Rising Fuel prices and EPA sulfur laws to be introduced in 2006 will shake up the transportation industry as they work to cut costs. Yellow-Roadway already has partnered with a Chinese company as they see the writing on the walls here in the states. Where will the industry cut costs? Well you could cut out the drivers? They are the second largest cost next to fuel? Trucks cannot drive by themselves yet. Railroads also hurt and the tonnage will require more engines with less power. We have the technology to use air-cushioned rail cars with high speeds and little power needed due to reduced friction and that will require little fuel. Hydrogen celled Trains? Yes easy with air-cushioned technologies. But who is going to pay for it? If we destroy our transportation sector through immediate retrofitting then how will the industries leaders pay for all the costs associated with the recent paper-swap mergers, and who will get burned; The Fishes, stockholders owning worthless paper. Automated trains, they are coming. Automated aircraft? Yes that too, the new jet airliners nearly fly themselves in 0/0 visibility from V-1, V-2 to deceleration on the runway upon landing and the Navy has jet fighters that can deliver ordinance and fly home, bomb without seeing, fly without training or fatigue. Trucks maybe that too. Could be twelve to fifteen years. Trains could be less than 6. Aircraft 10-15. People are not needed, yet the quality of life issues are at stake here, yet who is looking forward? I see no articles in financial papers, economic papers, magazines, and essays. I see some in Aviation Week and Space Technology, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, yet all these are too specific to a given subject with authors who are industry experts in only one or two fields. Tomorrow is sooner than you think and Hydrogen Cell Cars, Trucks? Four maybe five years away; they have many advantages besides fuel costs; they are easier to keep clean due to the dirt is more dusty than sticky, requiring less soap, again good for the environment. If Sulfur left out of gas drives costs of trucking companies and transportation companies up, then we will all pay more for everything. We will have little chance for a continued high-flying economic run. Speaking of which, I do not care one-way or the other. We do better in a down economy anyway. But there is that quality of life issue so important to our middle class anomaly. If this continues we will have a breaking down of the middle class and no market to sell to for our economic power base and corporations. Yes we will have a weak dollar, but this is no way to achieve it. Sure we can make stuff and sell it all over the world, but how can we match productivity of 3.5 billion Chinese once that machine is using all our technologies in manufacturing; all our accounting methods, and accepting our currency for payments; our education system, techniques? And what about an economic machine, which becomes war based over there? Of course if they have us as their biggest market then they cannot start a war with us, otherwise their economy crashes too. Shouldn't we think thru some of these issues and how they all relate to one another? |
