American truckers are going to DC today.

Support them and CALL NOW!

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=11305386&content_dir=ua_congressorg

Most of them voted for Bush.
And maybe it's time to stop moving intermodal containers individually on rubber-tired vehicles that eat up too much fuel and rip up roads they never pay enough for.

You would be dead in very short order. And none of them would ever have to lay a hand on you.

How do you know that? Their union bosses maybe but not the workers.

nook and cranny, thousands of miles using fossil fuel burning trucks. My guess would be that the majority of truckers probably did vote for Bush--twice. There is no quick fix, easy and simple answer to the high price of oil. We have all seen what Americans choose to do when gas is cheap--waste it.

so bad for crops. The lake has been fished out, etc.

In a hundred years from now would we really still see 18 wheelers be-bopping thousands of miles to bring goods everywhere, no matter how small? We had better have a better vision than that.

want to profit. Years ago food products were brought to market from farms at a loss. We had a deal if they grew them, we would help pay for their farms to exist and get the food to the cities. That is not the system now. Our infrastructure for moving food products to market has been destroyed thanks to "smaller and privitized government".

It was a social contract we had as a democracy just like public education. We all did better because of it.

Do you actually think Canadians control the BNSF, CSX, UP and Norfolk Southern rail lines?

That's one of the most ridiculous statements I've read in a long time. "Our infrastructure for moving food products to market has been destroyed". What? How the hell do you figure? That infrastructure is moving more goods quicker and cheaper than "years ago".

failed food system in this country. I'm not ridiculous.

We are even importing apples from China. I agree that's not local.

Truckers are needed to move goods right now. They are also protesing Mexican trucks on American highways and high gas prices and our open borders with corporate control, etc. Are you for that? Support them then.

for most goods. Perishable foodstuffs need to be shipped by those fossil fuel gulping trucks, though.

If you are eating lettuce in January and don't live in Florida or California, you are eating lettuce that had to be shipped in refrigerated trucks. Unless you get your vitamin C from homemade sprouts during the winter, you're contributing to the "problem."

Trucks will always be necessary even with an integrated container rail system to get goods from distribution nodes to where they are needed.

We all owe truckers and we all have a very big stake in seeing that they are treated fairly. They're getting hammered by these high fuel prices even more than we are, since set rates for hauls are not taking them into account.

If the truckers were fooled by Stupid, they're not being fooled now.

Yes more by rail would be nice but we have not invested in our infrastructure. We get much of our food from other countries such as Mexico and Peru.

Thank you.

But that is not the point. Goods, including produce, could easily be delivered to my city by rail and then taken by short haul trucks to their destination. There should be no reason for trucks to inefficiently transport goods thousands of miles. I once worked at a warehouse where I routinely unloaded semis that had travelled thousands of miles for such things as delivering sugar wafer cookies from Canada. I even had trucks delivering large cans of pears--from China! This needs to change. What do I say to my neighbor down the street who works for a company who makes cookies, or the farmer who grows pears? I'd rather see my money go to them as opposed to China or Canada and we could save transporting them thousands of miles, including many miles by truck.

I used to be a member of the Teamster's Union and I met many, many truckers. Yes, it's too bad that gas prices are high, they are high for everyone. Many of these truckers are very conservative and they bleed Republican and were gung ho for Bush and I hope they are happy now since it was the Republicans who deregulated the trucking industry and helped to make it what it is today. Truckers from Mexico? I think you can blame NAFTA for that one and today it is hard to find a Democrat who supports that, even the one whose husband helped to get it passed.

There is no simple answer to something as globally complex as the price of oil--something of which there is only a finite amount and many think the oil we have has already peaked. Things will have to change and there is no way to guarantee that every trucker today will be able to make a living at driving truck. Is there a way to make that kind of guarantee to all of the rest of us? Things change and we must learn to find new answers and solutions to old problems or suffer the consequences.

Illinois or other industrialized states.

There's always a reason not to do something. Rail lines can be built anywhere. Apparently there was no problem doing it with untold miles of highways. Things certainly cannot continue the way the have.