Jim GM4DHJ ... snipped-for-privacy@ntlworld.com wrote
>> David P wrote
>
>>> Trucks Are Clogging America?s Roads, Delivering Goods and
>>> Tearing up Yards
>>> By David Harrison, 1/26/22, Wall St. Journal
>
>>> Analysts don?t expect the surge in trucking to die down even
>>> once clogs in the supply chain work themselves out. Depleted
>>> business inventories will need to be replenished. A recovery
>>> in home building & manufacturing will create more demand for
>>> freight. And road and bridge construction funded by the roughly
>>> $1 trillion infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law last
>>> Nov will mean more construction trucks.
>>> It?s also likely that online shopping will keep growing, which
>>> means vendors are going to need to beef up their freight capacity.
>>> Amazon alone recently announced it would purchase 100,000 new
>>> electric delivery trucks.
>>> The American Trucking Assns, an industry group, says the U.S.
>>> needs an additional 80,000 truck drivers to meet demand. To
>>> address the shortage, the Biden admin in Nov unveiled a plan to
>>> make it easier to obtain a CDL & to create trucking apprenticeships
>>> to draw young people into trucking careers. That could put even
>>> more trucks on the road.
>>> ?Trucking is like air,? said Rodney Morine, a 3rd-generation
>>> truck driver from Opelousas LA. ?You don?t think about the air
>>> you?re breathing until you don?t have it.?
>>> Over the next 3 decades, govt forecasters expect tractor-trailer
>>> traffic to grow almost 3 times as fast, & single-unit trucks
>>> almost 4 times as fast, as car traffic.
>>> Engineering studies have found that the damage trucks inflict
>>> on pavements rises exponentially as the weight on each axle
>>> increases. Doubling the axle weight results in up to 16 times >>> as much damage.
>>> State and federal transport agencies estimate that trucks are
>>> responsible for between 35%-40% of highway maintenance costs
>>> even though they account for less than 10% of miles driven.
>>> A severe shortage of parking spaces for all those trucks has
>>> forced drivers to pull over on highway shoulders, mall parking
>>> lots and on residential streets to take breaks required under
>>> federal rules. Truck drivers told a Georgia state panel in 2019
>>> they pulled over in unauthorized parking areas up to 4 times/week.
>>> Few cities have been as affected by the truck boom & its backlash
>>> as Atlanta, a place with a long history as a freight hub once
>>> nicknamed ?Terminus.? Two of the top five truck bottlenecks in
>>> the country are in the Atlanta area, acc. to the American Transport
>>> Research Inst., a trucking think tank. Truck backups are also
>>> frequent in Fort Lee NJ, Cincinnati and Houston, the group said.
>>> From Jan to mid-Oct last year, there were 16% more trucks on
>>> Georgia interstates than in the same period in 2020 and 19% more
>>> than in 2019, acc. to data from the state dept of transport.
>>> That?s expected to grow in part because the Port of Savannah,
>>> about 250 miles away, is expanding its capacity, which will bring
>>> more goods thru Atlanta-area warehouses.
>>> Linda Jones moved to a quiet subdivision in suburban DeKalb
>>> County outside Atlanta 10 years ago. In recent years, warehouses
>>> started popping up around her and the streets filled with trucks.
>>> Now, she said, she has to weave thru tractor trailers whenever
>>> she leaves her subdivision. Trucks routinely park in her local
>>> shopping center & on the side of the entrance ramp to the interstate.
>>> ?We feel like we live in Truck City,? she said.
>>> Donna Mullins lives in suburban Clayton County, just south of
>>> Atlanta, on land where her grandparents used to raise hogs and
>>> grow vegetables. The area has sprouted warehouses, bringing heavy
>>> trucks with them. Thru the window of her home office, she keeps
>>> track of the traffic.
>>> ?On a given day, I can see 7-10,? she said. ?They fly down here.?
>>> Mullins owns a consulting business thru which she runs compliance
>>> training sessions for the logistics industry. ?We'd die without
>>> our trucks,? she said. But they shouldn?t go thru residential
>>> neighborhoods, she added. ?There?s gotta be some separation.?
>>> In Henry County, just a few miles from Mullins?s house, local
>>> officials who once welcomed the warehouses and distribution
>>> centers are having second thoughts.
>>> The board of commissioners has talked about imposing a moratorium
>>> on new warehouses or charging a fee to pay for transport improvements.
>>> In a Nov. referendum, voters approved a new 1% sales tax to raise
>>> $245 million over 5 years for transport improvements. The money
>>> will widen roads and interchanges to ease truck traffic. It'll
>>> also help repave roads damaged by heavy congestion, said Sam
>>> Baker, Henry County?s transport director.
