pressed further about how checklist is used, or how the overall process is used, Urquhart continued to insist that the checklist was not used as a checklist, and that it was only a tool to determine whether his officers had correctly conducted an interview with a trucker.

LLN: “What combinations of items on this list lead you as an officer to the next step, and what is that next step in the process?”

Urquhart: “Well, we don’t use this as the initial step. This is something the officer documents in the interview. It is not used in the preliminary, if you want to call it, the preliminary contact with the driver.”

LLN: “When you get to the list, how is it used, and … what on it would lead you to the next step from the list and then, what is that next step?”

Urquhart: “There is no next step from the list. It’s a, we ask them to, it’s a tool we asked our folks to use to ensure that they conduct their interviews in consistent and standardized fashion is what it is.”

LLN: “It may be we’re just talking about a difference of wording here. Obviously, if you get a rating on this list that tells you that you have reason to believe someone’s fatigued, you’re going to take some action. Or you’re going to go to another step in a process. I mean, will no one have a ticket or no one be placed out of service at any point in here?”

Urquhart: “If we, if one of our folks that is trained to do this is … the optimum action will be placing the driver out of service.”

Pressed further about how the list is used in the process, Urquhart became insistent.

Urquhart: “The form if you want to call it that, or the list, or however you’re referring to it, is a verification that our folks conducted their interview or their contact with that driver in the fashion that we trained them to do it. So you’re … and see, that’s the confusion, the danger of this thing is that you’re looking at this thing and saying, well, if I check off so many things on that list, you’re going to put them out of service. No, no, no, no, that’s not the way it’s used.”

LLN: “OK, how is it used? I guess that’s what I’m getting at is I’m still not clear on how this is used in the process. I mean, it says on it it’s a checklist. So obviously, they’re going to be checking things.”

Urquhart: “So basically, let me say this, if I put a statement at the top of that piece of paper and instead of checklist, I said did you conduct your interview in accordance with your training. That’s what it’s used for. It’s to ensure that, as I look at … this activity that our people are doing, I want to make sure that they’re conducting this process the way they were trained to do it. … It represents what they observe, and how the person presents themselves. The items in the interview, responses and things like that, are not covered on that checklist.

LLN: “OK, but these are the categories that they should be covering in the interview, aren’t they? I mean, obviously this plays some role or you wouldn’t print it, right? I mean, again, to me, it’s just makes sense that they’ve got to have some connection to the process or you wouldn’t be having them printed.”

Urquhart: “It does have a connection. Like I said, it tells us that they’re conducting their interview in a standardized fashion, and that they’ve observed the environment of the subject. And also interviewed them based on the criteria that we’ve instructed them to do.”

That instruction is another part of the issue. Some reports had placed the amount of training officers received at as little as three hours.

Urquhart was less definite, saying that it involved classroom time and some time in the field in a group setting. However, he placed the total time involved as a matter of hours – often in the range of eight hours or less.

Some question whether the hours of training received are enough to determine whether someone is fatigued – something that amounts to a medical diagnosis.

Urquhart contends it is. In fact, he says officers who receive the training can be more qualified to diagnose fatigue than medical doctors.

Urquhart: “Well, if you do your research, you’ll find out that there’s a significant percentage of medical doctors that don’t even diagnose sleep disorders properly. They lean toward depression.”

LLN: “Well, if doctors that have years of training can’t, then how would you contend that hours of training can accomplish what years of training in medical expertise cannot at the doctorate level?”

Urquhart: “It’s similar to the drug recognition examiner, that once you complete that training, there’s the message they tell you is that you’ll have a better working knowledge of drug abuse than most MDs do, because you’re focused, you’re focused on a very narrow aspect of that person. And uh, that’s, uh, that’s the, I think that’s best answers your question.”

LLN: “OK, well, let me ask one on that too, because you mentioned earlier …”

Urquhart: “Because doctors, most MDs, most doctors use a process of elimination. They’re trying to figure out what’s going on here, and there could be a wide range of things.”

Some of the individual questions officers ask in arriving at the specific conclusion of fatigue have caused concerns in the trucking industry.

