Can you hear that growing rumbling over the horizon? Getting closer and closer every minute?
No, it's not the Langoliers, it's much worse.
It's the growing threat of a national truck shutdown.
It wouldn't really be a strike or a walkout, it would be a point in time when the majority of truckers quit going to work because they can't buy enough fuel to get the job done.
With diesel zooming over up $4.00/gallon and with no end in sight, truckers - just like everybody else - are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet.
True... company-owned fleets of trucks would be able to keep rolling, but they are a small minority of the trucks on the road today. They would have no chance to keep things coming. Things like food.
Everything in this nation is trucked - at one point or another - to it's destination, and if truckers can't afford fuel and end up parking their trucks, nothing will get delivered.
The gasoline you put in your car is trucked in. If the trucks stop rolling, the available gasoline at your local stations will disappear in a flash.
You are worried about the high cost of gasoline? You could carpool if things really got tough, or take the bus, ride a bicycle, or even walk.
You can't carpool a truckload of fresh veggies, or ship a truckload load of meat on the local bus.
Try to imagine thirty days - or longer - in America without trucks.
2 comments:
Of course, if everyone stops using diesel, then there will be a surplus and the price will go down and everything will be cheaper than ever.
In reality, there is an equilibrium point between price and demand that drives out the least efficient in favor of he efficient. We call that a competitive advantage.
The trucks will roll and the cost will be paid. The things we can do without (i.e. happymeal toys) will be the first things to fall off the trucking queue. As long as you can still see the shelves at Walmart filled with 8 diffeent kinds of Head and shoulders, you know we aren't there yet.
So how far do you think the whole system can bend, before it breaks?
Or do you think we can bend it further and further - forever - and it will always snap back?
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