>>> Georgia has embarked on an $11 billion construction spree
>>> that'll widen highways, rebuild interchanges and open the
>>> country?s first truck-only lanes on a stretch of Interstate 75.
>>> A special committee in the state legislature recommended that
>>> the Georgia D.O.T. spend up to $1.5 billion more a year on
>>> freight infrastructure from new fuel taxes or user fees. That'd
>>> amount to a roughly 40% increase in the dept?s annual budget.
>>> GDOT Planning Director Jannine Miller said the goal is to make
>>> it easier for trucks to coexist with residents. But the trucks
>>> aren?t going away, she warned.
>>> ?It?s not a thing we take lightly but it?s something where
>>> we can't please everyone,? she said.
>>> The federal govt imposes special taxes on trucks in recognition
>>> of the damage they do to the roads. There?s a 12% sales tax on
>>> tractors and trailers, a weight tax for heavy trucks and a tax
>>> on large tires. The gas tax is also higher for diesel fuel.
>>> Those taxes don?t cover their total impact on pavements,
>>> congestion, safety or pollution, acc. to a study by David Austin
>>> of the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan scorekeeper >>> of Congress.
>>> Raising taxes on trucks so they cover the full cost would lead
>>> to more goods moving by rail, which would reduce the number of
>>> highway truck trips by up to 3.3 million, the study said.
>>> The American Trucking Assns says trucks already pay 45% of all
>>> highway user fees even though they account for less than 10% of
>>> all miles driven. The group supported raising fuel taxes across
>>> the board to pay for the recently enacted infrastructure bill,
>>> said Robert Costello, the ATA?s top economist.
>>> Congress instead relied mostly on borrowing and on repurposed
>>> Covid-19 relief money to pay for the bill, which included over
>>> $8 billion in grants for freight infrastructure & safety programs.
>>> The pandemic has accelerated a move toward e-commerce that had
>>> been under way for the past several years. Online retail made up
>>> 16% of retail sales in Nov, the last month for which data is
>>> available, up from 14% in the same month of 2019, before the pandemic.
>>> All those purchases emptied out retail inventories, prompting a
>>> surge of new orders to manufacturers, which themselves had to
>>> order new parts and machinery to meet that demand. Getting those
>>> goods to homes and factories requires a constellation of warehouses
>>> and trucks moving between them. The nation?s warehouse space rose
>>> 2.8% in 2020, the biggest jump since 2001, acc. to CBRE, a real-
>>> estate company. Warehouse capacity grew a further 2.5% in 2021.
>>> Backlogged supply chains have driven up the number of trucks on
>>> the road. Faced with a shortage of parts and equipment, businesses
>>> are willing to pay more to get products where they need to go.
>>> Instead of shipping goods by train?a less expensive but slower
>>> option?companies are now booking trucks on the spot. Some of
>>> those trucks are being moved without a full load, said Eric
>>> Starks, CEO at FTR Transport Intelligence.
>>> Truck utilization rates, which measure the share of trucks that
>>> are on the road, hit 100% in both the 2nd & the 3rd quarter of
>>> 2021, acc. to FTR data. That means every available truck and
>>> every available driver were running.
>>> High utilization rates have led to shortages of containers and
>>> chassis?the support on which truck containers rest?which means
>>> some trucks are being sent over the road to move a chassis,
>>> rather than freight, Starks said.
>>> ?Everybody?s going crazy,? he said. ?When that happens, that?s
>>> when more inefficiency in the system happens. You?re getting
>>> paid a lot of money and you don?t care if you?re efficient or not.?
>>> There are many reasons for the shortage of truckers. The
>>> frustrations of the job are one, and that includes tensions
>>> that arise from the increased conflict with the public.
>>> Truck drivers say they have to put up with reckless drivers and
>>> an unappreciative public which nevertheless expects packages
>>> delivered right away.
>>> At the start of the pandemic ?truck drivers were looked at as
>>> heroes,? said Hamlin Raney, who drives a flatbed truck across
>>> the Southeast. The sentiment has evaporated, he said. ?People
>>> cutting you off: It?s a daily thing.?
>>> Roughly 70% of American freight moves by truck, said Todd
>>> Spencer, president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers
>>> Assn, which represents smaller trucking companies.
>>> ?So a reasonable person would assume we gotta have trucks,? he
>>> said. ?There has to be an accommodation made and people aren't
>>> in a very accommodating mood.?
>>>formatting link
>>>
>
>> listening to Shep this morning and he was talking about a 1925 report
>> on what 1960 would be like and they said there would be no shops and
>> you would order stuff on a screen on your wall and it would be
>> deliverd by a conduit to your house ....apart fo the delivery method
>> they were correct....
>
> Nope, still plenty of shops.
going fast