You know, that saying used to be kind of a joke on the CB, especially around the truck stops. The "CB Rambos" would be getting into it with each other and then someone would key up and say "can't we all just get along?" Then the "Rambos" would usually turn on them.

The sad fact of it is that a lot of the "CB Rambo" mentality has now spilled over into the social media such as Facebook and Twitter. This was suggested by one of my Facebook friends earlier today when he made an innocent post on his own status and it ended up turning into an ugly attack by some of my friend's friends against my friend Heather (Trucker's Voice) and later myself for defending her.

When are we going to realize that we are all on the same side? It has been suggested many times that you'd be hard-pressed to get two truck drivers standing next to each other to agree on what color the sky is. There is no longer any unity in this industry. There are a lot of people in this industry that are all about the fame and notoriety. You hear them on the various trucking radio shows all the time. Their calls usually start out with "look what I did" or "I just talked to so-and-so" or "I just emailed my whatever." It's always "I." When someone else comes with a good idea, instead of saying "hey, that's a great thing you're doing, how can we get involved?" They choose to attack the person because they're jealous that they did not come up with it first. Or they try to steal the idea and claim the credit as if they came up with it.

And when that doesn't work, they attack. They show their lack of intelligence and professionalism by cursing, name calling and throwing wild, factless accusations around to try to discredit this person's efforts. And the sad fact of it is that the ones that end up getting hurt by all of this childish bickering are the ones that need the help the most.

You know, I may have only been driving Commercially for fifteen years, but I have been around this industry my entire life. My Father just recently retired from over forty years on the road and several million accident free miles. I remember riding with him as a child in the mid and late eighties. I remember how it used to be. The comraderie is all gone now. Drivers nowadays don't even have respect for themselves, let alone for anyone else. They speed, tailgate, don't move over for vehicles on the shoulder (which is now the law in many states). We keep screaming that we want to be treated like professionals, but we can't lead by our own example. If you want to be treated like a professional, you have to act like one. Not just on the highway, but in social media as well. On every site there is a delete button. If you don't like what's being offered, simply remove yourself. There is no need to curse or degrade someone because you don't agree with their views. There's no need to bash and slander them behind their back. My parents taught me years ago that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. There's a lot of cliche's on this- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, Don't start nothing, won't be nothing and so on.

Bottom line is this folks- nothing in this industry is ever going to change if we can't find a way to get along. All the bickering and in-fighting might be funny to those doing it, but in the grand scheme of things, it is extremely counter productive and serves no purpose.

We need to lead by example. We need to conduct ourselves in a professional manner at all times; even in the face of stupidity. Until we do this, we as an industry are never going to be taken seriously and we are never going to regain the respect that we so richly deserve.