The average 18 wheeler loaded at 80,000 lbs gets about 7 miles per gallon.

[livingwagenow]

Unsustainable. There are millions of 18 wheelers on American highways every day. I am a former long-haul driver 1995-1997.

The death of localization has made us a nation reliant on big trucks to ship everything across America. Food is becoming one of the most shipped items in big trucks. The death of local family farms has made us a nation addicted to one of the worst carbon polluting industries, trucking. This isn't a swipe at DU drivers. I know we have some truck drivers here. I also have a bit of a soft spot for the hardships that American truck drivers go through.

Think for a moment how free trading everything to China etc, has contributed to the problem. Ever seen a big truck pulling a short container? There are full-sized shipping containers as well.

That's a shipping container from a ship that came from China, India, Malaysia etc. Re-importing outsourced made-in-China "goods". Container shipping is a huge and fast growing sector of trucking in America. It's a gigantic contributing factor to carbon emissions. Trucking is one of the largest contributing factors to carbon emissions, both globally and in America.

The TPP, free trade on steroids pact being pushed will exasperate the problem even more. More reimporting, more job outsourcing, more containers being shipped and then trucked across America in millions of trucks that each get 7 MPG.

UNSUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION.

WAGE-Free Trade is a middle class/wage killer but it is also an environmental destroyer and a leading cause of global warming.

See the need to end free trade and bring back localization? Especially local food and farming. But also manufacturing.

[LuvNewcastle]

1. Let's localize and kill the international behemoth corporations.

I'm definitely with you there.

[trof]

2. Roger that. The 2000 mile potatoes:

I've posted this before.
10 # bag of spuds at the Piggly Wiggly in coastal Alabama.
From California.
My area used to grow huge amounts of potatoes for shipment throughout out the state.
No more.
Now our local farmers grow turf for lawns, golf courses, and football fields.

I found another bag from Colorado.
At least it was about 500 miles closer.

[livingwagenow]

3. Perfect example of shipping food that used to be grown locally.

And why we need to get back to locally grown. Thanks for adding.

[brer cat]

16. When I was in New Mexico last year

I went into an Hispanic super market. They had huge bins of dried chiles...all from China. New Mexico, "Chile Capital of the World", is a HUGE supplier of wonderful chiles so why would they need any imports?

[Heddi]

45. Yup. I lived in Yakima, WA for years. Apple Capitol of the WOrld

Apple Capitol of the World
Apple Juice Capitol of the World

tons of apple, pear, cherry orchards & packing plants.

Went to the grocer that was, eh, ~~400 ft from a large orchard.

Apples from Argentina.

You can go 400ft out the back door and get apples fresh off the tree...but no, they're shipped to WA (Apple Capitol of the World) from fucking ARGENTINA?

There were NO apples closer than Argentina? Not oregon, or idaho, or california? Not even Florida or Mexico or Guatemala? ARGENTINA?

blew my fucking mind as much as it opened my eyes.

[trof]

70. It is insane. I support Localvores!

Buy local.
Eat local.
Whenever you can.

[thecrow]

4. When I was in England and Italy

I didn't see many huge trucks like here. They must have localized their produce.
I drove from London to Salisbury and then on to Caerphilly, Wales. Even on the highway there were no huge trucks. How weird was that?

[Spider Jerusalem]

26. Things move by rail, mostly

and there is a lot more localised farming (I'm in Wales, not far from Caerphilly, and even the major chain groceries have locally-farmed meat and eggs and dairy and such).

[Art_from_Ark]

36. A little off-topic, but

You're near Caerphilly, as in the namesake of Caerphilly cheese? It's probably the best cheese I've ever eaten, but I have only found it in only one store, and I've looked for it in dozens, maybe hundreds, of stores in the US, Canada and Japan.

