Your Sentinel staff writer, Patricia Miller, reported on the Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s “The Trucks are Coming” study. I wish the trucking industry had access to its crystal ball. I guess its predictions for the future are based on past data.
Let me look into my crystal ball — by 2020, there will be no truck transportation as we know it today. Most of the companies operating now will be out of business due to an inability to attract drivers, insurance costs and overwhelming regulations.
The shortage of drivers today is so acute many loads are not being delivered or being delivered days after the delivery schedule required. If this shortage was let’s say … influenza, an epidemic is upon us.
By 2020, the few trucking companies still operating will be reregulated and will request and receive the highest rates known to mankind. The consumer will happily pay and plead for delivery whenever the truck can get there.
Groups such as the Tri-State Transportation Campaign will never author studies critical of the trucking industry because they will be too busy criticizing those people who do not want railroads going through their back yards.
The trucking industry has to be viewed as a utility and would certainly be as or more important than phones, electric, gas, etc.
Although I may not see 2020, many folks in the Tri-State Transportation Campaign will and I would appreciate an honest appraisal of just who had the most accurate crystal ball.
Samuel L. Cunninghame
government relations Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers Inc.
Port Newark