Urquhart objects to any examination of his department’s fatigue evaluation process that involves looking at individual checklist items; he refers to the practice as “cherry-picking the list,” and he says it ignores the way the process works.

However, opponents, including some at OOIDA, point out that the interview at the core of the process includes subjects covered under the list – so such criticism is warranted and valid.

One checklist item that raised some eyebrows was the inclusion of printed material. The Minnesota checklist includes “books, magazines and papers,” while Indiana’s checklist has “adult materials” listed.

The first amendment to the Constitution allows any U.S. citizen to read what they choose to, and to not face government punishment for their reading choices.

Urquhart maintains that despite that, it’s valid to include such item in the list.

“When you start to see copious amounts of material or whatever you want to call it that, where the driver is doing everything in the truck except for you know, sleeping when they should be sleeping, or using the sleeper berth for rest, then, there is a concern with that.”

Particularly troubling to some is the inclusion on the checklist of the CPAP – a constant positive air pressure machine, which is used to combat sleep apnea.

Urquhart says the main concern is whether the CPAP is being used, whether it is being effective in providing rest to the trucker.

LLN: “That’s a sign that you’ve combated fatigue, not that you’ve got it. Why is the CPAP on the list? Doesn’t this mean – again, playing the devil’s advocate – that they in fact have taken care of their fatigue and not that they do have it?”

Urquhart: “If they use it.”

LLN: “Without a card that can be read at roadside – and I have checked, there is no such card available – for roadside available, how do you know if they’ve used it?”

Urquhart: “We don’t.”

That, Urquhart says, is why interviewing the trucker, getting the trucker comfortable, and getting the trucker to answer questions honestly is imperative to the process.

Officers who use this process to put truckers out of service depend on the trucker providing information during the interview. Without it, Urquhart says they cannot make a determination.

However, the captain says taking part in that questioning – and providing answers – is not required.

“If the trucker so desires that, I really don’t want to answer any of the questions you’re asking me, that’s his option. He’s not bound by any of this. But, you know, they do, and like I said, they actual contact starts out as a cursory contact, then evolves into an interview, and then from there gets turned into a conversation. And pretty soon, they’re telling us about lots of different things that are related to not only their job, but their personal life and whatnot, and they tell us what they’re struggling with, and what … status they’re in at that time.”

Urquhart says one of the big concerns – a piece of key information at the heart of the checklist and the process – is figuring out whether the trucker is doing things in the sleeper berth besides sleeping.

Urquhart: “When you look at drivers that have logged, you know, 22, 24 hours in the sleeper berth at one block, I mean …”

LLN: “Is it possible that they were between loads?”

Urquhart: “Well, but, how much sleep are they getting? Are they in the sleeper berth sleeping, or are they in the sleeper berth doing other things? So …

LLN: “Is there a specific law saying they can’t be in the sleeper berth doing other things?”

Urquhart: “No, no, but there is the concern, and there is the regulation about being too ill or fatigued to operate the vehicle safely, so if you’re not sleeping or getting the rest you need … Eventually, your body needs certain things to survive, right? One of them is sleep. When your body decides to shut down, it will do that, and it doesn’t matter if you’re behind the wheel of a vehicle or not.”

OOIDA continues to get calls from truckers who say they are not fatigued, and who do have hours on their logbook to drive, but who are being put out of service using the checklist and the process that goes with it.

Editor’s Note: If you have been subject to the checklist in either Minnesota or Indiana, you’re encouraged to contact OOIDA’s compliance department at 1-800-444-5791.

After the economy hit the air brakes last fall, the news was uniformly depressing for months.

A single headline could have summed it up: “Banks, Real Estate, Auto Industry, Retail Sales, Consumer Confidence, Trucking and Everything Else Goes to Pot”.

But now, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke says we may be taking the “first step” toward recovery—with some improvements seen in housing, car sales and consumer spending.

He could have added that a few glimmers of hope are being seen in the trucking industry, too.

The government reports its freight transportation services index rose by 2% in February—the biggest increase in a year.

And Ward’s Automotive reports that class-8 truck sales increased 32% in March compared to February.

