Trucks at Work Blog

“Distance makes the heart grow fonder and familiarity breeds contempt. According to this, my soul mate should be in Thailand.” -Jason Zebehazy

I‘ve always consider the phrase “familiarity breeds contempt” one hell of an oxymoron, especially in trucking. I mean, in the larger context, isn‘t the familiar what we hold dear, despite travels near and far? For example, I‘ve been overseas a handful of times and when you bump into a fellow American, no matter where they live in relation to you stateside, it‘s almost like old home week. You instantly make a connection based on the familiar.

I remember once on a train in Italy the guy selling snacks turned out to be a U.S. college student taking a semester abroad. He pigeonholed the American couple in front me, asking for an update about everything from home - especially his favorite NFL teams - and they were more than happy to talk.

Back in the U.S., highway travel is one of the big areas where familiarity for me plays a hugely beneficial role. For example, I live in the Washington D.C. area, which is near the top of the list for traffic congestion nightmares. But since I grew up here, I know all the back roads and side streets when the highways get jammed. All due respect to the wonders of GPS and Garmin-like devices, you need to KNOW the roads to really navigate them. It‘s not all about lines on a map - some back roads have too many lights, or are under constant construction. That information doesn‘t get handed over by the friendly box on the dashboard.

Driving somewhere else, however … well, no matter how good the technology or the maps, it‘s always a toss-up. Take Chicago. Back in 2002, I stayed there for a week at a hotel just off I-55 outside the city. That‘s the only road I knew. As a result, no matter when I travelled in or out of Chicago, I was in traffic jams for miles. I took 55 back to my hotel at five completely different times - 10 am, 12 noon, 3 pm, 8 pm, 12 midnight - and sat in miles of stalled traffic each trip.

Every. Single. Time.

Then there was my brilliant escapade in Los Angeles about 10 years ago. Heading to LAX airport after attending a logistics trade shows, I realized at the last minute that I should ship the box of press kits and materials with me back to my office, instead of lugging them on the plane. And look at that - my map from Avis showed if I took this local road, instead of the highway, I‘d most certainly pass a U.S. post office branch or Mail Boxes Etc. store (this is before they got bought out by UPS). And wouldn‘t you know it! It worked - there was a post office right on the main drag.

In Compton. Yes, THAT Compton. I stood out like a sore thumb.

The post office took only cash so I had to use an ATM a few blocks over at a local grocery store. They‘d stacked up three burned out cars behind it. Standing there in line, I felt like a complete idiot in my suit and tie, to say the least. Most people were highly amused. One lady said to me, “You‘ve got to be a tourist. No cop would be so dumb to dress like you and stop here.” The whole episode passed without incident (and my box made it home safe and sound) but it just reminded me that if I‘d been even remotely familiar with L.A., I would never have taken that road thru Compton.

Not one of my better days.

I got fouled up again this past week, coming back from Pennsylvania through Harrisburg. The trick is to clip around the entangled highways - the turnpike, I-83, 283, etc. - to hit Rt. 15 through Gettysburg, Frederick, MD, Dulles, VA on home. That‘s the ‘back way‘ into Northern Virginia when you want to avoid the I-95, I-270, and I-495 highway choke points. But that‘s a route I only use occasionally and I spent 20 minutes driving around trying to figure out which road to take before a local waitress set me back on the proper path.

[I also miss my favorite radio stations when I am away from home - 98.7 WMZQ (country-western) and 98 Rock out of Baltimore MD (heavy metal, baby!) Thank goodness musical taste isn‘t part of my performance review - Gretchen Wilson back-to-back with Metallica and Theory of a Deadman would probably earn me a yellow penalty flag or two!]

A lot of truckers I know feel the same way (about familiarity with the roads - not sharing my musical taste. Most roll their eyes at that combination.) Decades spent on highways, interchanges, rural roads, and urban thoroughfares have given them much more sure-footed knowledge when they plan their routes. Navigation technology is great - don‘t get me wrong here - but it‘s got to be leavened with some experience before I think it can really add the efficiency drivers — and carriers for that matter — are looking for.

“Coastal shipping could complement - not compete with - trucking and rail. This is especially critical given current pressures on the trucking industry, such as rising fuel costs and labor shortages.” -From the “America‘s Deep Blue Highway” study recently published by the Institute for Global Maritime Studies (IGMS)

It‘s an intriguing, yet complex, thought: expanding coastal ocean shipping capacity that‘s specifically geared to haul truck trailers. Much like the intermodal partnerships that exist between the trucking and railroad industry, this one would benefit both parties by increasing freight capacity without the need for massive infrastructure costs - while at the same time reducing highway congestion, allowing for more timely and (one hopes) more profitable delivery for truckers.

