Where Do you "see" Trucking in 5, 10 years?

well, with all due respect isnt you older drivers that let it get like this? surely you cant be mad at the newer guys that have been at it for maybe 5 years. with any and all trades, its up to the older generation to take the hands of the younger generation, weed out who's gonna stick around, and show them the right way to do things. with that being said EVERY SINGLE trade has more regulations now. in the state of massachusetts you have to have a license to install insulation in your house now. A ##### LICENSE, TO CUT, AND STAPLE INSULATION IN YOUR HOUSE. its not just trucking thats gotten screwed by the government.

 

S' ok .....whos gonna see you stapling in your attic?

I'm told that Virgina has a tax stamp that goes on your lawnmower..........

 

Ya #### container hauler laid it over on the ramp to 225........ WHEN are they going to learn? That is a bad ramp....it's a flat turn with a progressively tightening curve and it's a full 90 degrees. It's rated at 35 for the 4 wheelers..... aren't we supposed to take it 10 mph slower?

 

I think Warren Buffet knows more about money, and making good investments than most, and for some reason, a year ago, he spent $26.3 BILLION on railroads...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/2009-11-03-berkshire-bnsf-buffett_N.htm

 

That's because he's about to kick the bucket and needed some more tax write offs.

 

Long haul is moving to the rails with more local/regional runs by drivers. 200 miles will be your long haul.

 

After donating 37 Billion to the Gates Foundation, I don't think he needs anymore tax write offs.

Warren Buffett gives away his fortune

FORTUNE EXCLUSIVE: The world's second richest man - who's now worth $44 billion - tells editor-at-large Carol Loomis he will start giving away 85% of his wealth in July - most of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

By Carol J. Loomis, FORTUNE editor-at-large
June 25 2006: 3:08 PM EDT


NEW YORK (FORTUNE Magazine) -- We were sitting in a Manhattan living room on a spring afternoon, and Warren Buffett had a Cherry Coke in his hand as usual. But this unremarkable scene was about to take a surprising turn.
"Brace yourself," Buffett warned with a grin. He then described a momentous change in his thinking. Within months, he said, he would begin to give away his Berkshire Hathaway fortune, then and now worth well over $40 billion.
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From the FORTUNE archives

doing them a favor. But if you want to, there are sensible ways of passing on what you have without depriving the kids of a feeling of achievement. (more)




Letters from Buffett
As part of his plan, Warren Buffett is sending letters to each of the five foundations that will be receiving his gifts. The letters may be found on Berkshire Hathaway's Web site. (See the letters. )



This news was indeed stunning. Buffett, 75, has for decades said his wealth would go to philanthropy but has just as steadily indicated the handoff would be made at his death. Now he was revising the timetable.
"I know what I want to do," he said, "and it makes sense to get going." On that spring day his plan was uncertain in some of its details; today it is essentially complete. And it is typical Buffett: rational, original, breaking the mold of how extremely rich people donate money.
Buffett has pledged to gradually give 85% of his Berkshire stock to five foundations. A dominant five-sixths of the shares will go to the world's largest philanthropic organization, the $30 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose principals are close friends of Buffett's (a connection that began in 1991, when a mutual friend introduced Buffett and Bill Gates).
The Gateses credit Buffett, says Bill, with having "inspired" their thinking about giving money back to society. Their foundation's activities, internationally famous, are focused on world health -- fighting such diseases as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis -- and on improving U.S. libraries and high schools.
Up to now, the two Gateses have been the only trustees of their foundation. But as his plan gets underway, Buffett will be joining them. Bill Gates says he and his wife are "thrilled" by that and by knowing that Buffett's money will allow the foundation to "both deepen and accelerate" its work. "The generosity and trust Warren has shown," Gates adds, "is incredible." Beginning in July and continuing every year, Buffett will give a set, annually declining number of Berkshire B shares - starting with 602,500 in 2006 and then decreasing by 5% per year - to the five foundations. The gifts to the Gates foundation will be made either by Buffett or through his estate as long as at least one of the pair -- Bill, now 50, or Melinda, 41 -- is active in it.
Berkshire's price on the date of each gift will determine its dollar value. Were B shares, for example, to be $3,071 in July - that was their close on June 23 - Buffett's 2006 gift to the foundation, 500,000 shares, would be worth about $1.5 billion. With so much new money to handle, the foundation will be given two years to resize its operations. But it will then be required by the terms of Buffett's gift to annually spend the dollar amount of his contributions as well as those it is already making from its existing assets. At the moment, $1.5 billion would roughly double the foundation's yearly benefactions. But the $1.5 billion has little relevance to the value of Buffett's future gifts, since their amount will depend on the price of Berkshire's stock when they are made. If the stock rises yearly, on average, by even a modest amount - say, 6% - the gain will more than offset the annual 5% decline in the number of shares given. Under those circumstances, the value of Buffett's contributions will rise.
Buffett himself thinks that will happen. Or to state that proposition more directly: He believes the price of Berkshire, and with it the dollar size of the contributions, will trend upward - perhaps over time increasing substantially. The other foundation gifts that Buffett is making will also occur annually and start in July. At Berkshire's current price, the combined 2006 total of these gifts will be $315 million. The contributions will go to foundations headed by Buffett's three children, Susan, Howard, and Peter, and to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.
This last foundation was for 40 years known simply as the Buffett Foundation and was recently renamed in honor of Buffett's late wife, Susie, who died in 2004, at 72, after a stroke. Her will bestows about $2.5 billion on the foundation, to which her husband's gifts will be added. The foundation has mainly focused on reproductive health, family planning, and pro-choice causes, and on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Counting the gifts to all five foundations, Buffett will gradually but sharply reduce his holdings of Berkshire (Charts) stock. He now owns close to 31% of the company-worth nearly $44 billion in late June - and that proportion will ultimately be cut to around 5%. Sticking to his long-term intentions, Buffett says the residual 5%, worth about $6.8 billion today, will in time go for philanthropy also, perhaps in his lifetime and, if not, at his death.
Because the value of Buffett's gifts are tied to a future, unknowable price of Berkshire, there is no way to put a total dollar value on them. But the number of shares earmarked to be given have a huge value today: $37 billion.
That alone would be the largest philanthropic gift in history. And if Buffett is right in thinking that Berkshire's price will trend upward, the eventual amount given could far exceed that figure.
So that's the plan. What follows is a conversation in which Buffett explains how he moved away from his original thinking and decided to begin giving now. The questioner is yours truly, FORTUNE editor-at-large Carol Loomis. I am a longtime friend of Buffett's, a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder, and a director of the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.

