Clarksdale, Miss., resident, longtime Oklahoman and North Carolina-reared blues musicmaker Bill “Watermelon Slim” Homans plays a mean slide guitar. And “I was an above-average harp player,” he says of his early years making music, his first record of work-song blues coming out in 1972. But when he hears what young blues players like Craig Lawler and Jason Ricci can do with the harmonica today, he knows from his 61 years ever more clearly why he spent so many of them working sawmills and, for as much as 13 years, driving trucks, 11 of those full-time over-the-road. And he’s happy with being just “above average.”

“While he may not be in the major leagues, a double- or triple-A baseball player is playing a good deal better than the rest of us,” he told a small Nashville crowd at Carol Ann’s Cafe Sunday.

And Slim carries the authority of his long real-world working experience with him, of course. He’s done well for himself since going full-time as a working, touring musician in 2004, at the age of 55. He’s won several Blues Music Awards and a gathering notoriety as a spectacular performer through continuing hard work, whether with his band, the Workers, or solo with harmonica and guitar, as he played Sunday. He’s now on tour in the “Honey Wagon” (pictured), a one-ton van on which he’s put upwards of 300,000 miles; in a sense, he says, he’s still over-the-road, putting an average 70,000 miles on the wagon each of the last few years.

His new record with the Workers, meanwhile, “Escape From the Chicken Coop,” might be the next great country-blues, you-know-what-thumping truck driving record to come across the pike.

Well worth a listen, in any case. Catch him live if he’s coming through your town in the next few months before heading overseas. I know I will: he’ll be back in Nashville later this month. Dates follow.

March
17 Oklahoma City Limits, Oklahoma City, Okla.
18 Flytrap Music Hall, Tulsa, Okla.
19 Nathan P. Murphy’s, Springfield, Mo.
20 Chelsea’s, Eureka Springs, Ark.
22 Carol Ann’s, Nashville, Tenn.
23 Stevie Ray’s, Louisville, Ky.
25 Callahan’s, Auburn Hills, Mich.
26 State Theatre, Kalamazoo, Mich.
27 Legends, Chicago, Ill.
28 Beale on Broadway, St. Louis, Mo.
31 Zoo Bar, Lincoln, Neb.

April
1 Lift Lounge, Omaha, Neb.
2 Blues on Grand, Des Moines, Iowa
3 Knucklehead’s Saloon, Kansas City, Mo.
17 Juke Joint Festival, Clarksdale, Miss.
30 Mojo Kitchen, Jacksonville Beach, Fla.

May
1 Bradfordville Blues Club, Tallahassee, Fla.
2 Common Grounds, Gainesville, Fla.
6 Gerald Veasley’s Jazz Base, Wyomissing, Pa.
7 Chan’s, Woonsocket, R.I.
8 Bull Run, Shirley, Mass.
14-15 Warmdaddy’s, Philadelphia
18 BB King Blues Club, New York City

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A great story in the California-based Porterville Record highlighted the difficulties being faced by a particluar 5-truck fleet in Ducor, Calif., Andromeda Transport, owned by Dave Schwartz. Schwartz (pictured, right, with his mechanic), as he told reporter Sarah de Crescenzo, considers himself a “modern-day environmentalist” in his commitment to keeping his older trucks in tip-top operating condition, thus enhancing their longevity, of course, and keeping them out of landfills and hard at work doing what they do best.

But his five vehicles’ powertrains are all of sufficient age that, come 2011, they’ll be illegal without retrofit if the current Truck & Bus rule from the California Air Resources Board stays in effect, requiring most pre-2007 engines to be retrofit with diesel particulate filters. Schwartz’s five trucks puts Andromeda just above the threshold required for the small-fleet exemption to the reg through 2014 for fleets of three trucks or less. It’s not an inexpensive proposition.

As Crescenzo wrote, “Between $40,000 and 50,000 would suffice for a retrofit, Schwartz estimated, to get one of his trucks up to standard.” Click the thumbnail of the Record photo above for the full story.

I reported on the rules that were coming down the pike for 2010, including retrofit options, in Overdrive’s October 2009 issue here.

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In my “Feeling the heat” piece — part of the regulatory package of stories that’s featured in the March Overdrive – about certain Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 pilot test carriers’ experience with the new comprehensive enforcement system, which goes live nationwide in July, there’s a lengthy sidebar dedicated to issues of fairness and accountability. Many drivers and carriers alike are bristling at the real-time points-based system’s addition of points immediately to a carrier’s score for problems with loads, for instance, that drivers are not able to see being loaded; for accidents where there is no fault assigned on-site; or where it’s clear the big-rig driver was on the wrong end of somebody else’s unsafe party (”If I’m stopped at a stoplight and some idiot drunk with a carload of people crashes into the back of my trailer, I’m cited for four injuries in that crash,” said Dart Safety Vice President Gary Volkman).

