By John Byczkowski and John Eckberg
The Cincinnati Enquirer

West Chester police officers confer outside the terminal where five people were shot Thursday morning. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

Trucking is one of the nation's deadliest industries, but that's largely because of road accidents, not homicides.

The trucking and warehousing industry recorded 584 fatalities in 2002 - more than manufacturing, food stores or restaurants, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. It trailed only construction and agriculture in the number of workers who died on the job.

Three-quarters of the fatalities in trucking are road accidents.

The industry recorded 15 homicides in 2002, putting it well behind police, food stores, bars and restaurants and taxicabs.

Still, the trucking industry brings together a number of factors that can contribute to workplace violence.

Richard V. Denenberg, co-director of Workplace Solutions, a nonprofit foundation in Red Hook, N.Y. that is devoted to preventing violence in the workplace, said three factors appear to contribute to violence between co-workers:

• A worker with a personality type that might resort to violence.

Lynn Jenkins, a senior scientist at NIOSH who studies workplace violence and prevention, said coming up with a profile drawn from perpetrators of workplace violence might not be helpful in prevention. The typical profile is a white male, 35 or older, a veteran of military service who takes pride in his work.

But applying that profile isn't effective: "What if you do label half your workforce as potentially violent?" Jenkins asked.

• A high level of workplace stress. Denenberg called this "a chronic stress, day after day after day that you can't escape."

• Failure to address the warning signs of impending violence.

Across a dozen case studies compiled in his book The Violence-Prone Workplace (Cornell University Press), Denenberg found situations of tension between co-workers were allowed to simmer until they exploded into violence.

"The problem is either (co-workers) don't see the signals or they don't know what to do," he said.

Jenkins said it's important that companies have a mechanism that allows workers to report violence and threats. In many workplace shootings, workers made specific threats - saying they were going to come back with a gun - but no one took the threats seriously.

How these factors played out in the West Chester shootings on Thursday isn't known.

The suspect resigned from the company's Atlanta facility in November 2001, and his connection to the office in West Chester wasn't clear.

What's certain is that trucking can be a high-stress industry.

Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, a Missouri-based group that has 103,000 members, said that many trucking companies have become powder keg workplaces since the deregulation of the industry in 1980.

In recent years, as many manufacturers tried to reduce costs by reducing inventory - so that parts for assembly or packaging arrive just in time for distribution - the responsibility for delivering those materials in a timely manner often falls directly upon the driver.

"It is a high-stress industry,'' Spencer said. "Most freight moves on an adjusted time delivery schedule, meaning you have less than a two-hour window to be where you're supposed to be and if you don't make that delivery, a production line shuts down somewhere.

"And it's not like truckers are rolling in bucks for what they do. The average income is maybe $35,000 to $40,000 a year, and it's not uncommon for drivers to be out for up to three weeks at a stretch or longer. They sometimes spend every waking hour trying to work, load, drive or deliver.''

In addition, Denenberg said, some truckers take drugs to deal with their stress, and that can contribute to violence.

A 1990 study of 185 truck driver fatalities by the National Transportation Safety Board found drugs involved in one third of the deaths. The most common drugs were alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines.

"Taking stimulants is a well-known way truckers cope with work stresses," Denenberg said.

E-mail johnb@enquirer.com or jeckberg@enquirer.com