I reported yesterday of the possible take-over of Flying J by the Pilot Corporation. The search to find information has been grueling and I have to admit, a lot of it is just plain over my head so I have contacted Thune’s office and his man Dave has gotten the information I have and is using his tools to look further into it, but here is the gist of it:

Flying J is the “only” truck stop operation that is completely self reliant. Flying J is based out of Utah and how nice it was for Congress to block further energy exploration in Utah. Flying J has for years, had to legally fight from being blocked vital access to trucking tools of the trade. Access that had been blocked by tools that Pilot/Marathon had a monopoly on.

Pilot/Marathon on the other hand is totally reliant on foreign oil. Although they have about 2x the number of wholly owned truck stops; they have many more franchises under different names. They have always been the highest price fuel for independent truckers, averaging 3-7 cents higher per gallon at the pump for those of us who pay cash. They rely heavily on big corporate union trucking companies such as YRW.

Luckily for those of us who’s routes take us mainly from the upper midwest to the west coast, where there are enough competitors such as Flying J, so we are able to take advantage of the stations that are more friendly to small mom & pop operations like our that do not have bulk buying opportunities. Bulk buying at this time is set at such a high minimum consumption, there is no little guy like us that could ever meet the requirements to enroll.

The kicker: if Pilot is to get its way and take over Flying J, they would have a monopoly so they would have the leverage to set diesel fuel prices at the pump nationwide, thus further forcing more smaller truck stops out of business and thus forcing us to buy their fuel made from foreign oil vs being able to buy diesel fuel from American oil resources. Remember the price gouging during Katrina? Well, it was none other than Pilot/Marathon that was behind it and although they were never convicted in a court of law, they were able to pay off the claims behind closed doors so the majority of the public wouldn’t be the wiser. 

There seems to also be a union/Czar connection here, (remember those pesky secured creditors in the GM & Chrysler take-over that had their appeals denied? BINGO! Basically the same tactics used here) so that is why I turned it over to Thune’s office. They helped to stop the CARB, which is the CA emissions legislation that would have required refrigerated interstate commerce to adopt CA rules that were in conflict to other state laws and US laws. When Obama signed the executive order allowing CA to adopt more stringent rules for its state, thus giving CA the “green light” to get its programs going; he was banking on the ‘cap & trade” passing.

Just when you thought you had seen enough, here comes more pay to play take over tactics. Tactics to grow another company in order to be able to use their all to politically driven phrase of: “TOO BIG TO FAIL”.

Ya know, what better way to control our travels and the fuel our vehicles consume!