The Work Truck Blog
Friday, April 12, 2024
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Caterpillar Crew.
Friday, March 22, 2024
Hating on EVs.
Wyoming Delegation: Everyone Wants Internal Combustion Engines, Enough With EV Nonsense
Wyoming Delegation: Everyone Wants Internal Combustion Engines, Enough With EV Nonsense
There is a real holding back the tide aspect to this. Electric vehicles are coming, and soon.
Indeed, they aren't really new.
California insists it's “speculative” to assume EVs will remain heavier than gas cars.Public policy should reflect reality, not the baseless future dream of featherweight electric cars.What’s speculative, obviously, is assuming with no evidence that their weight will change.
Heavy? Great. We used to complain that fuel efficient vehicles were too light.
To read the GOP propaganda in some quarters, Electric Vehicles travel in rogue bands, cross the Rhine, sack and loot villages, and take your daughters.
It's really absurd.
Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, March 22, 1944. Rationing
Wednesday, March 22, 1944. German defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Sarah Sundin's excellent blog on daily events in World War Two, whose feed updates are no longer working, notes this item:
Two gallons per week.
Could you get by on two gallons per week? Most days I drive a 1/4 ton Utility Truck, which is better known as a Jeep, and while it's small, it gets terrible mileage. I know that I use more than two gallons per week, but I would if I was driving my fuel efficient diesel truck as well. If I was limited to two gallons per week, I'd have to make major life changes.
Should I be pondering this as Congress, through the neglect of Ukraine, pushes us ever closer to a war with Russia, should she invade the Balkans?
During World War Two I know that my grandfather had a different class of ration ticket as his vehicle was used for business. His car was a "business coupe", which is about all I know about it.
I know it had a gasoline personnel heater, which probably provides a clue, but I still don't know who made it.
I had a 1954 Chevrolet at one time, and it got really good mileage. Interestingly, a 1973 Mercury Comet, with a really powerful V8 engine we had, also did. According to one site about older cars, the business couple should be something like this:
My '38 gets around 17-18 MPG @ 50 MPH. It drops to around 12-14 @ 60. She just doesn't like being pushed that hard.
My 54, and the 73, got much better mileage than that.
Whatever mileage the business coupé got, my father sort of brushed gasoline rationing off when I asked him about it, due to the other category of ticket. I don't know what that really meant, however.
Of course, for most long travel of any kind, people took the train. Something that we might want to consider as potentially being something that may very well return. High speed rail, for that matter, may be coming to Wyoming.
Last prior edition:
Tuesday, March 21, 1944. Dear John.
Sunday, February 25, 2024
Wyoming Delegation: Everyone Wants Internal Combustion Engines, Enough With EV Nonsense
Wyoming Delegation: Everyone Wants Internal Combustion Engines, Enough With EV Nonsense
There is a real holding back the tide aspect to this. Electric vehicles are coming, and soon.
Indeed, they aren't really new.
Friday, February 23, 2024
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, February 23, 1924. Electric Trucks.
Saturday, February 23, 1924. Electric Trucks.
On oil, the issue had an Autocar Truck advertisement advertising gas and electric trucks. . . the latter being something that locals now insist just can't happen.
Monday, February 19, 2024
Lex Anteinternet: Soap Blindness. Being careful about what you are ...
Soap Blindness. Being careful about what you are wishing for.
Independent truck drivers, whom share nothing in common with Donald Trump whatsoever, are claiming they'll boycott New York State today due to the judgment against the serially indicted former President.
In the Gene Shepherd classic A Christmas Story, Ralphie imagines that he'll get "soap blindness" and live on the streets, to the regret of his parents, for having his mouth washed out with soap. No such thing exists, of course, but in reality, if it did, it'd be worse than the remorse the parents would feel for the person enduring it.
In other words, a person needs to be careful for what they wish for.
Truck drivers, or at least American independent truck drivers, are heavily invested in the belief that "America needs us". They're also heavily invested in a myth of manly, rugged independence. The reality of the situation is quite different, however.
The United States went to a semi tractor supply distribution system through the short sightedness of Dwight Eisenhower, who backed the massive Federally funded expansion of the US highway system during his administration. Eisenhower, impressed with the Autobahn, which he'd seen while the Supreme Commander of Allied Expedition Force in Europe, wanted them here. It was really an example of the American System at work, and while I'm generally a proponent of the American System, it shouldn't have happened in this example.
Coming right at the same time that the American love of automobiles really took off, it caused a massive ongoing subsidy of the highway system, and by extension, the expansion of over the road trucking, at the detriment of the railroads. I've posted on that here before, stating:
It's doing that fairly inefficiently compared to rail. Rail is incredibly cheap on a cost per mile basis, and it's actually incredibly "green" as well. It's efficient. Trucks are nowhere near as efficient in any fashion. Not even in employment of human resources. Trains have, anymore, one or two men crews, the same as semi trucks, but they're hauling a lot more per mile than trucks are with just two men.
And, as we also stated:
One semi truck does as much damage to the highways as 2,000 passenger cars, or some I'm told. I was told that by the owner of a company that has semi trucks.
On top of it, truck driving isn't something Americans want to do anymore, something the independents who are protesting seem to be missing. As we earlier noted:
And laborers are also demanding better wages and benefits in order to do the work they're doing.
I can blame the nation for putting itself in this situation, however.
Drivers can make a lot of money, for sure, but their paychecks often go towards paying for their trucks and the like. Modern trucks are automatic transmission vehicles and the days of really highly skilled teamsters who knew how to double clutch and shift two gear shifts at once (which I've seen done), are long gone. The job has become one where temporary immigrants and immigrants from the Third World are incredibly common.
So sure, while there are Trump loving independent teamsters out there, there are a lot of drivers from India, Somalia, Russia or Mexico who no doubt have little Trump love.
And motorists have little truck love. That's part of the reason that teamsters feel compelled to attempt to remind people that things move by truck. The problem is, they don't have to.
Had the Defense Highway System not been built, things would move by rail, except locally. There's no reason that couldn't happen again, and if the Federal Government suddenly decided, for whatever reason (and expense would be a good one) to end the funding system, the result would be just like what happened when it quite subsidizing housing the mentally ill back in Reagan's day. States wouldn't pick it back up. It'd take awhile, but not as long as supposed, before rail picked its old role back up, but it could and would.
Beyond that, rail transportation is already very "green", as noted above, compared to truck transportation. It could be made much more so by electrifying the system, which is a proven system. Trains engines are also more capable of readily being made in alternative fuels than semi trucks are. Short haul trucks, from rail to consumer, are also relatively easy to make the conversion to electricity.
Up until after World War Two, most things moved by rail, and trucking was local. The highway system, while the Federal Government was already in it, was much more local.
So, want to show how valuable you are to the economy? Going on strike or into a boycott may do it. Perhaps you are like the railroader of World War One and World War Two and can't be ignored. Perhaps you are an economic Lysistrata and people won't want to ignore you.
Or perhaps people figure they're better off without you and they don't want to be taxed to support your industry anymore and they'll look forward to not seeing trucks in their rear view mirror.
Related Threads:
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Service truck made stateside on base from Dodge WC. April 12, 1944.
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