And I guess it probably wouldn't do any good to look for it at Mr. Wensleydale's shop, either

[Spider Jerusalem]

46. One and the same, yes

there's a statue across from the castle of...a wheel of cheese, in fact. Which looks a bit odd if you don't know what it is. (And it's lovely stuff, Caerphilly, nice and salty and crumbly and goes very well with a good cranberry chutney.)

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. Actually, the UK (and the EU) uses rail far less than the USA

EU: http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/freight-transport-volume-billion-tkm-1
2010: road 1,756 billion tonne-km; rail 390 billion tonne-km

USA: http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_49.html
2003: road 1,264 billion ton-miles (2,067 billion tonne-km); rail 1,551 billion ton-miles (2,537 billion tonne-km)

UK: http://www.transport-watch.co.uk/topic-33-freight-great-britain-%E2%80%93-modal-split
2010: road 151 billion tonne-km; rail 19 billion tonne-km

Shipping accounts for a higher proportion in the EU, not surprisingly - it has to for most between the UK and Ireland and the rest of the EU, but it's also important for transport across the Med and Baltic.

So the use of road freight is roughly comparable between the EU and USA - the EU has a bit higher total population, but is more compact. But the USA makes far higher use of rail.

[A HERETIC I AM]

52. Thank you.

Getting a little frustrated reading this thread. Thanks for the accurate info.

The idea that one can drive any length of a motorway in England and NOT see a heavy truck, indicates the driver wasn't paying attention at all.

Likewise, the idea that most of the goods travel by rail in the UK and the EU is simply wrong.

[thecrow]

62. And you were sitting in my car.... where?

So of course you know this and can call me totally unobservant ....HOW?
How rude.

[A HERETIC I AM]

65. LOL...yeah...sure.

It's possible you didn't notice them. In fact, based on your statement, it's likely. But I didn't say you were "totally unobservant". I said you weren't paying attention.

The ratio of "HGV's" as they are called in the UK, to cars is about the same as it is in the states, and by simply zooming in on a random stretch of any portion of any motorway in England using Google Maps, heavy trucks are easily spotted.


"I drove from London to Salisbury and then on to Caerphilly, Wales. Even on the highway there were no huge trucks.

Let's see....London to Salisbury - about 85 miles.
Salisbury to Caerphilly, another 100 miles.

Presumably you drove at least 60 miles on the M3 and roughly 40 miles on the M4 (The "Highway" portions) and about 80 miles on secondary roads or "Dual Carriageways" and you saw "no huge trucks".

Yeah. I am going to stick with 'wasn't paying attention'.

I've been to the UK numerous times in the past, and I sure as hell noticed them. As I said, they are as common on the roads over there as they are here.

Edit to add this;

It is quite possible that you saw just as many as I suspect you did, but it didn't register, particularly if you are used to equating a tractor trailer with something that looks like this;



When the vast majority of similar vehicles in the UK and the EU look like this;

[thecrow]

69. Nope. Didn't see that.

I did notice much smaller trucks than that. Large vans and some really odd-looking trucks. But not semis. Maybe it was just where I was in traffic?
I remember thinking how weird it was, even at the rest stops, not to see them.
So unless you want to time travel back to my car and point them out to me, you *cannot* say what I saw or that I wasn't paying "any attention at all".
Again, very rude .

[Wounded Bear]

61. I'm sure distance has something to do with that...

You can't drive 1,000 miles in England. Not unless you double back a couple of times.

[sendero]

5. It's a self limiting.

... problem. When it becomes too expensive to do that, it will stop. Not a day before.

And really, to be honest, the idea of producing all food locally, that has never really happened since the advent of petroleum and when it does happen you won't be very happy because it will mean the end of the world as we know it and not in a good way.

I have a garden and almost every meal I eat contains something from it. But there are many many many things I buy at the grocery store that I could not produce and could not be produced locally at any price.

[trof]

12. We may have to learn to eat fruits and vegatables 'in season' again.

We've done that before.
In my lifetime.
We could probably do it again.

