Modern life revolves around trucking.
Think about it. Everything you see in every retail establishment, from clothing to food to automobiles to lumber, relied on a semi-truck to get it there. Seventy percent of all goods in America are trucked in. Without the trucking industry, America would be frozen, absolutely paralyzed. Next time you see a truck driver, thank him or her.
Trucking is a hard life. Not only must you navigate an enormous vehicle through intense traffic often in narrow, crowded streets (imagine being a trucker in Manhattan), but long-haul truckers are tasked with being away from home and family for long stretches of time.
And, for some reason, truckers are reviled by the upper classes. A dear friend used to be a long-haul trucker on the eastern seaboard, and his job was punctuated at regular intervals by people who all but spat at him for his career choice as he delivered the goods that allowed their businesses to operate. Trucking is a thankless profession.
Unsurprisingly, drivers are leaving the industry in droves, but not necessarily because of the long hours or the marginal pay or even the classist bias. Almost invariable they’re leaving for one reason: Oppressive government over-regulation.
The trucking industry is already regulated to the nth degree, but in the last few years it’s ramped up to nearly unsustainable levels. Needless to say, those making the rules and regulations are also those most unfamiliar with the realities of life on the road. How many bureaucrats have climbed into the cab of a truck and put it in gear on crowded city streets or remote highways? My guess is virtually none of them.
Now we have an administration gone wild, a progressive cabal of do-gooders who seem determined to regulate the trucking industry out of existence for the good of the planet. Nowhere is trucking more intensely controlled than in California. And California’s insane regulations are what might bring the whole of America to its knees.
California’s mandates are more onerous than the federal government’s EPA regulations, which are bad enough. But the Golden State is obsessed with electric vehicles, and it is moving to mandate an electric fleet over the next few years. Never mind that California’s power grid is so fragile that it can barely handle regular demand as it is; they want those trucks electrified.
What politicians refuse to acknowledge is the ripple effects of these regulations. Consider this sobering analysis of how e-truck mandates could hamstring the American economy:
These are the issues truckers face if e-truck mandates go into effect. JKC Trucking vice-president and co-owner Mike Kucharski said, “My concern is that if this technology fails, the entire supply chain will be dead in the water. Failure is not merely inconvenient, it’s catastrophic. This is not an option, especially for the food supply chain of America.”
We had the merely glimpse of the chaos around supply-chain hiccups during COVID. Now imagine the supply chain collapsing, thanks to electric vehicle mandates. Each new level of bureaucracy adds to the cost of the goods being delivered, which of course are passed on to the consumers.
“However well-intentioned these rules and regulations might be,” explained one frustrated trucker who is leaving the profession after decades on the road, “it’s clear that no one is consulting with the long-haul truckers about the totally foreseeable bad outcomes. The great problem with all central planning is that regulators lack local knowledge, and are not inclined to speak to the people living with the consequences of their decrees – probably because we would tell them what idiots they are.”
It continually amazes me how many drastic changes the left wants to make in the name of “climate change” without factoring in how it will affect them personally. Even the most ardent environmentalist needs food and water. Without truckers, those necessities are jeopardized. (See this post “One Month Without Trucks” to understand the ripple effect.) If California – or any other state – tries to force the mandate toward electric big rigs, the trucking industry will crash, and America will grind to a halt.
As California goes, so goes the nation. Imagine a future without truckers, and see where it gets you.
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.