Saving Us

Today's Thoughts 8/5/11 Saving Us

One hundred and forty nine truck trailers and containers is what I counted on the back of a train yesterday. It was so awesome to watch. It just amazes me to know the facts about how much fuel and energy that moving freight in this fashion saves. I think the railroads say it's something like a gallon of diesel a mile to move all these loads at once, a very good fuel savings by any standards if you ask me. Think of how much fuel would be used if the freight was moved by one hundred and forty nine truckers. Thousands of gallons would be needed if the trucking industry was involved.

I just love the fact that so many are so interested in saving our planet. I really do. Keeping our planet in pristine condition is something that every person on the planet has in one way or another interest in, or should have any way. The thing that always gets to me though, is the fact that if we did everything that we could possibly do to save the planet; where does that leave us humans? So while I'm sitting there yesterday counting those one hundred and forty nine loads and all the fuel that is being saved, I'm also counting one hundred and forty nine Americans standing in the unemployment line. I'm counting the number of food stamps being handed out by the government. Counting all the jobs lost producing the fuel, repairing the trucks, jobs at truck stops that are no longer in business. And I'm wondering, for all that fuel that has been saved, all the clean air that we now can breathe because those trucks are no longer on the highway; is it worth it?

Is saving the environment worth the loss of our great nation? It's not just the trucking industry that has been harmed in all of this. Thousands and thousands of American jobs are now found in countries all over the globe.  The products that we used to manufacture here in the states and truck across our nations highways are now being manufactured in other countries. Then shipped by boat and loaded on a train to as close to their final destination as possible. And in spite of this new process that has been invented to benefit our planet and save our air, all that has been accomplished is the down fall of the greatest nation that this world has ever known.

The fact that we will not allow companies to produce products here in the states unless they meet stringent environmental standards simply moves those jobs to a country that will allow those products to be produced in the cheapest way possible. EPA standards be damned. Now instead of moving them across country we are moving them across the globe, probably using more fuel with lower standards then if we just shipped them by truck. The world has our jobs as we sit here years into a depression that no one wants to admit even exist let alone as to why it exist.

I know truckers across this great land are busting their butts trying to save what used to be a proud profession to be part of. And still is if you ask me. And it still needs saving because if we allow things to go as they have been over the last few years, there will be no Americans behind the wheel of a big truck on our nation's highways. To save whatever is politically correct at the time, our government and big business would sell out their own mothers to make a little more profit or to get themselves reelected to office once again.

So for me, the battle to save our industry has become a battle to save our nation jobs, save our economy, and to save what little common sense that still exist and to make it grow back into a flourishing nation that will support all industry in our nation. We must if trucking is to survive, take up the battles of all industry. The plain fact is that if they cannot survive in this country, there will be no products for us to haul. There will be no jobs for people to have expendable cash to buy anything. We must at some point in time get over us as a trucking industry and start looking outside of the industry and fix this country so that there will be a need for the trucking industry. Plain fact of the matter is that without them, there is no need for us. To win the war, we must understand where the battle is.

Be safe peeps …

Jeff Head.
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