Mike Parkhurst: Leading the Last Cowboys

"Overdrive--The Voice of the American Trucker," proclaims the magazine's cover; "The Price of Truth $1.50." Below this modest legend appears a full color photograph of a gleaming Peterbilt, or Kenworth, or a White Freightliner, with all chrome bumpers and wheels and stacks, always accompanied by a busty young model very scantily attired.

Its pages are filled with material for independent, over-the-road truckers, the owner/operators whose shutdowns last winter briefly paralyzed the trucking industry and led to outbreaks of violence nationwide.

There are articles about every aspect of trucking: equipment reviews about engines and transmissions; pictures of prettily built trucks of every make and model; stories about trucking, and articles about how to get ahead in the business.

The tone of the magazine is consciously directed at a certain image of the American independent trucker: "the last of America's pioneers," Overdrive calls him. He is tough but gentle, this man; he is filled with wanderlust and a craving for adventure, but he's still good to the wife and kids at home. He's free and American, and a crafty yankee through and through.

Yet Overdrive is more than a simple trade journal, and has been for its entire 13-year existence. It has established a minor reputation as a muckraking investigative journal concerned with all aspects of long-distance transportation and trucking.

The magazine was started in 1961 by an ex-trucker named Mike Parkhurst. Parkhurst came to some national prominence during the shutdowns last winter. Whether or not the truckers' strike actually originated with Parkhurst and his staff, as some suspect, they spent a lot of time and money coordinating it, keeping information going to the striking drivers, and attempting to convince them to hold out for more complete concessions from the government.

Parkhurst is a young, energetic-looking fellow who might be best described as a radical capitalist. He believes passionately in free enterprise, and would like to see the trucking industry freed from the restraints of governmental regulation to allow owner/operators to compete with large trucking fleets.

Parkhurst's goal is admirable if extremely difficult: he would like to organize independent truckers, those renegade cowboys of American commerce, to work together for their own interests.

He began driving trucks when he was 18 years old, picking up milk for a wholesale company. When he was 20, he bought his own tractor-trailer rig. Over the next few years, he hauled various commodities, including produce, furniture and comic books, to various parts of the country. He joined and left the International Brotherhood of Teamsters twice during that time.

After ten years of driving, Parkhurst says he was sick of the "harassment" suffered by drivers on the road from police, the government, large companies and citizens, and he hoped to start an association of truckers to work together against such problems. He started Overdrive as a means of reaching truckers, of establishing a platform on which to base the organization.

Parkhurst first sent flyers to truckstops, asking truckers to respond with their ideas for a new magazine. He intended to publish something more serious and businesslike than the "gossip sheets" that had been around previously.

After getting a favorable resporise, he published the first issue of Overdrive in September 1961. Twenty-five hundred copies were mailed out free to truck stops around the country; the owners were told to sell them for a dime, keep the proceeds, and reorder. By December of that year Parkhurst ran an edition of 16,000.

Parkhurst's association of truckers finally got off the ground in November of 1966. Roadmasters is a "voluntary association of concerned truckers," Parkhurst says, but "not a union." Five classes of membership are offered to owner/operators and company drivers, with benefits ranging from life and disability insurance to round-the-clock legal assistance for members in trouble with the law.

Roadmasters has gone to court a number of times in truckers' behalf, winning cases ranging as far afield as the recent abolition of the Iowa state justice of the peace system. In 1967, Roadmasters challenged the con-stitutionality of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which regulates national trucking.

Last December Roadmasters was the first organization for truckers to endorse the national shutdowns, and according to Overdrive it "spent more money and man hours coordinating truckers than all other groups of truckers combined."

A critical problem during the shutdowns was that no one knew who started them or who was running them. There was no union involved, no one committee presenting a set of demands. Caught in a bind by rising fuel prices, owner/operators got restless last year; in December a brief but massive shutdown followed, with highway blockades and assorted acts of violence. The truckers said they were asking not just for fuel price rollbacks, but higher and more profitable weight, length and speed limits.