The full text of the story can be read in our digital edition, and I’d recommend it for a look into what’s coming. Here, I thought I’d take a moment to highlight the remarks of one Steve Bugg (pictured), a company driver for Kennesaw Transportation, who had some questions of his own for FMCSA about how exactly the agency planned to allow for drivers’ records in their internal driver-rating system to be cleared of speeding tickets thrown out in court, not to mention the fact that, under CSA 2010, a simple speeding warning will count toward carriers’ scores, giving that warning, in the end, a much bigger weight than it’s ever had in the past.  

Kennesaw, under the CSA 2010 pilot test program in Georgia, experienced FMCSA interventions and changed their policy toward driver speeding infractions to include warnings, for instance, as other carriers out there have done as well.

Bugg took those changes in stride, as have other drivers, seeing clearly the increased cooperation between drivers/leased owner-operators and their carriers that CSA 2010 is necessitating. However, he also echoes a commonly held point of view among drivers about the seeming “guilty until proven innocent” nature of being held accountable in carrier safety scores for roadside observations that don’t carry any due process of law with them. My video interview with him (below)makes these points clear. 

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Soft freight and high fuel got you down? You’re not alone. Though business for the nation’s truckers has picked up since the extremely slow period we all saw last year, difficulties continue for many, and for two independent truckstops in Michigan the pressures were just too much. Writing in the Battle Creek Enquirer, Andy Fitzpatrick told a story today at once of long-running business difficulties brought to the breaking point and rich, well-remembered history.  

The Te-Khi Travel Court and Truck Stop at I-94 and 11-mile road, today next-door to FireKeepers Casino, was opened in 1963 and lived through times recalled by so many as the glory-filled bygone days of trucking. It lived through tumutuous times, too, as Fitzpatrick wrote: “In 1978 the Te-Khi sheltered 100 truckers and other drivers while a January winter storm raged through the area. In 1979 the truck stop witnessed an independent truckers’ strike …”

The Te-Khi, an adjacent restaurant and its sister stop, the Tekon Travel Plaza in Tekonsha, Mich., had been undegoing bankruptcy reorganization since 2004, and, unable to satisfy creditors or transfer to new ownership, operators decided to liquidate.

But as Fitzpatrick quoted Operations Manager Vince Bedwell: “Despite the local and national economic crisis and dramatic changes in the petroleum industry over the past several years, we have been able to maintain the business for longer than many independent truck stop operators.”

Some of the difficulties of the fuel and truckstop business — and well as operator ingenuity in the face of them — are detailed in Misty Bell’s sidebar to my story dissecting the price of a gallon of diesel in the March issue of Truckers News, now live via www.truckersnews.com (scroll down and click on the “Money in the Tank” thumbnail image of this month’s cover, or click on it here). Give it a read when you can. As it turns out, when fuel skyrockets, most truckstop operators are just as peeved as the rest of us.   

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It’s been a wild haul for Jasmine “Jazzy” Jordan, the 17-year-old Olympic-caliber cross-country runner who recently reached the halfway, 1,500-mile mark in her run across the U.S., carried out to raise awareness for truck driver health and health-insurance availability. You will remember Jazzy from my post in November, about her appearance on the Internet radio show TruckStar.

She’s on her way to Memphis today, and in a few weeks will be passing through my home base of Nashville, where I’ll hopefully be able to catch up with her. On her way toward Tennessee she’s been presented the key to a city (pictured, as Texarkana, Ark. mayor Horace Shipp declares Feb. 11, 2010, Jazzy Jordan Day) and, shortly thereafter, visited by a satirical comic character created by Jim McCarter, one half of the band and new media mavens the Keys Truckers, who reported recently on their blog that good friend Mr. Bobby Boofay had a fun run with Jazzy in Arkansas himself a couple weeks back. Boofay (that satirical comic creation of Jim’s I was talking about ) didn’t make it very far as he ran with Jordan, as you can see at their site, but the same can’t be said about the Keys, who are donating a quarter of every $1 download of their music to Jazzy’s campaign. (And fine music it is — particularly their “Draggin’ My Wagon,” a tribute to DriverGeoff I’ve written about in the past.) Follow www.thekeystruckers.com for more.  

Nor can the same be said for Jazzy, who’s logged more than 1,700 miles on foot since she began. Go, Jazzy, go! Visit www.runwithjazzy.com for more information about donations, which benefit the St. Christopher Truckers Development and Relief Fund, providing financial assistance to truck drivers in medical cost binds.

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Beth Brelje, writing in the Pocono Record of Pennsylvania, visited with several truckers waiting out a snowstorm in a Wal-Mart parking lot off I-84. Such waits have been legion for the nation’s haulers this season, with record amounts of snowfall hitting places where a snow deluge is not such a common thing. It may be common enough in the northern state of Pennsylvania, of course, but not such that authorities didn’t move to ban truck traffic on I-84 at a certain point in the day.