We’re still hearing about owner-operators sidelining their rigs and bigger trucking companies that are struggling.

In March alone, the government says 15,000 truckers lost their jobs.

But at least…and at long last…there’s some good news to report.

At least it’s possible to hope that the big ol’ tractor-trailer we call the American economy has eased off the air brake and is now slowly accelerating again.

Hell, put ’er in the hammer lane!

Did a chill just go down your spine?

It should have, at midnight local time last night. That’s because at that moment, it officially became tax day – the day we all have to pony up and pay for Uncle Sam and all he does for us; the day the IRS brings us one of life’s two inevitabilities, death and taxes (or both if you don’t file on time).

Some of us file early. Those are usually folks who are owed money; no one files early if they have to cough up cash.

Early filers can have an air of superiority about them. “I filed early; we’re going to spend the refund money on a trip to Maui.” Well, good for you. I’m going to spend mine on a trip to “Visa-Won’t-Kick-My-Behind Land.” And that’s assuming I’ll get one.

Some file right on time, or barely on time. Some of them even celebrate the event.

In Lawrence, KS, one post office has an all-night celebration where late tax filers pass through a gauntlet of celebrants, including live music by the Alferd Packer Memorial String Band.

It’s notable here that the band is named for the one man in U.S. history convicted of cannibalism; appropriate for tax day, wouldn’t you say?

Then there are those of us who file extensions. This is called “delaying the inevitable.” Death and taxes deferred. Borrowed time. An extra mile before you slam headfirst into a brick wall.

Those who file on extension are usually missing information, or for some other reason just can’t get the forms all filled out on time. If they file their extension by April 15, then they have until Oct. 15 to file. If they don’t owe, it’s a relatively painless experience.

I think they should make the final filing deadline Oct. 31. If you’re looking for a day that really expresses how we feel when we file taxes, that’s it. You can see the conversation:

“What is that – some soulless creature that’s about to suck the life out of you?”

“No, no it’s just an auditor; I filed on extension.”

Tax day is hard on all of us, but I’ve always thought it has to be especially hard on truckers.

They need to catalog and keep track of hundreds, if not thousands, of little scraps of paper, to categorize them, to expose all the little details of their life to an accountant, someone who may be a complete stranger.

I’ve never been really, truly comfortable with that exposure, and I like my accountant. I trust him, too; there’s never a question about my private information remaining private, or that the taxes will be done right. It’s just the principle of the thing.

Even worse, you have to expose all of that information to the IRS. At least you choose the accountant. Who knows what kind of people look over your forms there at Magical Unhappy Land?

I’ll tell you what kind of people. Unhappy people. Crazy people.

I have friends who work at the IRS, and I’ve known many other folks over the years who had jobs there.

Some are just the kind of people you want handling taxes – cool-headed, dispassionate, ethical, Joe Friday “just-the-facts” kind of people. Folks who would say, I’m not here for your soul, I’m just here for all your money. You know, honest people.

(Just an aside, if you think they’d be upset at that, believe me, they wouldn’t. Those folks have a sense of humor about their jobs; mind you, it’s gallows humor, but hey, who needs a funny more, right?)

Many at the IRS are just plain unhappy. A co-worker here who was briefly employed at the Death Star (IRS Service Center) talked about the unhappy faces and gloomy attitudes. And it makes sense.

Think about it. No one likes to see them coming. Having the IRS show up at the office is like having “60 Minutes” show up; no matter what the story is, it won’t have a happy ending.

Then, there are the other folks at IRS. For the sake of discussion, we’ll refer to them as the “Aluminum Foil Hat People.”

Yes, you didn’t hear me wrong. “That” kind.

They seem to congregate at the IRS. Oh, they’re not a majority, not even that large a minority. But they’re present, spread out, looking over your tax forms, going over your most personal financial information, and then wrapping it in aluminum foil and spraying it with “special chemicals” so the aliens can’t read it from afar using their minds.

I won’t offer specific stories; most IRS folks are reluctant to discuss them “outside the family,” and the stories I hear are mostly overheard at a gathering of friends. It seems silly to share overheard conversations when I’m complaining to all of you about privacy.

