Two weeks ago we drove up to Charlottesville for my nephew’s birthday party. As we pulled into a truck stop north of Rocky Mount for a kids’ bathroom break, I was struck by how desolate it was. There were maybe two trucks parked on the sea of surrounding asphalt. The lady behind the counter never looked over her newspaper. Rows of flashing slot machines pimping pre-paid calling cards sat empty, waiting for truckers who never arrive.
The kids did their thing and we turned to go, literally stepping around two store clerks blankly staring out the door while lazily fumbling with their cellphones. Clockwatchers.
With gas at $3.60 a gallon (and diesel at $4.20 a gallon), those clerks will be lucky to hold onto their jobs for another month. We get almost everything delivered to us by truck and now those truck drivers are getting crushed by soaring gas prices. This letter to the editor sums it up:
“…hundreds of independent North Carolina truck drivers [are] forced to park their trucks due to the outrageous fuel prices. The logging industry is one of our state’s biggest, but I as well as hundreds more are being put out of work. Hundreds have lost almost everything due to high fuel prices.”
This free-falling economy is putting the biggest squeeze on the little guy: the people who are just trying to make an honest living but are finding that tougher and tougher to do.
Its not pretty out there, folks. We could be heading for the worse recession I’ve seen.