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Supply Chain: What Would Trump Do?
This business of the supply chain being “broken” is a joke. The supply chain is not broken. It is being deliberately crippled by the man-boy governor of California, who has forbidden independent truckers or union truckers driving trucks more than three years old (as I understand data from other Ricochetti) from taking loads away from the piers to local distribution points. With the number of union truckers driving new rigs being finite, Mr. Xiden’s “24/7” claims are useless.
This is easily remedied. A real president would jawbone the man-boy governor of California into suspending the regulations for the good of his state and his nation. If this failed, a real president would go on national TV and announce that due to the State of Emergency he had just declared, he was suspending the regs, that he was authorizing the Secretary of Commerce (who would actually be at work, not trying manfully to breastfeed a baby) to seize control of all rigs from Austin to Walla-Walla, that he was diverting the Coast Guard to line the 70 waiting ships up to be offloaded, that he was ordering the Secretary of Defense to divert military resources to the area to assist, etc.
Please don’t argue about the details. The details don’t matter for my purposes; the will to succeed does. Mr. Trump would pull out every card in his capitalist Rolodex to find the right people to do this, would sic his house counsel on finding a legal way to do it, and would find the manpower and trucks. It would get done, just like we got WuFlu vaccines, an embassy in Jerusalem, Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, and an end to ISIS.
Mr. Xiden just makes a pronouncement, which means nothing.
Published in General
Why do we assume the root of these problems are all domestic. China’s hands are all over this.
President Trump wouldn’t be bowing to China, so we never would have gotten to this point.
A little respect here, people! Andy Warhol stayed up all night painting those.
An illuminating comment posted to this thread on CTH by a truck owner/driver:
(Italics mine.)
And here’s the next ‘unexpected’ shock to the system:
(Credit)
This crisis has been in the making for decades. Trucking has become a regulatory nightmare. States like CA want their fuel taxes on the truck fuel burned in their state. They, among several states and Canadian provinces, have developed a nearly unenforceable pact to force trucking companies to track fuel purchases and mileage so that an accounting can be made to determine a whether the taxes paid on fuel purchases matches the tax due on fuel burned in a particular state. It is a record keeping nightmare alleviated only partially with very expensive technology. Truckers, as you can imagine, have had to become technology savvy or leave the profession. Many chose to leave the trade. A similar pact evolved to allocate state registration fees. The biggest change happened in the beginning of the Obama administration when thousands of proposed but tabled interstate trucking regulations were enacted simultaneously. These rules were often in conflict and some made no sense at all, but adopted they were. The biggest change was the extension of liability for infractions to the fleet owners. Prior regulations placed compliance responsibility on the CDL drivers alone. After two years of utter confusion, clarifications came and the new rules became clear, but arcane and arduous. Trucking violations became revenue opportunities and blue states and even some red states, took clear advantage. Any commercial vehicle pulling a 10k lb. load (all half-ton trucks are rated to pull 10K loads) were targets. It was a massive power grab. Imagine that poor self employed Texas plumber pulling a small trencher he’d hauled thousands of times, stopped entering New Mexico and fined tens of thousands for failure to have a CDL, failure to keep daily inspection logs, trip logs and weigh station slips, failure to stop at a weigh station, failure to have an IFTA fuel tax sticker and a registration sticker, etc. His truck and load would be red-tagged and impounded. He would be stranded.
That’s a scenario played out over and over as trucks entered Blue states on interstate highways. At the same time a residential driver of an F150 pulling an RV of the same weight passes unmolested.
Technology came to the rescue to some degree and many of the more restrictive rules were eased by the Trump administration, however, the flavor of the regulatory regime remained as did the fuel and registration requirements.
The fuel tax and registration fee compacts bring up interesting constitutional questions. The bigger question is whether these taxes are imposts prohibited directly by the Constitution. They also clearly inhibit interstate trade. And compacts with foreign governments (Canadian provinces) are specifically addressed by the Constitution’s prohibition of states’ engagement in treaties with foreign powers. The overall question remains: can states essentially avoid constitutional scrutiny by forming compacts affirmed by a single legislative body (the Senate)? Was that the intention of the compact provision?
Constitutional scholars, please help.
All of the insanity state governments and, of course, the federal government do enhance power, leverage, for political leaders and bureaucrats. It grows until some point when the State collapses into an old dead place, usually with good food and interesting old neighborhoods, but without dynamism, growth or economic creativity. We departed for a couple of centuries, but all good things end.
We only pull gear around. We aren’t a trucking company. But the rules regarding what hours drivers can work and what they can do after they deliver their loads are byzantine.
“Mayor Pete” was on Meet The Press this morning, I point that out just in case others might be interested, I don’t expect to waste my time listening to him myself.
I know I’m late to the party, but let’s just say for one minute that there was a pandemic.
And there were bare shelves. And they were already having trouble getting things shipped/stocked. Then they made a random mandate for a vaccine.
It does kinda seem that this has been a problem about 2 years in the making, no? Don’t you think that, maybe, just maybe, they could’ve….I dunno….incentivized vocational training? Incentivized private businesses to hire more drivers? Incentivized anything? It does all seem a bit predictable.
In the meantime, the food prices go up, lumber prices go up, gas prices go up. And Congress is going to gift us out of the hole by driving us further into debt.
Good times.
I beg to differ.
Newsom and the legislature is the main problem. The people of California know nothing more than Democrats and are rigorously indoctrinated from childhood. Additionally, the promise of Stuff is always a strong lure. His Highness knows he can promise the Moon and not give it as long as he makes another decree.
Speaking of which, I’m sure he’d respond to the crisis by talking about how clean our air is now that the trucks are off the roads…
And people don’t need all that heating oil and stuff, their shivering will keep them warm.
“Let them eat air.”
– Gavin Antionette
update: 10/20/2021 ships waiting in LA for port number over 100 Port manager says he is proud of efficiency…
“Port partners continue to do a great job to ensure a safe, secure, efficient, reliable, and environmentally sound marine transportation system,” Louttit said. “We’re honored to be a part of it.”
Who is in a position to fire this knob?
Just for the record, how come the list never starts off with words like ‘profitable’ or ‘efficient’.
Safety is never job number 1. The job is job number 1.
They can SAY they value efficiency, as long as everyone understands they don’t really mean it.
I don’t know how it is in other trades, but if we aren’t safe, we can’t be efficient.
As an employee of a steel company, safety is job 1. There are too many ways to wind up severely dead or injured if it isn’t the focus. Even though I’m just an office/IT guy, I see the emphasis throughout the company.