It put independent owner-operator Scott Haley (pictured; photo by Brelje — click it for her full story) 14 hours off-schedule with a load of large cable spools bound for Texas, Brelje wrote. Weigh that against potential fines of anywhere from $50-$500, though, and potential extra liability for any crash involvement, whether his fault or not, during the commercial vehicle ban, and Haley was unequivocal in his decision to get off the road, despite the fact that many other truckers were ignoring the ban. 

“For some, ignoring the ban cost time anyway,” wrote Brelje. ”An eastbound tractor-trailer jackknifed on I-84 in New York long after the ban went into effect. The driver had to go through Pennsylvania to get there.” Jackknifing is the most extreme consequence of driving in unsafe snow conditions, and there have been plenty instances of those this year (you may remember Baltimore columnist Michael Dresser’s hyperbolic declaration of jackknifing truckers as ”Public Enemy No. 1″ in mid-February). There are many other possible crash outcomes, of course, which will cost you time and money well above what stopping for a few extra hours safely will. Most drivers know how best to stay out of crashes — if it gets bad enough, just shut down the rig.

Click on the thumbnail image of operator Haley for Brelje’s full story. And stay safe out there.

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I missed the news of the passing Tim Costello (pictured) in late December last year. Coming across it via the website of the New York Times, which had ran a nice roundup in the paper of his life and work, I’m struck as always by what so many individual haulers are able to accomplish in addition to keeping American supplied in their long paths across the nation’s roadways.

Costello, 64 when he succumbed to pancreatic cancer last year, spent more than two decades behind the wheel, in fuel delivery for a time but also as a long-haul driver. Along the way, he advocated for workers, studied long and hard in his in-cab office and coauthored several books of labor history, sociology and advocacy. Most notable among those books, perhaps, is the year 2000-released Globalization From Below: The Power of Solidarity, which has since become, the Times reported, “a primer for labor advocates who argued that globalization was destroying jobs and reducing wages in the United States while exploiting workers in Asia.”

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The $2 bill, you may not have known, was a calling card of Ruan Transport founder John Ruan, who passed away at age 96 on Sunday, Feb. 14, and was remembered fondly by many in a lighthearted tribute ceremony in Des Moines attended last week Thursday by more than 600 people.

After the celebration, reported David Elbert in the Des Moines Register, “guests were presented with $2 bills bearing Ruan’s signature and a small caricature of him adjusting a bow tie.” Ruan was well-known for wearing bowties, Elbert notes, going on to explain that Ruan used $2 bills frequently after “an early business associate gave Ruan a $2 bill to pay for gasoline”; young trucker Ruan had run out of fuel money.

Of course, he bounced back from that down time to build one of the “largest private trucking companies in the country,” as Elbert had it. Read his full story here.

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In the November issue of Truckers News, my editor and colleague Randy Grider wrote about Michael Mooney (pictured) in his lead column, “Magic Man.” Mooney, a performer based in Cartersville, Ga., is deft with all manner of magician’s tricks, but he also has a compelling story to tell, which he never misses the opportunity to do.

One of his regular haunts, the TravelCenters of America location in Cartersville, offers plenty such opportunity, in addition to what he views as chance to give back to the group of people who kept him going during tough times: the nation’s truck drivers. As Grider wrote in the his story, “Mooney isn’t a trucker himself, but he calls truckstop his ’second home,’ and truckers — whether he knows them personally or not — are his extended family.”

Mooney spent many years down on his luck and essentially homeless, during which time the kindness and generosity of the nation’s haulers got him through, and back on his feet. At the Cartersville TA, he says, he can often be found performing for drivers gratis, or offering a ride to Wal-Mart nearby or elsewhere. “I’ve taken guys 100 miles to the Freightliner dealership to get a part for the truck,” Mooney says. “They were good to me back when, so I’m trying to return the favor. I do it on my own. If I don’t have anything to do, I just offer my assistance to them.” And, of course, he may “show my magic tricks off,” he adds, along the way. 

Watch for him elsewhere — he’s lately put out feelers to industry reps and may take his act to some of the major truck shows this year, with any luck. He’s open to working trucking company events, too, he says. “This means a lot to me – like I said, I lived at truckstops for a time, and I’m not the only one. There are many homeless people out there in truckstops – truckers’ kindheartedness, generally, allowed me to get back on my feet and I’m sure has helped many others over the years.

“I’d be happy with doing more shows for drivers. I think it’d be awesome, and the thing is, I’m not out to get rich or anything, just to cover my expenses and have a little in my pocket when I’m done.”

To see an example of his show, complete with magic and testimonial, check out the video at this link.

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