The State - News from Dec. 13, 1988

About 300 union truck drivers rallied in San Francisco before marching to the first in a weeklong series of hearings on deregulation of the trucking industry. The state Public Utilities Commission is expected to decide in a few months whether to alter a 1986 ruling that restored some regulations on major shippers after six years of complete deregulation. The truckers, most of them wearing blue and gold Teamsters union caps and carrying signs reading “Deregulation Is Death,” came from across Northern California to show their support for continued regulation. Rally organizers had expected a crowd of 1,000, which was to have received moral support from dozens of big rigs circling the plaza and blowing their air horns. Only two trucks showed up, however. “They were sidetracked by shippers,” Chuck Mack of the Teamsters told the crowd. “The employers got the word out to their drivers not to show up here.”