DAYTON — A nationwide call to independent truckers, asking them to pull their rigs off the road or slow to a crawl, was a hit or miss proposition Tuesday, April 1, illustrating the difficulty of coordinating any sort of cooperative protest among the drivers who crisscross the country.

"I don't have a union standing behind me," said Gordon Boyer, 53, a diesel-fuel hauler for Seaway Fuels Inc. "I can't afford to go on strike."

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Jim Falk, an independent truck driver from Uniondale, IN, fills his truck up with diesel fuel Tuesday April 1 at the TA truck stop in Eaton. Falk bought 153 gallons of diesel fuel for a total of $605.73.Click to enlarge

Some truckers, on CB radios and trucking Web sites, had called for a strike to protest the high cost of diesel fuel, saying the action might pressure President Bush to stabilize prices by using the nation's oil reserves. But the protests were scattered because major trucking companies were not on board and there did not appear to be any central coordination.

"You can't get truckers together on anything," Boyer said.

In some parts of the country, however, the strike seemed to have taken hold. On New Jersey's Turnpike, southbound rigs "as far as the eye can see" were moving at about 20 miles per hour near Newark, said Turnpike Authority spokesman Joe Orlando. Outside Chicago, three truck drivers were ticketed for impeding traffic on Interstate 55, driving three abreast at low speeds, said Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Luis Gutierrez.

Ohio Highway Patrol posts in Montgomery, Greene, Warren, Preble and Miami counties, however, had no reports of trucker-related issues on area highways Tuesday afternoon.

At the TA truck stop off Interstate 70 in Eaton, it was business as usual, with truckers stopping to fill up, maybe eat lunch, and hit the road. Still, the mood was somber as drivers watched their profit margins slip while the pump numbers soared.

"If I were home, I'd be parked," said Jim Falk, 52, of Uniondale, Ind. "As it is, I'm sticking at 55 all the way, and this truck will go as fast as I want it to. It's ticking me off a little to see other trucks blowing by."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2403 or ldempsey@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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