For about a year now, owner-operator John Raffone, 49, of Clearwater, Fla., has been leased to Swift Transportation with this 2013 Kenworth T660, under a lease-purchase agreement with payments of $610 a week for 108 weeks.
You see, Raffone is also running for the Presidency of the United States — you’ll find his Federal Election Commission “statement of candidacy” form at that link. With no operating budget for the candidacy outside of the one that keeps his trucking business rolling, and relying on word of mouth via the road and social media to spread his message, Raffone’s by no means a traditional politician.
The 25-year over-the-road operator’s platform, if he could be said to have one beyond a desire to return high-level politics to the average person, however, is heavy on trucking-related issues. He hopes that by staging a run he can at least raise the profiles for what he says are in some senses “old-fashioned” trucking ideas. He’s running, he says, as a Democrat.
Raffone favors a return to pre-deregulation-style freight rates set with a formula simpler than the complicated lane-by-lane, commodity-by-commodity style of the past. He lays out his formula by trailer type in the post at this link. Cut-throat-type competition over freight is his target for elimination. 1980s trucking deregulation enabled such, he says, and ruined the industry for many.
He would give the DOT authority over shippers and receivers relative to detention time, with enforcement power delegated to the federal marshal’s service.