[FarCenter]

6. Frozen bagged vegetables may have a smaller carbon footprint than fresh at a farmer's market

Harvested, processed, and frozen in bulk near the farm, and shipped in bulk via refrigerated truck or rail container, they are fairly efficient.

Small amounts of vegetables transported 10s of miles from a local farm in a pickup or box truck may actually use more fuel per pound of produce sold, particularly if unsold produce is discarded.

The same goes for fresh vegetables in a supermarket. The fresh peas in a pod may have a bigger carbon footprint that bagged frozen peas. This is especially true if the fresh peas are not in season locally.

[Rstrstx]

7. That's pretty damn good actually

Considering Hummers are supposed to get about 9-10 mpg. And good luck stuffing 80,000 lbs of potatoes in one

[dembotoz]

14. i was thinking the same thing

[cthulu2016]

29. Yup.

[dreamnightwind]

8. Great post

Out here, you can stand on or near the Golden Gate bridge, and watch the container ships come in, mostly from China, but other places too. It's amazing how often they come. Aside from the fuel and emissions of the trucks is the fuel and emissions from these ships, I have no idea but I'm sure it is a lot.

You've identified the problem quite well, and our president is working to make it worse with agreements like the TPP. It seems that, much like Goldman Sachs, we can't vote "free trade" out of office.

I can understand the argument that some items can't be produced locally, we'll need some importation, but we're heavily tilted the other way. Many of the items we're importing are just a way for corporations to sell goods made in unregulated countries with cheap and desperate labor pools, undercutting local farmers.

Another way local farmers are undercut is through the regulatory process. Out here, perhaps 7 years ago or so, a new regulation was put in place, written by large corporate dairy farmers, that required a practice the large farmers already used, and that the small local farmers could not afford. The result was that roughly 40% of the small local dairies soon either sold their farms to the large corporations, or just went out of business. That is the kind of thing that gets spun by the RW as the negative impacts of big government and regulation, but the real problem is a captured regulatory system, where the regulations are literally written by lawyers working for large corporate interests.

[Scuba]

9. Willie Nelson gets it ...

[Glassunion]

10. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

but pound for pound against my 55 miles per gallon vehicle, that 80,000 pound truck is way more efficient. If weighed evenly, a group of my vehicles that match the weight of that one truck could only drive less than one 10th of one mile on that same gallon of gas.

I'm with you completely, and I strongly feel that we need complete trade reform period. I'm sick of checking the label on everything I buy.

We do need to look at the total, not just food. Everything we buy seems to come on a truck, even local, organic, non-gmo produce leaves the farm on a truck. It is the most energy efficient way to move it. It is difficult to live in today's day and age and not buy something that has not spent time on a truck. We do need them. Probably 99% of what we own, or consume has spent time on a truck. If you take the truck out of the picture, it will need to be replaced by smaller vehicles that will burn more fuel and expel more greenhouse gasses. But as it stands it's impossible to get even the very basics without a truck. Just for clothing alone one would need to live in a cotton/wool/alpaca/silk/yak/rabbit/cashmere/jute/etc region where the raw product could sit next door to the local resources that spin the fibers into fabric, then next door have the fabric tailored into clothing all within a local community to avoid trucks. However, you would also need all of the support for that industry to be local as well. So your electric companies, equipment manufacturer, food, etc... would also have to be local. On top of that, they could only serve the local community, because as soon as the guy in the next town over sees that awesome pair of alpaca boxers, he is going to place an order and want it shipped.

Even in a dream world, where everything we get is made and manufactured in America, odds are a huge portion of it will spend time on a truck. My American vehicle was delivered on a truck, my American blue jeans delivered on a truck, my Zippo which is made in my home state spent time on a truck, my work boots spent time on a truck, in fact I cannot think of one thing that has not spent time on a truck.

