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The Dripping Faucet Of Trucking

I can still remember my Mom reminding me to make sure the dripping faucet in the bathroom is all the way off. That little drip over a month could add into the thousands over time. Without close observation, it is easy to neglect it.

I mean what is one drop of water?

Well for some reason I equate this to the trucking and transportation industry. One truck waiting for a delivery may not make a significant impact on wasted fuel and lost time. One additional regulation may not be that significant. One more toll increase might be lost in the sands of time. Multiply that by thousands of trucks over thousands of days and you come to some astounding numbers. Just for lost fuel and time in traffic alone, the public faces additional costs to the tune of:

$27 Billion

This is the number I read in Overdrive magazine that is wasted as we, and our trucks, are waiting in traffic. Shockingly, this number does not even mention the billions in regulatory cost that trucking has been saddled with. On top of that, you couple lost road time, lost fuel, and regulation with a driver shortage, and the $27 Billion number begins to approach triple digits.

Tolls, and inflation are additional costs that send the amount of increased costs into the stratosphere. You combine all these costs and it is a real possibility that road transportation could become prohibitively expensive for a lot of things.

It adds up really fast (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This statement probably seems ridiculous but costs of doing business in transportation keep piling up on truckers and fleet managers and the public is feeling these costs at the store since it ultimately impacts them. Pretty soon those drops of wasted water begin to overflow the sink.

A penny more here, a few cents more there do not seem that big a deal but it is being absorbed by the public on everything from fuel, to food and even to non essentials. The faucet is dripping over and over and no one is looking at how to shut it off. In the case of the public, I have a strong suspicion they do not even realize the connection between runaway trucking costs and their finances. So in turn it is not just road delays we have to worry about, but a system that is being pushed far beyond what it can bear financially.

Eventually, that faucet will have totaled enough to fleece the public out of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS in added costs of what they use in daily life.

A possible solution?

I have no fast solutions but I do have some ideas.

As an industry we need to direct a portion of our outreach and education to the general public and consumer groups focusing on

The costs we are paying in terms of regulation, inflation, fuel, tolls, congestion..etc
How those costs are draining their pockets at the store

We need to encourage the public to contact their Congressman about slowing the pace of regulation, tolls, and fuel increases. Connecting fuel increase reduction with the unopened Keystone Pipeline might not be a bad issue to push as well.

Another direction would be to see how we can reduce road congestion by the smart management of traffic. With all the technology can’t we get more people off the roads by giving businesses incentives to start telecommuting programs? This may seem silly but it is clear that those cars on the road add up.

Why not offer incentives to come to work at different times of the day to reduce bottlenecks that occur when people come at one set time.

It will take a lot more than just a few ideas, but this is a start. I would love to hear your ideas…

-Michael Saks
Editor of Haulin
msaks@ectts.com

Overdrive article link
http://www.overdriveonline.com/traffic-costs-trucking-industry-27-billion-a-year-says-study/

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