But I’m perfectly free to talk about folks I’ve met. For instance, the guy who’s wearing headphones with the cord running into his shirt pocket. He’s singing along and looks perfectly normal, until you realize the headphones aren’t plugged into anything and his shirt pocket is empty.

I have known ones who heard voices, ones who talk to people who aren’t there, ones who look at you after 30 minutes of silence and scream “just what did you mean by that?” ones who say sentences that perhaps have never been heard before in the English language.

And then we have the ones who may not be speaking English. I’m not sure, but I certainly wasn’t sticking around for the translation.

With that in mind, I feel compelled to tell the other side. Some of the normal folks at IRS have their own stories of crazies. And some of those are doozies.

My favorite: the woman who opened an envelope, expecting a tax form. Instead, it was filled with a powdery substance, and a note.

The note read: “You took everything my husband had; thought you should have him as well.”

Ick. With a capital “I.”

So what is the point of this little rant, this unrelated aside, this description of one of life’s great miseries?

Taxes, like junior high school, are an unpleasant experience we all share, and that few if any of us can avoid. It isn’t going away. It humbles all equally. It does not discriminate. All must fall before its might.

So you might as well enjoy a laugh or two about it.

It’s certainly better than sitting around all gloomy and wondering where we’re going and what we’re doing in this handbasket.

Last week, we ran a program on technology, products and devices for truckers displayed at the Mid-America Trucking Show.

Land Line Magazine Senior Editor Jami Jones and Land Line Now Producer and Senior Sound Engineer Barry Spillman had walked the aisles of the show, looking for the stuff that was good, and the stuff that was snake oil.

One product that they weren’t sure of was Eco-Flaps – a kind of mud flap that looks like a plastic grille, a design intended to let air pass through the mud flap while stopping the mud and rocks the flap’s intended to stop.

So Barry and Jami both asked our listeners to tell us what their experience with the product was.

We were flooded. And it was great.

We heard that they do handle spray better. That they do still block mud and rocks. That truckers are seeing better fuel mileage when using them.

In fact, the only negative response we received was from a trucker who hadn’t even tried the Eco Flaps.

With all of that said, I think I need to make a few things clear.

First, we got the message. We don’t need more calls or e-mails – in fact, Jami Jones has been so flooded that she’s having trouble answering them all. We appreciate the response, and we thank all of you who called or wrote, but believe me, we have what we need.

Second, you might think we must be getting money for all this – absolutely not. We don’t even sell the ads that run on Land Line Now – that’s all handled by the folks at Sirius XM.

We did this because we see so much snake oil out there, and we report on it. But we know there are good inventions. And it sounds like this is one.

Every once in a while, we like to bring you the good news. And this is one of those times.

The issue of safe parking areas for truckers is nothing new. Pretty much every trucker on the road has encountered it at one time or another.

But the topic became all the more urgent with the death of Jason Rivenburg recently at an abandoned South Carolina gas station.

Because Jason lacked a secure, safe place to park, a thief was able to break into the cab and kill him during a robbery attempt.

Whatever happens to the suspect in that case is a matter for the courts. But what happens in regard to solving the ultimate problem that led to Jason’s death is in our hands – and the hands of our elected officials.

This isn’t a matter of truckers not planning their trips.

How many truckers have planned thoroughly, but not found that last parking space in a truck stop, not found the rest area that allows 10 hours parking, not found a shipper or receiver who would let them stay overnight – ending up in the parking lot of the abandoned gas station or empty strip mall, or even on the entrance ramp?

In Indiana, that’s a particular problem, since the state patrol has told us several times that they will ticket truckers parking on entrance and exit ramps, even if they’re out of hours. And now, that state and others are just plain closing rest areas down.

If you don’t stop, you’re in trouble. And if you do stop in some places, you’re in just as much trouble.

It’s a catch-22 – and it needs to stop.

As I said, this isn’t a matter of truckers not planning their trips. It isn’t a matter that private enterprise can solve, since they’ve had their shot and failed miserably.

If the government wants these rest periods, they need to ensure the parking is available, and that it’s safe, clean and well lit.

Let’s see how they do in meeting what is clearly an obligation.