Fuel costs push truckers toward brink Immediate solutions needed, not just long-term proposals

LINCOLN – Excise taxes. A federal heavy-vehicle use tax. A road tax. Federal and state sales taxes on everything from fuel to ham and cheese sandwiches. And federal and state income taxes.

Add to that the various federal and state agencies – including the Department of Transportation, state police, Federal Motor Safety Carrier Administration – who must be appeased through licenses, inspections, fees and fines, and all of that can cost as much as $5,000 a truck.

Only when it is all paid can Larry Sidelinger of Damariscotta turn the key to his logging truck. Not that the taxes he pays or the banks which credit him keep stable rates, he said.

“Every time somebody sneezes in Iraq, our taxes go up 20 percent,” Sidelinger said during a meeting at the Knights of Columbus hall Saturday with legislators and 400 members of the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine and the Coalition to Lower Fuel Prices in Maine.

Government has always squeezed logging truckers, but diesel prices are pushing them out of business, truckers said. They predict a massive shutdown unless prices fall.

“We can barely keep our houses warm,” said John Porter, an independent trucker from Lee.

With diesel fuel prices rising – as high as $3.65 per gallon Saturday – costs have increased 23 percent in 90 days for some truckers, said Brian Souers, president of Treeline Inc., a Lincoln logging and hauling firm.

“We’re not making 4 percent,” Souers said. “The people who work for us need more money, too. Where’s it going to come from?”

“We don’t want a handout,” Souers added. “We are looking for a solution.”

Truckers would dislike passing costs to customers because they want their industry to stay competitive, yet fuel costs have eroded it for years. Scott Hannington of Hannington Timberlands of Wytopitlock said his company had 65 workers 21/2 years ago. Now it has 11. Robin Crawford & Son of Lincoln hauled 247,000 cords of wood in 2001. This year, the company might handle 80,000, Crawford said.

The speakers blamed many targets, including President Bush for a failed energy policy and Gov. John Baldacci for one of the nation’s most business-unfriendly states. They tagged commodities market speculators who inflate fuel prices; the Iraq war, which costs $9 billion monthly; themselves, for not organizing sooner; environmentalists and Arab greed.

Most politicians attending seemed to miss the truckers’ dire immediacy. Representatives for Maine’s U.S. senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both Republicans, read statements outlining pending legislation aimed at curbing price gouging and speculation – long-term solutions, if they work.

State Reps. Everett W. McLeod Sr., R-Lee; Jeffery A. Gifford, R-Lincoln; and Herbert E. Clark, D-Millinocket, gave rousing speeches but had no short-term answers. State Sen. Elizabeth Schneider, D-Orono, blamed societal greed and the Iraq war before discussing her plans to press legislators for an immediate suspension of diesel taxes and a joint resolution appealing to President Bush.

“You should support the people who want to exit Iraq,” Schneider said. “It would give us $9 billion a month.”

John M. Kerry, director of the state’s Office of Energy Independence and Security, pledged help from Baldacci’s administration within the next two weeks.

But no one could say how much help would be coming or when, and it’s needed now.

“Less than 10 percent of the people in this room will stay in this business if it keeps going like it is,” Medway businessman Dick Day said.