“Like education or healthcare, transportation is fundamental to the economy and is a major issue in our lives,” noted authors John Curtis Perry, Scott G. Borgerson, and Rockford Weitz in their report “America‘s Deep Blue Highway: How coastal shipping could reduce traffic congestion, lower pollution, and bolster national security.”

The authors - all with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University - collaborated with experts from the Institute for Global Maritime Studies (IGMS) and several economists to broadly analyze the benefits expanded coastal shipping services could bring to the table for the U.S.

“We have a 19th century rail network, a 20th century highway system, and

21st century transportation gridlock looming on the near horizon,” they argue in the report. “We must return to the sea to get freight moving. The now underused deep blue highway could provide resilience and improve the environmental performance of the nation‘s transportation system.”

“This study shows how coastal shipping could improve America‘s economic competitiveness by reducing traffic congestion, air pollution, and infrastructure maintenance costs,” noted Per Heidenreich, a shipping industry expert and former CEO of Heidmar Inc. “Even better, a revitalized marine highway is not only good for the country, but also makes good business sense. Getting our highways moving again through coastal shipping will yield excellent returns. It is a vision for the future that is good for us all and within our reach.”

OK, sure, this all sounds good - but what does it mean on the nuts and bolts level to the freight world?

The coastal shipping plan envisions, on the Atlantic coast, the wider use of Roll-on Roll-off (RoRo) ships - special vessels designed specifically for carrying truck trailers - that seem particularly suited to the salt-water highway. Cargo would be driven aboard at the origin and driven ashore at the destination, allowing truckers to engage in more profitable short-haul rather than long distance runs. On the Pacific coast, small container ships seem more appropriate to leapfrog crowded highways, the report concluded.

Although not a panacea, investing in coastal shipping requires relatively little cost, the authors argue. “Our research indicated that a typical Atlantic port can be prepared to handle RoRo traffic with a $5 million investment,” they said. “An incremental investment of approximately $50 million would be needed to increase daily capacity along the Atlantic coast to a total of 21,000 trailers.”

That capacity is essential for bypassing highway congestion and its related costs, the study claimed. They point to Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that freight tonnage will be 70% higher in 2020 than its 1998 level - and increased landside congestion slows the pace of economic productivity, as highway congestion right now costs American commuters 4.2 billion hours and 2.9 billion gallons of fuel per year. Multiply that by $5 a gallon and the fuel bill is staggering.

Coastal shipping could also bypasses the American Society of Civil Engineers‘ (ASCE) conservative estimate that improving the nation‘s surface transportation infrastructure would require $155.5 billion in annual funding.

There‘s also the environmental and energy security angles as well. “Transportation consumes more than two-thirds of the petroleum Americans now use; petroleum that is increasingly expensive and volatile in price,” the report said. “Trucks use far more oil than trains or ships. On a ton-mile basis, ships are far more efficient users of energy than trucks. And ships powered by natural gas - a technology that is coming on stream -consume no petroleum and emit much less air pollution.”

There are safety and economic security angles in here, too. “Moving freight offshore would add resiliency to a brittle American transportation system,” the study‘s authors argue. “The ASCE rates over 25% of our country‘s 599,893 bridges as either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Our report focuses on interstate highways running parallel to the coast and we point to specific instances in which disabling a bridge or tunnel has led to serious disruptions affecting the wider economy.”

The I-95, I-5, and I-10 coastal interstates alone have 6,600 bridges collectively among them. Of these, 1,370 bridges have spans greater than 300 feet and, if destroyed, would take at a minimum months to replace. For the longest bridges over major rivers, it might take years to restore service. “This presents a significant vulnerability for the U.S. economy,” the report stated. “A downed bridge is more than a frustration to commuters; it can cause serious disruptions that ripple through regional trade corridors with consequence across a wide sector of the economy.”

OK, sure - this is by no means an easy, overnight fix to our freight flow issues (and, of course, it‘s full of bias, the study being produced by a maritime group). But there are ideas in here definitely worth exploring - especially as an intermodal relationship could help truckers reduce the kinds of long-haul routes that turn off drivers seeking more home time; the kind of home time more short-haul lanes created by coastal intermodal could provide. Like the report‘s authors stated, more coastal shipping is by no means a panacea. But it‘s an idea worth giving some serious thought to.