When the December shutdown produced nothing but spectacular headlines, the truckers again took matters into their own hands in February. Avoiding inflammatory blockading tactics for the most part now, the independents effectively shut down national trucking for over a week. Violence again attracted the media, but little discussion was present over specific issues of federal regulation. When the government responded with a 6-per-cent freight surcharge for regulated carriers, the strike began to collapse.

At this point, a great deal of confusion developed. It was painfully apparent that no one knew who spoke for the truckers, least of all the truckers themselves. While newspapers reported the shutdowns as over, many drivers were still holding out in truckstops, looking for greater concessions. Yet some returned to work immediately, snatching up loads untouched by the strikers.

Overdrive never did endorse the settlement of the strike. The 63-per-cent surcharge was insufficient to cover rising costs, and applied only to ICC-regulated carriers. Most independent drivers haul commodities exempt from ICC regulation and so received no benefit from the increase.

Parkhurst hedges somewhat on the exact role he and Overdrive played in the shutdowns. He does not see himself in any leadership position among truckers. In an interview last month, he said, "Truckers don't want somebody up there saying, 'Hey you're gonna do this or you're gonna do that,' so we've been very careful, in stating the facts, that we act as a funnel for all their problems and focus them as best we can. I suppose that there are some truckers that look upon us as being a leader or their leader. I don't. I just look on it as knowing more what's happening, or what should happen, than anybody else."

Overdrive got considerable criticism during the shutdowns and since from truckers who accused them of using the strike to boost their own sales. Parkhurst emphatically denies this, and claims in fact that over a hundred truck stops returned their newstand copies of the magazine in protest against its policies.

More problems came Parkhurst's way last spring, when, he says, the Justice Department attempted to seize all the records of the magazine. The reason given was to prevent another shutdown scheduled for the middle of May; but Parkhurst feels the attempt's real purpose was to discover sources used in an article detailing certain questionable connections between Attorney General William Saxbe and the Teamsters. Overdrive filed a countersuit against Saxbe alleging possible violations of Constitutional rights, and the case was dropped.

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Dissatisfied by the settlement finally reached in the February shutdown, Overdrive magazine called for another one, to begin May 13. It was publicized in March, April and May editions of the magazine, and was to include demonstrations in Washington. Overdrive sent leaflets and newsletters to truck stops, and personally contacted truckers all across the country in an effort to gather support.

It was a bust. According to the newspapers, truck traffic remained virtually the same throughout the nation. No violence was reported, though Parkhurst claims there was some. And the demonstrations in Washington washed out.

Parkhurst holds the media largely to blame for the failure of the May shutdown, though he attributes it to other factors as well. Press coverage was limited, he says, because "there was no violence, or very little violence. There were no blockades, there was nothing for the press to look at. If you don't have something dramatic to focus a camera lens on, then nothing's going to happen."

Yet he claims that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of truckers quietly shut down their rigs for the two days. Besides the lack of press coverage, Parkhurst blames the strike's failure on lack of understanding and determination among truckers, and the fact that emotional and financial resources had been severely drained last winter.

Parkhurst refuses to discuss specifically plans for the near future. "We learned one lesson," he says. "Don't advertise what you're going to do in advance." Industry and produce warehouses were given ample time to stockpile supplies and thus offset the effects of any shortages, he says.

Overdrive has proposed some federal legislation that Parkhurst claims "would eliminate the need for any more shutdowns as far as the independent truckers go." The legislation is described in the July issue of Overdrive, which is dedicated to a "Truckers' Declaration of Independence." Briefly put, this legislation would allow independent owner/operators to compete for business with large trucking companies.

Under the present arrangement, they cannot. Interstate trucking is regulated by the ICC, which grants "operating rights" to carriers to haul certain commodities over certain routes. Independent operators have three options: they can haul "exempt" commodities, such as produce and cattle; they can lease their trucks to and drive for licensed carriers, thus virtually eliminating their independent status; or they can apply for operating rights.