I just want our trade deficit to turn around, and our leaders to cease trading with other countries that do not have fair labor practices. I feel that international trade is awesome, but if the only thing we are shipping to other countries is boatloads of money in exchange for shit products produced by forced labor so a corporation could squeeze an extra percent or two in profit margin, we are going to collapse under our own consumption.

[karadax]

11. Hybrid diesels can do 12 MPG.

The technology is there to substantially minimize the impact of hauling freight all over the place.

I've read of great ideas to go green right at the ports where the endless cargo containers arrive. Fully electric trucks that function like a trolley.

It's also been said that some bigger engines are more efficient at half capacity than a tiny engine operating at full intensity.

There are many options to fix it. Someone just has to have the balls to invest.

[cynatnite]

20. It's not just a matter of investing...it's how to get them on the road...

Trucks will have millions of miles on them before they're taken off the road. Brand new trucks are very expensive and usually it's the larger companies that can afford to buy them. Even then, more often than not those brand new ones will only go to the long-term drivers.

My husband has been a driver for 17 years and only two times has he ever been given a brand new truck. This one that he is currently in he got because he is a trainer for his company.

It's more difficult than you'd think to get the more fuel efficient trucks on the road.

[Egalitarian Thug]

35. The truckers I've talked to say the same thing about bigger engines getting

better mileage because they don't work so hard.

[RC]

58. How well do these Hybrid diesels scale up to be able to haul 80,000 lb truck cross country?

Batteries are not cheap and are heavy in themselves. Hybrid work well in cars, but loaded trucks, running cross country, including the Rockies, weighing in at 80,000 pounds on the tires? We've had this technology long enough, we should know the answer by now.
Which is cheaper over the life of the truck? Straight diesel or hybrid diesel, including battery replacement?

[lumberjack_jeff]

64. Train engines are hybrid diesels.

A 1 mpg improvement in mileage would save the trucking company roughly 14,000 gallons of fuel ($55,000) over the truck's lifespan

[RC]

66. Actually, no they are not.

They are diesel electric. The engine drives a generator, which in turn powers electric motors that turn the wheels. The engine stops and the locomotive has no other motive power.
Is a front-end loader a diesel hybrid because the engine drives a hydraulic pump?

Hybrid whatever, can run on either/or or sometimes both power sources, usually the batteries or the prime-mover engine. Locomotives have only one power source, the prime-mover diesel engine.

[lumberjack_jeff]

68. People disagree on this point, but after doing some research, I think you're right.

Diesel-electric locomotives which store surplus electrical energy in batteries, (most don't) would be a hybrid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_train

[Eleanors38]

72. Similar to pre-nuclear submarine technology. I understand

several old dreadnought-class battleships were re-engined in the 30s whereby the old "triple expansion" piston steam engines were retained, but the drive was changed to generators coupled to electric motors -- all to push a 35,000 stand dis ton warship.

[bvar22]

13. We're doing our part...

PLUS, it tastes SO much better.
Health, nutrition, carbon footprint, and contamination aside,
we would grow our own if only for the taste.

[4dsc]

15. 7 mpg is very generous.

I'd say most truck still get less than 5 mpg that are traveling our roadways. 7 mpg is actually very good mileage.

[A HERETIC I AM]

55. The "range" of class 8 trucks is between 4 & 7.5 MPG

The average is closer to 6.

http://cta.ornl.gov/vtmarketreport/pdf/chapter3_heavy_trucks.pdf

The statement "most truck still get less than 5 mpg" is not true.

[tosh]

17. While rail cars sit idly on the tracks...

This puzzles me every day.

Edited to add: Yeah who knew that one day it would be cost-efficient to ship FOOD GOODS and raw ingredients around the world and back??? Astounding, isn't it??

[Not Sure]

33. It's possible the rail cars are moved at night

I worked a lot of industry jobs where we had to deliver loaded cars and take empty cars each warehouse or distribution center at night because that was when nobody was actively working inside the railcars. Several places you'd never know the cars had been changed out if you weren't keeping track of the numbers on the sides since the cars are all painted the same.

