THOUGHTS ON A SUCCESSFUL TRUMP PRESIDENCY
AS PUBLISHED IN THE WASHINGTON POST
With Donald Trump’s inauguration right around the corner, I have thoughts to share from transportation on what a successful presidency would look like, particularly given that ten percent of the country’s workforce is employed by transportation.
Ever on the mind of American consumers, particularly transportation is the cost of oil. High fuel costs keep the price of delivering goods expensive, slowing the economy. Oil prices has contributed greatly to the number of companies going out of business. The numbers are unavailable for 2024, but an alarming 88,000 companies ceased business in 2023.
Because of high fuel costs, trucker wages have been stagnant the last couple of years, which is exacerbated by younger generations avoiding the industry. This lack of drivers will bite this country hard when freight picks back up. Not to be Captain Obvious, but high gas prices affects everyone, leaving less money in weekly budgets, money that could be spent elsewhere.
Another concern are severe emissions policies. Transportation has made enormous strides cleaning up their emissions, but the policy looming for 2027 is even more severe, causing truck manufacturers to predict new truck prices to increase by up to $30,000. The trucking industry cannot afford this, which will cause holding off buying new equipment. My company will not be ordering new equipment for 2027 if this new mandate is implemented. We can only hope the Trump administration will ease the new mandates, if not halt them altogether.
Additionally, with new emissions comes more breakdowns with equipment as historically, the new controls causes more mechanical issues. It’s more common for a truck to be sidelined with faulty emissions problems than with any other parts of the truck, such as engines or transmissions. These breakdowns are horrendously costly and problematic to the industry.
The saber-rattling with Canada is also something to be watched by the transportation industry. Biased border policies causing American truckers to be delayed at the border are capricious and costly. Issues with paperwork or a truckers driving record, going back decades, are recurring problems to be contended with. From this perspective, as well as the available oil would be to transportation’s benefit if Canada, or its provinces, became another American state.
Finally, bringing China, Russia, and Iran back in line would free up billions and billions of dollars badly needed to repair our infrastructure. The roads and bridges in this country have deteriorated substantially to our mutual detriment. Despite war hawk cries in Congress, repair and expansion to accommodate extra traffic with that money would go a long way to strengthening our economy.
Trucks may seem a nuisance to four-wheedlers, but without trucks, this nation will ground to a halt.