The last option is virtually meaningless, since the larger companies can oppose license applications and usually win.

One result of this situation is that a produce hauler, going from California to Boston with a load of lettuce, must legally return empty to pick up his next load; and there aren't many cattle or produce runs west out of New England. Thus a fourth and rather common option is to haul illegal loads and hope not to get caught. The trucker who goes, though, runs the risk of expensive fines.

Parkhurst's bill would reclassify owner/operators, while driving their own trucks, as having unlimited operating rights for interstate commerce. It would not allow them to undercut established rates; competition would have to be on the basis of service provided.

The bill has not yet been proposed by any member of Congress. Rep. Dan H. Kuykendall (R-Tenn.) says he is "interested" in the bill, but has not made any decision on whether to sponsor it, according to a spokesman in his office.

Parkhurst expects stiff opposition to the bill from a broad spectrum of transportation concerns, including the railroads, the American Trucking Associations, Inc., the Teamsters and especially the large fleet trucking companies. Yet he says he hopes that the independent truckers acquired enough national standing last winter to be able to put the bill through on their own.

Parkhurst is an idealist and a crusader, and thinks of himself as fighting the good fight for truckers around the country. He is an extension of the trucking mystique: tough, independent, but thoroughly American in his role as publisher and labor leader.

Overdrive's editorial policy is "to print the truth." There is but one truth to Parkhurst, and it is as pointed and uncompromising as the outlook of any political radical. Yet Parkhurst remains a firm believer in the American system, in democracy and free enterprise.

Overdrive writes constantly of the same sorts of political inequities that provide fuel for radical fires. A recent issue of the Overdrive Newsletter complains that "Truckers will continue to get fined for minor traffic violations and lawyers and accountants will continue to escape fines for major violations because truckers don't become legislators and judges, but lawyers and accountants do." Overdrive has also gone after the oil companies and big business in general, leading some to suspect it of political radicalism. Yet this is hardly the case.

Parkhurst's support for the independent trucker does not particularly extend to other areas of society. As long as truckers get their fuel and their loads, and can drive untroubled on the roads, he has little or no complaint with American society. He is opposed to any form of socialism beyond social security, and attacks mass transit with a vengeance.

Parkhurst does see the possibility of enlightened self-interest leading the truckers to become less conservative in their political views; but he thinks that this depends on education and understanding. He claims that many, perhaps most, truckers "can't see beyond the hoods of their trucks," and it is his role to bring them to a wider view of things. "Whether that's leadership, or whether it's education, or knowledge, I don't care what you call it. I call it knowledge, and understanding of what needs to be done," he says.

Asked about possible common interests between the independent truckers, many of whom haul produce, and the United Farm Workers, Parkhurst says, "It would take a lot of education to explain to truckers what the common round was, what the average trucker, at this stage of the game, could care less whether those grapes and lettuce are picked by machines, Mexicans, Negroes, blacks, colored, or whatever they're called, as long as he gets that load. Now, if it could be shown to them that the following things could be accomplished by aligning themselves either with or against the United Farm Workers, then they might come around. But that's an educational process of at least a year, of a lot of articles, and a lot of personal involvement."

The failure of the May 13 shut-down to materialize effectively damaged Parkhurst's and Over-drive's credibility as a powerful representative of the independent truckers. This was a critical issue last year, when various groups were vying for leadership. Parkhurst claims that Overdrive-Roadmasters represents more independent truckers than any other group, and accuses other organizations of padding their memberships.

His enthusiasm remains undiminished, but it is questionable now how great his leadership of the independents is. Basically, they became truckers to avoid tying up to anything or anyone, and are proud of their lack of affiliations with unions and other organizations.

Parkhurst's future as a publisher seems assured; Overdrive is a secure financial operation. Whether he will realize his aim of organizing the independents is anyone's guess.