Truck drivers held a protest on Friday about some of the biggest issues in the industry

CBS ChicagoFootage from Friday's truck driver protest in Chicago.Around 30 truck drivers staged a protest in Chicago on Friday, NBC Chicago reports. The protest was documented on the Facebook page Black Smoke Matters, which featured live videos streamed by participating drivers.Other posts on the page indicate that some drivers were protesting by declining to drive their trucks.Multiple posts on the page suggested turnout in some places was lower than expected.Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.Around 30 truck drivers staged a protest in Chicago on Friday, NBC Chicago reports. The truck drivers reportedly drove from Monee, Illinois, to Chicago and planned to end the protest at Chicago's Trump Tower.The protest was documented on the Facebook page Black Smoke Matters, which featured live videos streamed by participating truck drivers. Videos posted on the page appear to show drivers staging similar protests in New York and Texas. Other posts on the page indicate that some drivers were protesting by declining to drive their trucks.The group's goal is for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to take truckers' side of things into account when considering new policies. At the top of the list is the electronic-logging-device (ELD) mandate, which came into effect in December 2017. The mandate requires truckers to keep an electronic log in their cabins to ensure they don't work for more than 14 hours a day or drive more than 11, in accordance with the hours-of-service law. Many truckers have told Business Insider that the federal mandate cut down on their wages, freedom, and safety.Some experts were skepticalFriday's protest raised skepticism from experts who said in January that it was unlikely to succeed. I would be shocked if anything was successful, Michael Belzer, an associate professor of economics at Wayne State University who has studied trucking for decades, told Business Insider. I'm afraid organizing on Facebook is a little unrealistic.Read more: The federal government just confirmed what America's 1.8 million truck drivers have been saying for years: The truck-driver shortage doesn't really existA February protest in Indiana drew 78 truck drivers, well below the 400 to 500 the Indiana State Police expected to participate. Multiple posts on the Black Smoke Matters Facebook page suggested turnout on Friday was lower in some places than expected. I thought more drivers would participate, a driver from South Carolina said.Numbers are still low, the narrator of a video filmed in Chicago said. We expected a lot more.Very few trucks were pulling out of the Petro this morning in San Antonio, a driver from Texas said in a video.Additional protests appear to be planned over the next month.Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said social-media-organized trucker strikes have been common since the late 2000s. They've largely failed, but that's not to say that the technology-based organizing tactic is doomed forever.If Black Smoke Matters succeeds, it wouldn't be the first time naysayers were proved wrong. Between 1973 and 1974, independent truck drivers organized over CB radio to shut down trucking across the US for multiple days in protest of skyrocketing oil prices. Truckers won their demands after the shutdown, and the strike gave rise to the influential Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association.It takes time for new kinds of worker strategies to get traction, Viscelli told Business Insider. And maybe there is potential for drivers to do the kinds of things unions used to do - like get them decent pay and working conditions and a say in what happens in terms of policy - through technology.Some question the group's tacticsThe name is a play off the Black Lives Matter social movement launched in response to police killings of black Americans, Black Smoke Matters president Mike Robbins previously told Business Insider.Read more: Thousands of truck drivers are organizing a strike in a Facebook group called 'Black Smoke Matters' - here's the origin of the provocative nameFurther, Belzer said their messaging addresses nitty-gritty details that the public might not understand about trucking - like the ELD mandate, hours-of-service laws, and rest-stop parking. The ELD mandate was one of the driving forces for organizing the strike, as many truckers said the electronic log forces them to speed against the clock.I'm hoping they will change laws around the ELDs, Franklin said. I'm hoping they could do away with them.One of the many consternations ELDs have brought to truckers such as Franklin is limiting parking at truck stops. Because most truckers are now working around the same time every day, they're also populating parking spots at the same time. So, many truckers aren't able to find a place to park their truck and sleep at night.Parking is one of my worst enemies, Franklin said. I worry every day about where I'm going to park.But ELDs might sound reasonable on paper to the general population because they ensure truck drivers don't drive more than 11 hours a day in a 14-hour block.The public won't support them on such a question, Belzer said. To the extent that public is at all aware of the ELD, they're going to think, 'Why not have an ELD? It sounds great.'Viscelli said it's altogether unwise for Black Smoke Matters to focus on the problems stemming from ELDs and other government mandates.ELDs aren't the problem, Viscelli said. They are a symptom of the bigger problems of driver mistreatment and lack of power.Read more: Truck drivers wait an average of 2.5 hours at warehouses without getting paid - here are the 20 cities where truckers wait the longestAnother obstacle for internet-organized strikes is the size of the trucking community. There are nearly 2 million truck drivers in the US, and they are spread across the country, spending most of their days alone.This isn't Tahrir Square, Belzer said.Above all, Belzer said Black Smoke Matters will likely fail because organized labor movements have been systemically and legally suppressed across the private sector.It's going to be very difficult [to strike] without recognition that workers have a right to organize, Belzer said.But Robbins said Black Smoke Matters' tactics and response rate have been promising. With an executive board of 11 nationwide, they've put up Black Smoke Matters flyers at truck stops around the country. And the group has encouraged truckers to strike for as little as a day or as long as a week - meaning they might not necessarily lose wages. That could involve blocking the freeways or just spending time at home.We're known as a rough and rowdy group, but what the public doesn't realize is that behind the scenes Black Smoke Matters is very organized, Robbins said.The value of unionizingAs the typical joke in trucking goes, you can't get two truck drivers to agree on the price of a free cup of coffee.When examining trucker-resistance movements that have arisen over the past decade, a patchwork of groups, such as the United States Transportation Alliance (USTA) and Operation Black and Blue, appear.Those diffused groups lack the power that a single, cohesive group can have, Belzer said.Labor unions used to merge the interests of disparate interests, not just for truck drivers, but employees nationwide. Across private-sector industries nationwide, labor-union membership has fallen from one in three during the post-War World II era to one in 10 today, according to Jake Rosenfeld of Washington University in St. Louis.A few decades ago, most truckers were unionized. In 1974, Belzer said there were 2,019,300 truckers in Teamsters. Now, there are 75,000. Owner-operators, who total 350,000 nationwide and average 26 years in the trucking industry, are outright banned from forming labor unions.The decline of Teamsters follows a decline in trucking pay and working conditions. A Business Insider analysis showed that median wages for truck drivers have decreased 21% on average since 1980. In some areas, they've declined as much as 50%. In 1977, the mean earnings of a unionized truck driver stood at $96,552 in 2018 dollars. The median earning of a truck driver now stands at $42,480.Viscelli said a major benefit unions provide, along with fighting for contracts with fair wages and benefits, is unified messaging during strikes. That ensures the public and government officials, along with the truckers' employers, can understand the key issues that employees face.Back when there were Teamsters in long-haul, that was called solidarity - that old-fashioned idea that workers have common interests vis À vis their employer and should stick together in advancing those interests, Viscelli said.Read more: Walmart's trucking fleet used to be as selective as Harvard, but a truck driver shortage has changed how Walmart hiresViscelli said union leaders have the ability to lobby the government more effectively than disparate social-media movements.But trucker Facebook groups are already doing like this - it's just that they don't feel their voices are being heard. USTA and Black Smoke Matters representatives have met with FMCSA officials at least twice over the past two years.It's not uncommon for truckers to clock in up to 100 hours a week, Belzer said. They're not paid for rest breaks. And they're often forced to spend hours waiting for shipments at warehouses - unpaid.This ultra-stressful environment, Robbins said, is the furthest thing from safe. NOW WATCH: Car builders make hot rods out of World War II fighter plane belly tanks function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener(message, receiveMessage, false);