Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Climate Change and Environmental Issues "Greener" Trucking - Or Something Else ?

Bingo.

Even if you aren't a Mechanic this should be fairly obvious.

1959 is gone. And it aint comin' back.

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And good riddance.

I am not saying that the current raft of regulations is going to be perfect either. But I am also saying that the answer is to remove the lobby influence from the government regulatory agencies.
As long as we have lobbyists going through a revolving door from lobby office to govt agencies, and back and forth, NO government agency will be able to function properly, no government agency is going to write fair and honest legislation and no government agency is going to do anything but protect the people who are supplying its staffing.

It's real convenient to blame all of this on liberal and on Obama, but Obama and his liberal America haters didn't put the foxes in the henhouses.

You might want to look at the ATA, it's associated lobbies, and Big Oil first, and see if perhaps they might have wielded some undue influence.

It's not JUST the Securities Exchance Commission, it's ALL of the agencies now...regulatory capture is across the board, and it did NOT START WITH OBAMA.

Yer on a roll, Checks.

Interestingly, lobbyists are where our politicians get most of their information these days. They usually get to hear both sides from opposing lobbyists.
Republicans would like to believe that everything was okay when the government was run by Republicans. But it just aint so. Conservatism has generally proven itself to be a failure.
Liberalism, of course, is also a failure, but its failures are usually less painful.
Balance is the key.
And, as this thread has addressed, coping with change.

All of which goes to prove you're far more "ideological" than I, Greger ! OTOH, even I do know how canal boats can go "uphill" even as water flows down. But let's hear your engineering precis on how to build "200 mph freight roads", by all means ! Or your political one on how to create freight spurs in urban areas economically !

"High-speed passenger rail" - where you go sixty + mph until the next station 10 miles down the track - stop and a couple of dozen depart/ board while hundreds wait. A couple of hundred people stopping/starting in order to board/discharge a dozen ! (Yeah that's "efficiency "!)

OTOH we could create a system of elevated "interurban cars/carriage systems" using the the median/sides of extant highways providing efficient point-to-point transport in, say, 12-15 passenger packets moving at 40-50 mph. Developed like a tree, systems would use standardized "cars" operating solely on remote control and shunting from the "main line" in order to discharge/pickup passengers to be met by "locals" of the same ilk.

Not too long back the local paper published an old account of two individuals traveling from Easton, PA to Ohio and returning in a couple of days on a similar, terrestrial system. Now all you have to do is claim our grandfathers could do something we can't !

The lack of the foregoing is ONE of the reasons we have folks commuting sixty+ miles in "pickemup" trucks. The other is government interference. Until government stepped in, the "sine qua non" of the suburban set was the station wagon. It was built on a car chassis.
EPA CAFE regs killed them. But didn't "kill the need" . Hence the emergence of the SUV. (Which, BTW, weren't subject to "car safety regs" so mfgs, happily embraced the SUV and loaded it up with all sorts of "gee whiz" features attractive to the suburban set. Never mind the CG and ride height meant truck handling and "enthusiastic driving" meant dead bodies. The consumer - and most importantly government was "happy" !

America is awash in energy ! We've got trillions of units of NG in proven fields. Like wise billions of barrels of oil in proven fields. But there is one "holdup:". The Obama Administration ! Its halted development of inshore, shallow water development in the Gulf, blocked terrestrial development of the Baakken Field in the midwest and done everything but declare martial law to slow development of Marcellus Shale ! One must wonder what the "objective" of the Obama Administration is, since its "estimates" of the efficiency and impact of its touted "green alternative energy" schemes aren't proving out in reality and killing a lot of wildlife along the way.

But not of this is going to help the plight of the OO trucker ! It appears he's going to get slammed on his punkin with yet another in a long litany of federal mandates favoring the unions and the ATA. And, as usual, the consummer will have to pay.... >Mech

Greger,

Spoken like

Spoken like someone that's never driven any of them - particularly the "maxodyne" ! "Singles" can pull as much freight as any other design, but DOT weight regs demand "axles/ton". I see you've never seen those multi-axle trailers so prevalent in the northern midwest.

No OTR "sleeper cab" truck is what anyone, (outside a tribe of Packis) would term, "luxurious". More like a mobile (and very tiny ) motel room sans the shower !

None of this "Government Imposed Mandate" is about energy or its "efficient use" IMO. Our trucking industry is already on the peak of the energy/cost curve. The Obama Administration - and the ATA/Teamsters, etc are using the power of regulation to "reshape the curve" - to their advantage. IOW a political ploy to erase yet another "restricting factor" in government control of our economy.

The United States is awash in energy ! Or at least it would be but for the blockading rulings and actions by the sitting administration. Developement of vast fields of gas and oil are being blocked at every turn by every legislative arrow in the quivers of the watermelons regardless of the "science" of its safety ! Why would the President of the most powerful economic machine in the history of the world work so damn hard to starve it of its lifeblood ? >Mech

Yes, of course it is. Drill, baby drill.
The one good thing about having Texas oil executives in the whitehouse was the way they drove down the price of oil.
Fuel prices have soared since Democrats stole the last elections.

