"This is going to be tough for all of California's truckers, but it's going to kill owner-operators out here," Stephanie Williams, vp of the California Trucking Association (CTA), told DRIVERS.

Williams said those fee increases are partly the result of California's attempt to deal with its $38-billion budget deficit as well as inaccurate fiscal forecasting by the state's Department of Finance (DOF).

Supposedly DOF projected that truck registrations would increase in California but instead they fell dramatically. According to CTA, intrastate registrations dropped to 423,000 last year from 656,000 in 1999 and California-based interstate truck registrations fell to 44,359 in 2002 from 61,000 in 1999.

Registrations are falling thanks to the economic fallout resulting from the national economic recession as well as the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the West Coast port lockout.

Todd Spencer, executive vp of the Owner Operator Independent Driver Association (OOIDA), told DRIVERS that while he can sympathize with California's need to close its budget gap, putting an inordinate burden on truckers isn't the way to do it.

"We think it's really distressing what California is doing," he said. "This is an industry that is very sensitive to costs. The reality is that there are too many trucks chasing too little freight today."

CTA's Williams noted that DOF's solution to its revenue over-projection problem is to tax the trucks that still remain in the state. And she said that's driving many operators to bordering states.

Of course, this issue is even bigger than the Golden State. When trends start in California, they have a tendency to spread elsewhere. That means truckers anywhere in the 50 states could come up against the same threat to their wallets.