Truckers can’t work from home, and many are discovering the can’t work at all. Recently we wrote about how bankruptcies were mushrooming, and a few weeks ago we wrote about how the mortgage mess will clobber credit buyers before long as government regulators crack down. Truckers are suffering from it too.

These days it costs over $1,000 to fill an 18-wheeler, and trucking companies are failing at what some call “catastrophic levels.” Industry analysts estimate that 42,000 trucks, or 2.1 percent of the nation’s capacity, were idled in the first quarter—with nearly 1,000 companies going bankrupt.

The cost of diesel fuel has caused a cash-flow problem for truckers, forcing them to look for loans for basic operating expenses including the cost of license tags, insurance, maintenance, and, of course, fuel. But the credit-crunch brought on by the mortgage crisis has bankers cutting their losses and repossessing rigs.

Here’s the scary part—thanks to the falling U.S. dollar, Russia and eastern Europe are buying those trucks, and thus eliminating the rigs from the U.S. marketplace for good. That may not seem like a big deal in our slow economy, when there still are too many trucks chasing too few loads. But when U.S. demand picks up, though, there will be fewer trucks—and higher shipping prices. And when the price of transportation goes up, the price of goods goes up

Things are gonna get worse before they get better.

There are a growing number of online employment services that either specialize in telecommuting or have a special telecommuting section. But watch out, some of them are nothing more than scams.

Everything may seem like it’s on the up and up–reasonable salaries, professional website, even a warning to watch out for scams–but when we looked closely we spied something fishy going on.

Our first clue was that the website required you to pay to register. Now what sense does that make? If the site is in the business of finding good employees they can rent to employers, why would the block the road to success with a toll booth?

Other sites don’t charge to join or register, but they do charge a fee to cover their ‘administrative costs’. That’s total bull. All businesses have administrative costs, and those are paid by customers (employers) not employees. Remember, a temp agency charges employers for your work, say $25/hour, and they pay you, say $20/hr. That $5 an hour difference is supposed to cover their costs and also a bit more–that’s called profit.

Our second clue something wasn’t right with some sites was that they charge you before they even look at your resume. If they were serious about getting you work doncha think they’d might be interested in what you can do, even to the extent of testing you on things you claim you can do? ‘Real’ temp agencies certainly do. Temp agencies are very interested in qualified folks because their income depends on an on-going relationship with their clients, your potential employers. If they hire incompetent people their customers will be unhappy and look elsewhere.

The smoking gun clue, though, was the fact that these sites charge employers, their customers, a fee to register. Why would an employer pay a penny before they knew the company had qualified candidates for their job openings?

But don’t get the wrong idea, just because a site doesn’t charge a fee to join doesn’t mean it’s not a scam. The safest bet is to be sure you don’t pay a penny to get a job. Honest employers are happy to pay recruiting and training costs.

Your bill says you watched that pay-per-view movie 13 times, non-stop. So you call the cable company, and the idiot you talk to says that’s tough, the computer says you watched it so you did, and you’ll pay for it or we’ll turn of your cable service, so there. Well guess what, boys and girls, you can be one of those idiots too!

That’s right, cable companies are looking for people to “work from home educating and assisting our customers with their bills, which can be very complicated. You will be responsible for ensuring it’s a great experience for each and every customer. The work is fast paced and your performance will be closely monitored.”

Have you ever, even once, had “a great experience” talking to your cable company? Or for that matter has a Billing Customer Service Representative ever had a great experience talking to a customer? And don’t you love being closely monitored?

Okay, maybe they aren’t as bad as the phone companies–one cell phone company rep actually told us, “I’m sorry, you have to come into the office, we can’t do business over the phone”–but customer service jobs in a call center or at home, regardless of who you work for, have to be for masochists. If you’re anal retentive too, one company even has a Customer Retention position available.

Still, all this does suggest that yet another segment of the marketplace has recognized the advantages of working from home. Check it out, this might be for you even if you aren’t an idiot.

If you’re a computer guru and really know what makes a computer tick, if you have good communication skills and enjoy helping people, there may be a full- or part-time work at home job waiting for you at SupportSpace.com.

People who telecommute have no way to earn a living if their computer is on the blink, and company tech support often can’t (or won’t) help. For many baby-boomers and seniors, computer technology just isn’t easy to deal with. SupportSpace responded to that need with a unique approach: all their techs work from home. And you can too if you have what it takes. If you’re an exceptional techie, and can make a disappointed customer with a fried hard-drive thrilled they called you, read on. A college degree isn’t required, but you do have to be at least 18.

You’ll have to go through an initial interview and a thorough check on your background. Then you’ll take a technical skills test. What they’re looking for are competent, experienced techs, so don’t expect them to provide technical training. They will, however, provide training for their online tools so you know how to let the world know you’re open for business, how to take calls, how to download remote desktop software, and how to use proprietary and commercially available tools to solve problems. They also provide webinars and encourage interaction among their techs, which offers the opportunity to learn from others.

