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Trucks made to
drive without cargo in dangerous areas of Iraq
BY SETH
BORENSTEIN
Knight Ridder
Newspapers
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Empty flatbed trucks
crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the
soldiers who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade
bombs.
Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the
300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp
Anaconda near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their
lives driving empty trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of
Halliburton Inc., billed the government for hauling what they
derisively called "sailboat fuel."
Defense Department records show that Kellogg Brown and Root, a
Halliburton subsidiary, has been paid $327 million for "theater
transportation" of war materiel and supplies for U.S. forces in Iraq
and is earmarked to be paid $230 million more. The convoys are a
lifeline for U.S. troops in Iraq hauling tires for Humvees, Army
boots, filing cabinets, tools, engine parts and even an unmanned
Predator reconnaissance plane.
KBR's contract with the Defense Department allows the company to
pass on the cost of the transportation and add 1 percent to 3
percent for profit, but neither KBR nor the U.S. Army Field Support
Command in Rock Island, Ill., which oversees the contract, was able
to provide cost estimates for the empty trucks. Trucking experts
estimate that each round trip costs taxpayers thousands of
dollars.
Seven of the 12 truckers who talked to Knight Ridder asked that
they not be identified by name. Six of the 12 were fired by KBR for
allegedly running Iraqi drivers off the road when they attempted to
break into the convoy. The drivers disputed that accusation.
In addition to interviewing the drivers, Knight Ridder reviewed
KBR records of the empty trips, dozens of photographs of empty
flatbeds and a videotape that showed 15 empty trucks in one
convoy.
The 12 drivers, all interviewed separately over the course of
more than a month, told similar stories about their trips through
hostile territory.
"Thor," a driver who quit KBR and got his nickname for using a
hammer to fight off a knife-wielding Iraqi who tried to climb into
the cab of his truck, said his doctor recently told him he might
lose the use of his right eye after a December attack. Iraqis
shattered his windshield with machine gunfire and bullets whizzed by
his ear. Glass got in his eye, and he broke two bones in his
shoulder, he said.
His truck was empty at the time.
"I thought, `What good is this?'" he recalled.
Shane "Nitro" Ratliff of Ruby, S.C., who quit working for KBR in
February, recalled a harrowing trip in December.
As he was hauling an empty truck to Baghdad International
Airport, Iraqis threw spikes under his tires and a brick, a
cement-like clot of sand and gasoline through his windshield,
scattering shards of glass all over him and into his eyes.
"We didn't have no weapons; I had two rocks and a can of ravioli
to fight with," Ratliff said.
Ratliff caught up with his fleeing convoy in his damaged truck
and made it to the airport safely. He figured he'd pick up a load
there, but he was told to return with another empty trailer.
Iraqi insurgents have killed two civilian drivers.
Kellogg Brown and Root, the Army and the truckers gave different
reasons for why empty trucks were driven through areas that the
drivers nicknamed "rockville" and "slaughterhouse" for the dangers
they presented.
Some of the truckers charged that KBR is billing the Pentagon for
unnecessary work. KBR described the practice as normal, given the
large number of trucks it has delivering goods throughout Iraq. Army
officials said longer convoys may provide better security.
The Army's contract with KBR calls for daily truck runs, but
doesn't dictate how many trucks must be in a convoy or whether they
must be full, said Linda Theis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army
Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill. The area military
commander or KBR officials might choose to run empty trucks as a
security measure, she said.
KBR denied there was any problem with the truck runs. "KBR is
proud of the work we do for the military in Iraq. It is difficult
and dangerous work and requires a lot from our employees," said
Cathy Gist, a KBR spokeswoman. KBR truckers say they can earn about
$80,000 a year, which is tax-free if they remain in Iraq for a
year.
The empty trailer runs in Iraq peaked in January, February and
March of this year but have dwindled as violence has escalated and
forced contractors to reduce the number of trucks in each convoy and
how far they travel, the drivers said.
Earlier this year, as many as a third of all the flatbed trucks
in a 30-truck convoy were empty, they said. Much of the time,
drivers would drop off one empty trailer and pick up another empty
one for the return trip.
"There was one time we ran 28 trucks, one trailer had one pallet
(a trailer can hold as many as 26 four-foot square pallets) and the
rest of them were empty," said David Wilson, who was the convoy
commander on more than 100 runs. Four other drivers who were with
Wilson confirmed his account.
James Warren of Rutherfordton, N.C., one of the fired KBR
drivers, said he drove empty trucks through Iraq more than a dozen
times. Besides the risks to the truckers, the six National Guard or
Army escorts who provided security were also in danger, he said.
The KBR driver who shot the videotape of the 15 empty trailers on
the road in January described it this way: "This is just a sample of
the empty trailers we're hauling called `sustainer.' And there's
more behind me. There's another one right there. ... This is fraud
and abuse right here."
KBR documents viewed by Knight Ridder showed that one February
run included 11 "MT" (trucker lingo for empty) trailers, 11
containers (which could be full or empty) and six with pallets on
them. On another February day, three of 15 trucks were empty.
KBR officials said empty runs resulted from the lack of cargo at
one depot. The company ran all the trucks so they'd be available to
pick up cargo for the return trip. "This is the same as typical
commercial trucking operations work in the U.S.," said Gist.
Drivers discounted that explanation.
"Sometimes we would go with empty trailers; we would go both
ways," said one driver who goes by the nickname Swerve and declined
to be named for fear of retribution. "We'd turn around and go back
with empty trailers."
An independent expert on trucking economics put the cost of a
300-mile one-way run at a minimum of $1,050. Researcher Mark Berwick
at the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota
State University used a computer model, the fuel costs that
Halliburton charged the Army and the truckers' salaries to come up
with that figure.
Wilson and Michael Stroud, of the Seattle area, another former
KBR trucking convoy commander, said the actual costs were probably
far higher.
"It was supposed to be critical supplies that the troops had to
have to operate," said Wilson, who returned to his home in southwest
Florida after being fired by KBR. "It was one thing to risk your
life to haul things the military needed. It's another to haul empty
trailers."
Peter Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and the
author of "Corporate Warrior," a book on privatization of the
military, said the use of empty trucks illustrates how the
government's contracting system is broken.
The government gives out large cost-plus contracts in which
"essentially it rewards firms when they add to costs rather than
rewarding them for cost savings," Singer said.
Despite a massive increase in contracts for the war and
occupation of Iraq, the Army hasn't increased the number of
officials who oversee those contractors. Only 180 Army officials
monitor defense contracts and only a little more than a handful of
them are in Iraq, Singer said.
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(Mark Washburn of The Charlotte Observer and Mark Rogers of the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram contributed.)
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� 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. | 
