Preface. In “Why You Should Love Trucks” I showed that essential supply chains depend on trucks nearly completely.  Because of little inventory and dependence on just-in-time deliveries, our civilization would almost immediately feel the repercussions of trucks stopping. In fact, civilization would crash within a week. So finding a drop-in replacement for finite diesel ought to be the top priority. And it won’t be electric or hydrogen trucks as you can see in the related posts at the bottom.

Book updates:

Why you should love trains (the rail strike was averted September 2022): In a letter to Congress, American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear said if all 7,000 long-distance freight trains available in the US stopped running, the country would need an extra 460,000 long-haul trucks daily to make up for the lost capacity, which isn’t possible because of equipment availability and driver shortages. Such an outcome would would send the price of diesel to record highs and through substitution, gasoline as well. The trucking industry — dealing with labor issues of its own — faces a deficit of 80,000 drivers nationwide.

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

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If Trucks Stopped Running

I found three articles about what would happen based on what actually did happen during long trucker strikes. They came to similar conclusions, which I’ve combined below, though much is left out (Holcomb, McKinnon, SARHC).

Day 1 without trucks

• Manufacturers and assembly lines that use just-in-time delivery will shut down when parts run out or storage for finished products fills up.
• Hospitals will run out of supplies like syringes and catheters within hours.
• Milk and fresh bread will run out.

Day 2 without trucks

• Food shortages will escalate, especially in the face of hoarding and consumer panic. Supplies of essentials and perishable foods will disappear
• Restaurants and fast food outlets close
• ATMs will run out of cash
• Construction stops
• Pharmacies close
• Americans generate 685,000 tons of trash per day. Garbage will start piling up in urban and suburban areas creating a health hazard.

Day 3 without trucks

• Most service stations will run out of fuel
• Widespread lay-offs in the manufacturing sector
• Waste water sludge becomes a problem as tanks at treatment plants are now full
• Work on infrastructure stops as repairs can’t be undertaken
• Public transport, fire, police, ambulances, telecommunications, utilities, mail, and other essential services stop

Day 4 without trucks

• The repercussions start to reverberate globally, as 48,000 imported containers per day can’t be unloaded off of ships. Exports stop too.
• All fuel supplies are depleted from service stations. Many people can’t get to work
• With no fuel, airplanes and railroads shut down.
• Garbage is piling up and has become a sanitary problem
• Britain is out of beer

Day 5 without truck transport

• Drinking water is depleted. The delay of weekly deliveries of chemicals has meant that water treatment plants can no longer guarantee that water is fit to drink.
• Industrial production stops, a large proportion of the labor force is laid-off or unable to get to work, travel and recreation stop
• Healthcare is confined to emergency services
• Utilities have localized disruption of gas and electricity, and due to lack of fuel can’t pump water and gas, repair broken water and gas networks, etc
• Livestock begin to suffer from lack of feed deliveries, wastes accumulate, ranchers can’t transport animals to slaughterhouses,  meat production stops
• The Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly is out of alcohol

Within four weeks:

• The nation will exhaust its clean water supply and water will be safe for drinking only after boiling.
• If this happened at harvest time, many crops will rot in the fields
• The Department of Defense supply chain will break down, crippling the military “in ways no adversary has been able to achieve”.
• Global financial collapse (my addition).  A halt of international trade would bring the financial system down, probably sooner than this.

This is just a partial list of what would occur.

American Truckers react to “When Trucks Stopped” (CDLLife)

Many truck drivers thought they ought to stop driving to make people respect and care about them more (and so did their counterparts in Britain to the article posted there called “Life without Lorries”:

• The country would stop! At times I think that is what needs to happen! 32 years of being out here, looking out a windshield and watching life go by! Companies and the public not treating us, the back bone of this country, with any respect! Companies just think we are machines and we have no life outside this truck! The rules and regulations are getting stupid and taking money away from the driver and his or hers family! It also puts us in the truck longer! But, if the gas and diesel haulers just shut down for 72 hours, watch what happens!
• We tried that for YEARS. The Big Companies won’t allow there drivers to shut down. They are to money hungry. The OWNER OPERATORS try but they can’t do it by themselves. So it doesn’t get done. Great idea but hasn’t worked in the past.
  
• Like James Cameron said the owned ops would have to block fuel islands there are so many foreign fu@ks that will not stop nor care about are problems and these big company’s have so many of us by the balls
• you know just as well as I do that wont happen unless every driver out there will participate. were just like the rest of the human race. only a hand full care to know the truth. the rest dont care. just like our presedent.
• Let’s stop talking about it and just do it…. We run this country, not some bullshit government
• Teach the government that trucks are needed for life on earth
• Every other means of transportation is subsidized my the government except us!!!!! That tells me, that the government does not think of us very upstanding. It shows me that they don’t care for us. Trucking is the only industry that is governed on how many hours you can work, you are told when to sleep, when to get up, and basically told when you can see your family. We’re like Ronnie Milsaps’ song states, Prisoners of the Highway!!!!!

Truckers comment on what would happen:

• Stores would be empty inside of a week for one. Rioting and lawlessness would set in soon after.
• The life as we know it will end, there’s only one thing that’s not shipped by truck and that’s the air we breathe….
• Everybody dies
• CHAOS
• World War 3
• the world would probably end
• America will fall apart!!!
• There would be alot of cold hungry naked people out there

Conclusion

There are many reasons trucks could stop running, but my concern is the inevitable time when oil production has fallen so low it impacts the ability of trucks to do the essential work of society.

The United States government (DOE, EIA, EERE, National Laboratories, and state governments) and private businesses are well aware of this problem and have teamed up to try to make trucks that get better mileage on alternative fuels like biodiesel, batteries, compressed natural gas, other fuels, better tires, and so on.

The next few posts will focus on how we can keep trucks running, because without trucks, America stops.

Related Articles

There are many other barriers to building a battery electric truck. They use many finite platinum group elements, precious elements, and rare earth elements.  Plus there are dozens of challenges to improving batteries that must be overcome but mostly can’t be due to the laws of physics and thermodynamics.  Nor are trucks going to be running on hydrogen: The dumbest & most impossible renewable

The electric grid will eventually fail without utility scale energy storage of at least a month of electricity to compensate for seasonal deficits (see When Trucks Stop Running Chapter 17 The Electric Blues).  Natural gas is the main energy storage now, as well as coal, and the main and often only way to balance the sudden life and death of wind and solar power. Sure, hydropower can also be used in the 10 lucky states that have 80% of it, and the few places that can afford multi-million-dollar batteries (though only for an hour). Natural gas also provides peak power in extreme heat or cold.  But natural gas is finite. The electric grid could crash from a weapon or solar flare electromagnetic pulse and be down for a year or more. Electric trucks are impossible. Without trucks, civilization fails. Manufacturing uses over half of all fossil fuels, and depends on the high heat only they can generate (see Chapter 9 of  Life After Fossil Fuels).

References

ATA. American Trucking Association. About Trucks Bring It. http://www.trucking.org/Trucks_Bring_It.aspx

CDLLIFE.com. November 30, 2013. If Trucks stopped… https://www.facebook.com/cdllife/posts/659785004044448

Holcomb, Richard D. July 14, 2006. When Trucks Stop, America Stops. American Trucking Association.

McKinnon. November 2004. Life without Lorries: The impact of a temporary disruption of road freight transport in the UK. Commercial motor magazine.

NAS National Academy of Sciences. 2012. NCFRP Report 14: Guidebook for Understanding Urban Goods Movement.

SARHC. A Week without Truck Transport. Four Regions in Sweden 2009. Swedish Association of Road Haulage Companies.