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of working as a remote tech is that your schedule can be whatever you want it to be. Need some extra money? Then work some extra hours. Are you a college student and need to study for finals? Work fewer hours–or even not at all if you want to go out with the gang afterwards and blow off some steam. This kind of work makes a great second job, too, because you can schedule around the demands of your primary job.

When you’re ready to work you simply log into the SupportSpace online workbench, and when customers call you’re shown as available. Log off, and you’ve effectively put out the cat, pulled down the shade, and locked the door on your shop.

Tech support problems cover the range of issues, systems, and equipment that people use; but you don’t have to be an expert in everything. You can promote your special talents to deal with Windows XP and Vista, system tune-ups, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, e-mail, backups, networking issues, security, printers and other hardware, virus prevention or removal, digital cameras, MP3 players, video and webcams, and malware/spyware removal.

SupportSpace gets 25% of what you bill, but you set your own rates. Full time, hard charging techs with plenty of experience and good repeat customer ratio can average $30-$40 an hour take-home, although $18-$20 per hour is more typical. (Keep in mind these are clock hours, not billable hours. You might be logged in and available, but not working with a customer. You might advertise a $75 per hour rate, but only work an average of 20 minutes an hour.)

Another nice aspect of remote tech support work is that you don’t need any special equipment or tools. SupportSpace provides online diagnostic tools, and if you’re a geek, you already have everything else you’ll need.

Keep in mind this kind of work depends on electricity and online access. That’s good news, and that’s bad news. The good news is you can do it from anywhere. If you decide to go to beach for the summer, you can take your laptop and work there. But the bad news is, if your ISP goes down or a hurricane puts out the lights you’re out of business.

Also remember that as a freelancer you won’t be paid for sick days, you won’t have a 401K, and you won’t have your taxes deducted. On the other hand you also won’t have an increasingly expensive and aggravating commute, or an ogre for a boss (unless you’re really hard to work with).

SupportSpace is the standout employer for work at home techs, from our research. Their business model has attracted the venture capital community, and their online approach is unique. Best Buy’s GeekSquad is the largest in the business, but theirs is a bricks and mortar, office-based culture. PlumChoice is an online competitor that “served 2.5 million transactions in 2007″ but they seem a bit embarrassed by their at-home workforce and asked not to be included in our upcoming book because of its title: Undress For Success.

To summarize then, working from home as a remote tech support specialist has the advantages of flexible scheduling and decent pay, but you’d better know your stuff and be prepared to watch out for yourself.

If you want the inside scoop visit TechComedy.com for a look at the funny, and sometimes aggravating, side of the business.

It’s often useful, when your trying to solve a problem to have someone look over your shoulder. A wonderful bloke from downunda just came to visit, and his view on oil prices scared the hell out of us. He says the talk in Australia is that gasoline prices will triple before long.

Consider. In 1998 gas was just under $1.00 at the pumps, now there’s talk it’ll be above $5.00 a gallon by year end. Goldman Sachs says that the price of oil could reach $200 a barrel this year. But they’ve been wrong before–by grossly under estimating. So our Aussie friend may very well be right.

Granted, there’s nothing that says the curve has to continue up at such a steep rate, but China and India’s increasing competition for oil plus the prospects of war with Iran* suggests it will. Besides, there’s very little reason now to look back at history to help predict the future. We’ve reached, as others have said, a tipping point and old rules no longer apply.

Remember, our oil reserves represent only about 3 week supply. And you know OPEC ain’t gonna help by pumping more oil. The cartels are enjoying huge profits, and want more–after all, that’s the mantra of capitalism we keep trying to sell them (and democracy). Do you really think they’ll start pumping more simply out of the goodness of their hearts?

We could start drilling in Alaska and offshore near Florida and California, but so far environmental issues have been allowed to overshadow the reality that our economy is in extremis and desperate measures are called for.

Someone once said they thought the reason people didn’t support the Vietnam war was because they didn’t have a personal investment, it didn’t effect them directly–and they were horrified by what they saw on TV. World War II, on the other hand, had a nation drawn together by rationing, victory gardens, and a star in the window indicating my man was over there–and Edward R. Morrow tried to create a picture of what was going on for radio broadcast.

If you buy that, the idea of reducing gas prices with a tax holiday is exactly the wrong stimulus. Indeed, there are those who think we should increase the tax on gasoline (with low income credits) and institute a rationing system that would decrease driving, and reduce air pollution and global warming–not to mention our dependence on cartel oil.

Reducing our dependence on foreign oil would help balance the Federal trade deficit, and help reduce foreign investment in American corporations, something we’ve written about recently. It’s not much of an exaggeration, really, to say that we’re being invaded without a shot being fired.

So what’s the point to this diatribe? The point is, as our research has shown, if just 40% of our workforce would telecommute (a realistic percentage supported by three studies, plus government and corporate experience) we could reduce our dependence on Gulf oil by 80%.

What do you think?

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* Why has Bush, a President with nothing to lose from a party with a lot to gain, been running around talking to all the mid-east countries? Why are we sending 40,000 more troops? Why have Navy task forces been repositioned?