Mike Hendrix, writing at Cold Fury, slipped an aside into his most recent article that sent chills down my spine.
A final note: my brother tells me that his conversations with other truckers indicate that, should diesel passes the five-dollar/gallon mark, a large number of his fellow independents and owner/operators intend to shut ’em down. They’ll do it too; they’ll have to, they won’t have any choice in the matter. My brother his own self is near that point already; he told me the other day that his every-other-day fillup, formerly around 250 to 300 dollars, cost him well over eight hundred bucks last time. No business can go on hemorrhaging that kind of money for very long before quickly bleeding out. Think the huge truck-driver shortage, a genuinely dangerous situation, couldn’t possibly get much worse than it already is? Think the price of every good, every commodity, can’t keep rising so insanely? Think this is a crisis we’re in now? Just you wait until thousands more trucks, the lifeblood of our economy, have been taken off the road for good.
What does that mean in raw figures?
- Owner-Operators primarily operate Class 8 Trucks (33,001 pounds and greater). There were approximately 2.9 million registered combination trucks (tractor-trailers) in 2018.
- There are approximately 350,000 owner operators driving in the United States today ... Owner Operators make up 9% of the truckers on the road today.
- Nearly 1.5 million people work for the 124,320 employer businesses in this industry, and another 587,000 are self-employed, or “nonemployers” ... These nonemployers (assuming one person per business) make up nearly 29% of the workers in the industry.
So, if independent owner-operators have to park their trucks because they can't recover their fuel costs from their customers, we're talking about a 10% reduction in the number of trucks available to haul freight - this on top of an existing supply chain crunch that's got every truck running as hard as it can, all day, every day, just to try to keep pace. We're also talking about a quarter to a third of those involved in the trucking industry being out of work.
Our supply chain simply can't handle such losses. It'll be crippled.
And all this because the Biden administration has deliberately, with malice aforethought, sought to cripple US fuel independence, shut down drilling and production of fossil fuels, and make us more dependent on "green" energy sources that can't possibly make up for what they're replacing.
Try telling me again that the Biden administration's energy policies aren't a deliberate attempt to damage, if not destroy, the US economy, and with it the USA as an independent nation. I won't believe you. The evidence speaks for itself.
Peter
15 comments:
Last week I watched a man filling a one ton flatbed set up for construction. The station's pumps automatically shut down if you use a debit card. He had to restart the pump three times.
I had a guy come by to do some tree work last week. He said it was costing him over $1800.00/week to fuel his equipment; about double the "pre-Ukraine" rate. Where the hell is he going to recover that from? Tree work is more of then than not "elective." With everyone putting off elective expenditures because THEY are paying through the nose for fuel and everything else, the elective stuff gets back-burnered...
...Thanks again, Joe...
Only quibble
"Just you wait until thousands more trucks, the lifeblood of our economy, have been taken off the road for good."
Well, until fuel prices get lowered and/or they can recoup the cost.
We're getting into hard times (YMMV.) Prepare accordingly to your resources and situation.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Trucking companies will raise their rates, as will owner operators. The real problem with this is that some trucking companies are under an annual contract with Fortune 50 companies, which states (in effect) we'll ship your goods for x cents per mile, but in return you promise to ship y pounds of goods.
The problem that trucking companies have is that typically the rig isn't paid off; it carries a mortgage, and the mortgage company doesn't care about an owner's hard times - they want their money. Nor do they really want to foreclose.
Trucks are run 24/7/365 and stop for maintenance, freight, or because of drive time regulations. When the truck breaks down, it loses money until it's back on the road again.
We're now at the point where fuel prices and fuel taxes must change, and the change must be permanent. The alternative is not going to be pleasant for anyone.
Should have added the pumps shut down at $100.
Adding to the stupidity, I've heard about 70% of wind turbines and 70% of solar panels come from China, so "going green" is really about subsidizing Chinese tyranny at the expense of American freedom.
Yep, watched a 'work truck' 26' box size filling up at the local stop and rob this afternoon. He went through three credit cards and two restarts to get his tank filled at $4.79/gal.
Now that the Covid lockdown charade has reached it lifespan, hamstringing the ability of people to freely move about is the next play. Pump prices will have the desired ripple affect to further destroy society as we [used] to know it. "Burnin' down the house..."
We charge a fuel surcharge on every delivery, and pay our contractors a fuel surcharge.
While not the same as cheap fuel, it helps.
Alot of small companies locked themselves into bad contracts by low-balling bids to get work, they may be around long.
The big companies will survive.
When do the people say "enough is enough?" Can a State tell the Federal Leviathan to "FO" within their borders? The Fed is supposed to operate at our leisure not the other way around. Is this secession or the affirmation of the constitution? It's 1860 and the fight this time is again about slavery, ours versus the Fed.
Spin
I have an owner/operator buddy that just did a in-frame rebuild last summer. He bought the Kenworth W900 used knowing he would have to do the engine rebuild in a couple hundred thousand miles a few years back. The engine rebuild was the last upgrade on the rolling rebuild/refresh. Prior to the in-frame he had upgraded or improved the creature comforts and looks of the W9. He has pulled two loads this year as shippers are low-balling loads. He listed his truck for sale on Monday. Tuesday he bought a 22 year old T800 Day Cab for $30k that looks very rough but is mechanically sound. He is going through the process to haul containers at the Savannah port. This will be about 1/4th the income he is used to but he will be home every night.
I suspect this will be an issue that pops up locally first - some regions of the country are more expensive than others; truckers located there, or working to/from there will be the first to shut down or no longer travel there.
We've seen this to some extent already - a number of truckers won't take loads to California due to their emissions regulations and bans on older trucks.
I bet we'll see even more containers and other loads going to Texas, Georgia, Florida, etc due to lower prices than we already are.
The definition of treason is ...
I'll take a contrary view here and say, good. The more trucks sidelined and the faster our supply chain and economy collapse the better. It's long past time for the gangsters in DC to go. If we were half the Americans of 1775, we'd have put a stop to this tyranny years ago. But we were all too comfortable. Love to piss and moan about the state of affairs but the best we can manage is a big Trump rally where the same applause lines are repeated or a protest in dc where the Regime false flags it and imprisons hundreds of poor patriots indefinitely. It's clear that Americans won't do anything until they get a double fisted punch in the gut, that hits them in their wallet and threatens their comfy life. Well, maybe this is it. We're going to have to relearn what it means to be a neighbor, to support your local community in order to survive. Throw out our idols and put God and country first. We went all over the world spilling our blood for all sorts of lies cooked up by the DC criminals. Hiw about here at home? It has to start with states and localities saying no to dc. But it won't happen until people are desperate. If truckers shutting it down causes a collapse, hallelujah.
Freight rates are going up to cover the fuel increase, and going up a lot. Pretty much every contract has "escalators" built in on diesel pricing, and boy did they get tripped and tripped hard. What used to be a 4600 trip has hit almost 7000.
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