Without Truckers, we have no bananas…

Truckers fly down the on-ramps to I95 South, and I saw many do it during my 1,500 mile trek to Naples, Fl last week. As day sped toward midnight of my 16 hour shift, an 18 wheeler entered the right lane from the on-ramp. I was coming up in the left lane, somewhere in Darkened, SC. The big, silverfish trailer shimmied back and forth, and I thought, “get that puppy under control.” He or she did, and we ambled down the straightaway. Driving a tractor-trailer is a dangerous gig. Last week’s crash in Sacramento was headline horrific, but on average, over 400 truckers die on the job each year. 456 in 2012 to be exact…

Trucking is vital to the U.S. economy. The American Trucking Associations reports, “nearly 70% of all the freight tonnage moved in the U.S. goes on trucks. Without the industry and our truck drivers, the economy would come to a standstill. To move 9.2 billion tons of freight annually requires nearly 3 million heavy-duty Class 8 trucks and over 3 million truck drivers. It also takes over 37 billion gallons of diesel fuel to move all of that freight.” It’s astonishing to think of all the products we take for granted every day. Like bananas. I marvel that every time I walk into a grocery store anywhere, there are always bananas. I also often wonder how many, so I did the math*. We consumed 41,333,504,508 bananas in 2009… Trucks deliver the rest of our food, too.

What’s my point? This morning I read a story about how a trucking company just adopted our Workforce Central, and they deployed it in our private cloud. We actually have a lot of trucking and other logistics companies as customers. As a food lover, I appreciate them even more now.

The ATA concludes, “Simply – without trucks, America stops.” And yes, we have no bananas.

* The math