 

Can rail haul bees?

Will rail run pipe loads from Houston to the Bakken reserves?

I'm pulling a load from L.A. Harbor to the Toyota plant in Huntsville......Why doesn't Toyota run that load by rail?.....Because I can get it there faster.....Maybe not cheaper than rail...But it will get there before rail could get it there.....

 

Rail wont be getting expanded. The economics are not there anymore, back in the 1920's people didnt have ready transportation and railroads were it. Bus service is far easier to incorporate for this society, even trackless electric busses (still has the overhead gantry for power like a trolley, just has tires instead of rails). The other problem with rail is they lost too much of their right of ways. Now its the NIMBY principle, Not In My Back Yard, every one wants change, just dont do it where they live. Too many people have built homes or factories on what was railroad land.

Trucking will still be here. More fuel efficient designs are comming out, people want to go green. Present trucks with 100% drive from the engine will be replaced with partial power from engine and city power from batteries. The 500 hp monsters we use now will become relics to museums. If your still trying to use one then your likely to be paying more overhead for the carbon emissions.

You can guarantee more paperwork. Logs may be mandatory on computer or i-pad (frankly I see the I-pad replacing the qualcomm). Lots more confusing regulations. Get more Diesel Bear's that will post a ton of info with out boil downs of what they post.

Automation? No, individual consumer still relies on control. So the likely hood of personal pods to move people or freight is maybe 50 years away. Then we will have robots doing work for us (in 50 years). We will sit in our eutopia society drinking mint julips while the bot goes down the road to move our freight. But that is just speculation. Military is already working on instruments of death that will work with out control, its only a matter of time.

Days of simplicity are gone. The only simple time you might get might be at retirement. But even then people will want to regulate the amount of time you want to spend in that hammock. Welcome to the age of understanding.

My nephew posted on his facebook that there was a spaceport being built, and that the future will soon be here. As opposed to living in the here and now.

 

trucking in 5-10 years will be like it is right now !!

We still be hearing that the new rule that the Government wants to put into effect will put 100's of thousands of us out of work.

We will be hearing that the hours of service need to be changed to make things safer,more money,healthier,etc.

We will hearing that the new drivers need more training and even then will never be as good as we were when we were fresh meat.

We will be hearing how no one sticks together to get anything done.
It will still be JB Hunt, Schiender,and Wereners fault that we are not making any money.

We will be hearing that it is all the old timers fault things are screwed up.

We will still have grown men acting like children on crack on the CB.

We will still have super truckers that think they can turn back the clock by driving as fast as the truck will run.

We will still have drivers crying that all cops are #######.

We will still be hearing that we need to strike or call the U.S. Marshall's or some other hair brained idea of the time
.
Most of all we will hearing how GOOD things were just 5 or 10 years ago !!!!!