04/06/2017
As I sit here in Gilroy,Ca, in my own corner of America I spend more time listening to city,state, and national issues than ever before. While California law creators are trying to drum up support for state gas taxes on top of the current42 cents per gallon which is to be used for road upkeep which they do not do very well I have heard of the federal challenge coming up in the auto transport industry and I imagine it will apply to all trucking business: electronic log books are going to be required to be used by sometime this December 2017.
As many of us experienced the gas spikes to $4 and $5 a gallon in this decade we also saw basics such as grocery stores increasing their costs to consumers to maintain their own profit levels. In several areas of California the minimum wage basis has exceeded the federal minimum too. So now if you bought a standard taco from Taco Bell it no longer cost $.90 but now costs $1.39 or something close to that. The issue being that it does not take just direct costs to influence what we pay at the pumps or stores but the strict regulation of trucking drive times in the name of health and or safety standards will start having a financial impact throughout the country and not just California as time taken to move products will start to take longer. What can the trucking companies do to keep their standards of delivery times, but use 2 drivers per truck-increasing their costs, or take at least an extra day en route increasing their costs for more hours? In the long run the (we) consumers will see another shift in our expenses.
As a larger number of the population is now baby boomers and older, more and more will not have the formerly rising standard of income they once had. People are wondering why at 65 I did not retire? Two reasons which is that it is boring doing nothing, and when everything already costs ten times what it use to cost when I entered the work force (except income) how am I going to manage the next 5 to 10 times increase in the next 30 years?