[tosh]

39. Good point.

Around here (agricultural area, also near seaports) I have noticed that it might be a seasonal thing. Grain cars in storage while logging cars are in demand and vice-versa. They are using inactive stretches of rail for storage of cars, sometimes for a few months at a time.

Do you work in the rail biz? If so, cool!

Edited to add: I see from your post below that you do! Locomotive Engineer.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

18. Shipping by rail is more fuel efficient

Unfortunately we have let much of our rail infrastructure deteriorate in this country.

[cynatnite]

21. It's also much slower than truck and can't get to the places that trucks can. n/t

[Not Sure]

34. Much of it was duplicate track laid by competing railroads...

and most of those are consolidated into a few giant corporations. The tangled web of industries that abound in nearly every major city are either begrudgingly handled by the giant railroads or have been spun off to smaller Class II and III railroads (and even many of those have come under a common ownership umbrella). Those short-line and regional railroads often have a much smaller profit margin and many of them aren't union shops (as far as transportation employees are concerned).

Still, the vast majority of those rails are/were privately owned, constructed and maintained, so if they are vital to a railroad's bottom line, they will be maintained. It doesn't take much neglect for a railroad to become damaged, which greatly reduces operating speed, so those traffic lanes that are heavily used are also well maintained. Some state or municipal government owned lines are well maintained and others just barely pass the minimum standard. The former Burlington-Rock Island line between Fort Worth and Dallas is a good example of a municipal government owned line that supports a lot of passenger and freight traffic and is well maintained.

The railroads I run on are generally well maintained and there is a constant reinvestment into the vital routes. I think it's become apparent to most of the major railroads that timely delivery is about the only thing that matters for many of their intermodal customers, and good track is a key component to on-time delivery. Fort Worth is currently undergoing a major rail reconstruction project where many miles of track are being replaced or upgraded to reduce train dwell times. This not only gets the idling trains out of town so they aren't polluting the urban environment, it gets the freight to the customer faster. Trains use less fuel when they are operating at a constant speed, rather than accelerating and decelerating, so these upgrades will also reduce fuel consumption as well as pollution.

[Brickbat]

53. Not every Class I is interested in maintaining its moneymakers.

Once CN privatized 15 years ago, all it cares about is pulling the last tiny nuggets out of the goose that laid golden eggs.

[Not Sure]

56. You're right

Uncle Warren spoils us with good track and better power.

One of the guys I hired out with came over from CN. I was not impressed with what I heard. Sounds like it was a lot better under IC management.

[Brickbat]

57. It's shameful how bad it is.

If the trainmasters and dispatchers knew what they were doing and were good managers, OR if the track, power and cars were in decent shape, it would be bearable. But neither is true.

[Not Sure]

63. I'm sorry to hear that

We have our share of all that (especially in Fort Worth - the headquarters - where douchey cutthroat trainmasters go to vie for promotions to the NOC), but it never feels that bad. It's much better at outlying terminals on the Transcon, and on some of the secondary routes it almost feels like you have a certain autonomy. You can just do your job and move freight.

Your comments along with the story I read recently about a whistleblower in Memphis make CN sound like a very toxic place to be working. I wish you the best of luck going forward.

[hfojvt]

54. not really

I looked it up for DU perhaps 6 years ago. At least in that recent past, the USA was shipping far more freight tonnes by rail than we were by truck. The trucks are just far more noticeable. Plus, since a train is moving 60-100 times what a truck is, you naturally don't see as many of them. Passenger trains are probably still going to, although the last time I took one was in 1990 from Lincoln, Ne to Portland, Or and back.

[cynatnite]

19. My husband has been a truck driver for 17 years...

Trucks consume 53.9 billion gallons of fuel every year. There are 1.2 million trucking companies in the US. 90% of them have less than 6 trucks. 70% of all freight in the US is moved by truck. Out of every dollar earned by a truck, only 4.8 cents of that is profit.

