Truckers Taking the High Road, Test Firm Says

An estimated 20,000 big rigs roar up and down two main San Joaquin Valley highways every day, and the area’s leading drug-testing firm says 15% of the drivers are high on cocaine, marijuana or PCP.

While the vast majority of the truckers are safe and sober drivers who form a vital link between Northern California and Los Angeles, stoned truckers on the valley’s two north-south arteries are causing a disproportionate number of accidents.

California Highway Patrol figures show that on old Highway 99 between Bakersfield and Modesto, truckers are at fault in an average of one accident each day. On newer, safer Interstate 5, the situation is better but still alarming--one truck-involved accident every other day.

Those accidents cause dozens of deaths and millions of dollars in damage every year.

With possible liability lawsuits hanging over their heads, more and more trucking firms are seeking the services of Bill Dixon, head of the valley’s largest drug-testing firm.

Dixon’s Pathological & Clinical Services Laboratory in Fresno conducts 1,000 drug tests a week for San Joaquin Valley government agencies and businesses, including a steadily growing number of trucking firms over the past few years.

About 15% of the truckers test positive for illegal drug use, Dixon said, mostly for cocaine, marijuana and PCP.

“Amphetamines are starting to make a little bit of a comeback, but they are not as prevalent as you might think,” he added, referring to a stereotype of truck drivers as wild-eyed, pill-popping “speed freaks.”

Dixon sometimes is called upon to serve as a toxicological detective. A Fresno packing company owner, perplexed by the deteriorating condition of his recently built warehouse, called Dixon and asked about the effects of marijuana.

“The sides of the building were bowed out and there were evenly spaced puncture marks all over the walls,” Dixon said of the warehouse. “It looked like someone had sat on the roof and squashed it.”

Dixon determined that warehouse workers, under the influence of drugs, had been staging forklift derbys inside the building and often accidentally rammed the walls of the building.

“The owner was a little naive about drugs,” Dixon laughed.

Dixon said employers seeking drug tests for workers were growing more frustrated by worker absences, on-the-job accidents and lower production, problems usually attributable to drug use.

Dixon said drug testing of truckers has been relatively free of controversy because the Teamsters union has not actively opposed such tests. Other unions and employee organizations, however, have opposed such tests.

Bill Krieg, a Fresno attorney and chairman of the legal committee for the Fresno branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said drug testing without reasonable cause is in direct violation of a person’s right to privacy.

“Even for people in safety-related areas--pilots, truckers. . .--that does not give employers or the government a right to indiscriminate testing,” Krieg said.

While Dixon sympathizes with an employer’s desire to keep drugs out of the workplace, he doesn’t see widespread drug testing as a cure for America’s drug problem.

“Drug screening and testing is one small element in the overall treatment of the drug problems,” he said, advocating that companies also implement employee assistance programs for workers with drug problems.

He is aware of the dangers of errors that can cost innocent workers their jobs and complains that toxicology laboratories aren’t required to be licensed or use standardized procedures.

He said his lab did follow-up work on another lab’s results that identified a worker as a drug user. It turned out the worker was on medication for epilepsy and Dixon’s lab helped the worker get his job back.