What the United States is awash in is idiocy.

No, I'm not a truck driver. Yes I've driven a few Mack trucks and worked on them as a youngster. It wasn't my cup of TEA thank you. My dear old Pa was a mechanic and a truckdriver when I was just a tyke. Fortunately by the time I grew up he had gotten a real job.

In a perfect world I'd be drivin' this!

I think you may have miised the part where I said trucks are perfect for local deliveries.

Yes, all the water in your intergalactic canal system can be pumped up or down as required. I think we all have a handle on that technology. And yes, I've seen barges being pushed up the Missisippi and the thousands of horsepower required to slowly push it up the hill. But as far as trains go we have only to look as far as Europe for the High Speed Rail technology. No, it doesn't stop at every whistle stop anymore than airplanes land in every hick town. But do please write your congressman to see if you can get that barge canal started. Just point to examples of it efficiently used elsewhere in the world.

High Speed rail, unlike your Automated Interstate Barge Canals, are already in the planning stages, this is what the future looks like:

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I do like twisted humor, Greger, but this does push the envelope !

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OMG this is almost sickening enough to make me puke.
Come on Mech, why is it that you only see the ONE side of everything? The station wagon could have been saved numerous ways, and I know this because there are two surviving examples, no THREE I just thought of a third, and it's a domestic one!

1) They could have done what Mercedes did, develop a reliable DIESEL version, which would have gotten 40 to 50% better fuel economy. No-o-o-o-o-o! Instead they insisted that station wagons had to have 460 cubic inch four barrel gassers and they wouldn't even stop bitching long enough to try fuel injection.

Jesus Christ on a bike Mechie, the station wagon died at a time when the US auto industry was so damn cynical that the only company with the guts to try an alternative design was forced to use a Renault engine...and we got AMC PACERS as a result.
The Ford Fairmont could have succeeded if they would have been willing to try an up-engineered version of the 2.8 liter Ford V-6 instead of the 250 or 300 cubic inch straight six, which they refused to outfit with fuel injection ONCE AGAIN.

Bullcrap, I call bullcrap.

2) Yeah I am on a roll! The next surviving example comes from SWEDEN, the Volvo wagon. They're everything the American wagons weren't, safer, better looking, roomier, more powerful but still efficient, because the Swedes, those damn socialist bastards, they engineered the crap out of em.

3) FINALLY today you can now get a decent station wagon again, and the best of them costs a pretty penny but it's powerful, good looking and it's efficient. The Cadillac CTS wagon.
It'll smoke a lot of the sports coupes and still get 25 mpg on the freeway.

And what we now call "sport touring" is a station wagon my friend. The Chevy Traverse, the Dodge Magnum, the Caliber and Nitro all fit the station wagon category.

And still no diesels. And please, don't even try to tell me it's because our smog regs are too tough. They're tough but it just requires something our automakers refuse to do, DOMESTIC research and development.


Yeah okay whatever, not like Republicans don't have a aching desire for a large surrogate penis on wheels. That's what killed the station wagon, it's a Mom car while an SUV is compensation for.....


Oh yeah sure.
USGS slashes Marcellus Shale estimate 80%

The USGS are the factual end, the party poopers.
I am so used to hearing rosy projections...we're AWASH IN ENERGY, so much it will too cheap to meter!
Remember that projection? Yeah sure Mech, we can just hook up a port in every garage and charge a flat rate. Too cheap to meter!

I'm waiting for the next downgrade, first it was 410 trillion cubic feet, now 84 trillion, next they'll say 21 trillion.
And most of it will be on a slow boat to CHINA!
You like for us to forget that there is NO requirement that these benevolent bastards sell all that energy to US. They can sell it to anyone they want.

So like I said, the era of CHEAP AND READILY available fossil fuel IS OVER Mech. You can have cheap, but it will mean long lines and reduced availability, you can have readily available but it will mean expensive. You can have one or the other but not both.


When they stop destroying those shallow waters we'll talk.
They seem to have a distinct disregard for that sort of thing.


I would LOVE to engage you in a discussion of the costs involved in shale oil development, but I am waiting for oil to once again top 150 bucks a barrel. Once it does, and it has staying power at 150 for oh...say at least a decade, that discussion will not be necessary and whatever obstacles are currently present will be worked out, because at 150 a barrel it will make more sense to approach shale oil development than not to, and then the only problem will be whether or not the principal players want to pay attention to environmental quality or go in like usual rapers and pillagers they've proven to be.

Over my dead f**ing body, and I am not alone.
Notice how they suddenly came up with a new frack water formula the other day, one which isn't quite as toxic?
Know why? I think you do know why.


Spare me, please.
Republicans have BLOCKED almost EVERY SINGLE effort to develop alternative energy proposed since 2008 unless it benefitted China.


And as usual, the consumer has to pay when the magical "invisible hand of the market" is allowed to work too, so what the hell is the difference, please tell me!