National Freight Program Heats Up

The Journal of Commerce in its April issue reports dissatisfaction is brewing about the direction of the National Freight Program. The program, whose goal is to improve the efficiency of the U.S. freight transportation system, is turning away from trucks and towards rail and water.

According to the Journal, the goal of the Obama administration’s freight policy is to eliminate trucks from the roadways. Precisely, the journal writes “the Obama administration is forming a national freight policy that can be boiled down to a single concept: Get more trucks off the roads. Moving a larger percentage of the intercity freight by water, and then rail, for as far as possible and shifting to trucks for the last few miles, will result in cleaner air, fuel savings and less highway congestion.”

The reaction from the trucking industry about this new intercity direction has been less than enthusiastic. Randy Mullett Vice President Government Relations and Public Affairs at ConWay, a major national trucking company with over 28,000 employees, was quoted by the Journal as being disappointed that the importance of the trucking industry “is being negated, and the importance of mobility for highway users is being dismissed.”

The disappointment is understandable. At stake is the 2011 transportation budget, which is expected to set the direction for the transportation infrastructure for years. Here, the biggest fear that the trucking industry has is that funds expected to build up the truck highway and bridge infrastructure will be diverted on a mass scale to build the rail and waterway infrastructure.

Compounding that issue is that many in the shipping and rail industry are questioning the wisdom of putting more money into a truck-oriented highway infrastructure if trucks can’t pull their fair share of the financial weight.

One has to only look back at the collapse of the I-35W Minnesota River Bridge, officially known as Bridge 9340, and realize that the weight of heavy trucks poses a threat to America’s aging and poorly maintained bridges. Although one solution is to retrofit these bridges, others say that the cost is too high and won’t solve the basic problem that trucks present, and that is weight and maintenance costs.

With hundreds of billions of dollars needed for highway and road improvements, and revenue from gasoline and truck tax falling far too short for expensive highway and bridge retrofits, the question comes up if there is a better way than trucks.

Analysts point out that shipping freight by truck is not the most economical way nor is it environmentally the best way for the environment. Others point out that an overloaded truck-infrastructure makes the United States distribution system vulnerable. Many would rest better if they knew goods could make it in not only by truck, but also by boat, rail and air.

If a ship and rail infrastructure is favored over a truck infrastructure, many new jobs in the maritime industry will be created, but at the same time job losses would undoubtedly mount in the trucking industry. And this would include job losses at truck and auto parts manufacturers, diesel gasoline companies, truck servicing centers, highway restaurants, motels and even truck driving schools.

Although the trucking companies may win concessions from congress in the2011 transportation budget, the trucking industry must take a hard look at the writing on the wall. Corporations are waking up to the fact that ships are much more economical freight solutions. And new technology is expected to make shipping an even more economical and environmentally viable solution in the future.

The one thing that trucks don’t have working for them is nature; that is the wind, the tides and the sun. New boats can make use of all these energy sources and offer the very real possibility of energy free travel. This on top of the safety, costs and pollution concerns are making trucks a much harder sell.