The big picture is a complicated one and not an easy one to solve. Localization will kill the economy. My husband would be out of a job if he didn't transport nationwide.

It's easy to spout this stuff off, but when you're having to move needed medical equipment, food or other necessities to areas where those items are in short supply, the argument for localization goes out the window.

A lot of small businesses rely on nationwide trucking. A large percentage of UPS and FEDEX drivers are owner operators.

The death of many local farms came from us becoming a nation of hundreds of millions of people needing to be fed who live at all corners of the country.

Shipping containers are only a small percentage of product that gets moved in the US. We also export and import to Canada and Mexico.

The trucking industry is held up by low fuel costs and high demand of product.

Companies like Freightliner and Peterbilt are making an effort to build more energy efficient trucks and there are even some on the road. The thing is that on average trucks will stay on the road for a few million miles. A new truck for some drivers is something with less than 500,000 miles. In other words, the turnover for new trucks getting out on the road aren't all that high.

Maybe later down the road they will become more affordable, but for now...reality will continue and the same trucks that's been running the roads help provide the computer you used to type your rant, the coffee you drank, and just about everything else that you need to survive in this world.

[CANDO]

22. I've been in trucking for 25 years

Most of that time as a Teamster operating for a northeast regional LTL freight co. The notion that trucks get millions of miles of use is not my experience. Over my career, its not unusual to have a truck with maybe a million to 1.4 million on it. I never seen one with that many miles on that wasn't about done for as far as useful life left in it. Just like the family vehicles we own, at a certain point they become too expensive to maintain. Fuel mileage has improved over my career. I drive trucks now that easily get 7.4 mpg. And anyone suggesting more freight on rails is rather misinformed as to when and what and where stuff needs to get to and from where. You're not going to see rail spurs into your local Wally world store.

[cynatnite]

24. My husband got a truck with 3 million miles on it one time...

On average they usually wound up in the neighborhood half a million to a million miles.

I never suggested anything of the sort about rails. I know the limitations of rail.

[Not Sure]

32. It's not trucks vs. rail, it's trucks + rail

Railroads have changed a lot from the days when every industry, warehouse and shop had a rail spur. Industries that still use those spurs are more likely to receive goods or raw materials that aren't practical to ship any other way. As you said, rail spurs aren't coming back to deliver freight to customers.

Trucks are much more nimble and flexible than trains when it comes to delivering small shipments to multiple customers. Trains are effective at delivering a large volume of freight or bulk commodities such as wheat, corn syrup, cement and ethanol to a single customer or transload point. Decades ago, trucking companies and railroads competed against one another to move both big and small shipments, and while some of this still exists, generally speaking both modes turned to cooperation instead of competition.

So, today you have railroads moving large volumes of freight by trailer and container to intermodal terminals, where the trailer and container are then delivered locally by a truck. The cost savings is very real compared to a rail only or a truck only mode, both in terms of fuel and labor costs. And railroads love the idea that they don't have to serve individual customers at their industries, delivering one or two railcars at a time, which can add days to delivery time. By moving the freight via intermodal trains, mile-and-a-half long trains of containers stacked two-high and trailers on flatcars can be delivered cross-country in not much more time than it takes to drive. Less time, in fact, for the highest priority trains.

BLET Locomotive Engineer here

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. The average American car gets 24 miles to the gallon.

There are a lot more of those than there are 18-wheelers. (The average European car gets 45 miles per gallon, in comparison.)

Being reliant on cars for transport is far more environmentally destructive.

[Agschmid]

27. Can you cite your statistic?

[Spider Jerusalem]

28. here:

[Agschmid]

30. Thx.

[badtoworse]

25. I love to buy American and I look for it when I shop. I 'll pay a premium for it.

What should I do when it's just not available? Sometimes I just do wihout, but sometimes I can't.

Really pisses me off to buy from China. I'd love love to see "buy America" become mainstream.

[Revanchist]

31. could large cities like NYC

Could cities like NYC be sustained locally or are there too many people to make it practical?

[Egalitarian Thug]

37. If they were well planned yes, but none of them are so, no.

Maybe Portland, OR.?

[cherokeeprogressive]

38. Your post is a little misleading. My Freightliner's GVW was 26,000 lbs. That's JUST the tractor.

Not the trailer, OR the load.

A 53' "dry van" weighs about 15,000 lbs. By "dry van" I mean regular trailer, not refrigerated. 53' is as long as you'll see.

So let's do a little math... 26,000 for the tractor, 15,000 for an empty trailer, that's 41,000 lbs.

That means 7 mpg for 39,000 lbs of actual freight.

That changes the equation a little bit, no?

[Ikonoklast]

71. Late model tractors pulling a composite dry van will scale 46,500.

I certainly am not driving the lightest weight tractor out there and use it to pull a reefer to boot, but I routinely scale 43,500 with half tanks.

And I average over 7mpg.

[taught_me_patience]

40. A bigger problem is F-150's that get 15mpg and hold four people are flying off the shelf

because someone *might* have to haul a refrigerator once every ten years...

[caraher]

41. MPG isn't a good metric

For land transport, rail is going to be the efficiency winner, mainly because trains have lower rolling resistance (steel wheels on steel tracks lose less energy to constantly deforming the wheel at the point of contact than rubber on pavement) and because they present less frontal area per unit cargo (so a smaller fraction of the energy goes into moving air out of the way than in moving freight). This is all presented very clearly by David MacKay

The appropriate metric is energy cost per unit mass moved per unit distance traveled, e.g. (gallons fuel used)/(pounds moved * miles traveled). Put in MacKay's favored physics units, that would be kWh/(ton * km):

[stevenleser]

43. Agreed. That's the metric to use. nt

[FatBuddy]

48. a truck still has to take if from rail facility

to end user facility.

[caraher]

49. Sure

I'm not saying don't use trucks... just that for anything that travels long distances and doesn't need to get there yesterday, it's far better to ship it by rail to a distribution center and then by truck to its final destination - at least to minimize energy use.

[FatBuddy]

50. they do that for lots of goods

here's the disconcerting part for me: truck driving is one of very few career paths for people that don't require a college education that can still make decent enough money. any call for dialing down the transportation sector is always going to be suspicious to me.

it's almost like they want everyone to work for wal mart or something.

[caraher]

67. The big picture has to involve creating different jobs

In the long run, long-haul trucking has to diminish regardless, simply because we can't sustain the current system based on fossil fuels. There's only so much oil, and keeping the effects of climate change manageable demands we keep most of the fossil fuel we haven't yet burned in the ground. I'm not really sure what the net effect on jobs of pushing the mix toward more rail and less trucking for long-haul transport would be, but you do raise an important consideration!

My hope would be that as we move away from fossil fuels, job prospects will open up in building a new energy and transportation infrastructure (including expanded mass transit). We need to make sure that those jobs offer a good living to anyone willing to do an honest day's work. And we have to continue to fight for organized labor. Thanks for the timely reminder that the right to a decent job can't be forgotten!

[TBF]

42. Capitalists care about one thing only - profit

and they are killing our planet.

[FatBuddy]

47. if you have it

a truck delivered it.

in many cases, at least.

[A HERETIC I AM]

51. In the overwhelming majority of cases.

Including the house or building people live in and the road to get there. All brought by truck.

[On the Road]

59. 7 Gallons a Mile for That Big Thing?

Seems like a model of fuel efficiency. Container ships even more so.

[Archaic]

60. Compare that to the 4000 pound SUV carrying the 200 pound human.

And only getting 14mpg.

Or the "efficient" cars they keep advertising that get a whopping 35mpg to move that 200 pound human.


At least trucks move stuff.