Learn about how quickly society would ground to a halt if the trucks stop and the trucking industry ceased to exist.
HDPR Live # 67: What happens if the trucks stop? I’ve said for years, “the trucking industry is the backbone of our society.”
Today we are going to put that statement to the test by exploring what would happen to society if the trucks stopped.
Within 24-hours, deliveries would stop and that would cause hospitals to run out of basic supplies. Service stations would begin to run out of fuel. Manufacturers that use just-in-time manufacturing would stop producing their goods. Mail and packages would stop being delivered and fuel prices would skyrocket.
Within 2 – 3 days food shortages cause panic, essential supplies run low, banks cease to operate, service stations run out of fuel, garbage starts to pile up, and container ships are ideal at ports and at sea.
Within the 1st week, travel would grind to a halt and hospitals would exhaust their oxygen supplies leading to a lot of deaths.
In the 2nd week, clean water supplies would begin to run dry and society would start to completely unravel.
Within a month, if the trucks stop, the clean water supply would be exhausted and illness would rapidly increase. Civil unrest would be rampant, martial law would be instituted and society would devolve into tribal conflicts. If the trucks stop, we go into the dark ages.
Source of information: CDLlife.com
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Complete Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine:
Welcome to the Heavy-Duty Parts Report. My name is Jamie Irvine, and today we are live. With all of our live broadcasts, we’d love to have you participate in the conversation. Feel free to make a comment or ask a question. We’d love to have you part of the conversation today.
I wanted to talk about what happens if the trucks stop. For many years now, I have said that trucking is the backbone of society. It’s one of the reasons that at The Heavy-Duty Parts Report, we take it very seriously, that we are trying to serve that industry in the greatest capacity possible using our skills and expertise to help trucking companies lower cost per mile, lower their total cost of operation, to help heavy-duty parts companies be more successful at communicating their messages around encouraging people to use high-quality parts that are going to help fleets be more successful.
We really believe at The Heavy-Duty Parts Report that without trucking the many of the advantages that we have in our modern society would disappear very, very quickly. And so in order for us to really emphasize that point, to put that idea to the test we wanted to share with the audience today, some information that was pulled together by CDLlife.com.
So we’ve got an infographic that we’re looking at here that that’s providing us with a bunch of information, a bunch of research that CDLlife.com did. I’ve included a link in the show notes to a blog article they wrote back in 2012 that talked about this.
So all the way back then we knew how important the trucking industry was. Of course, with the pandemic things have really, you know, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, everybody was celebrating the trucking industry, you know, everybody in the trucking industry from repair mechanics and parts technicians, all the way to the drivers were heroes. We don’t want people to ever forget that.
So what I wanted to do is I wanted to talk about exactly what would happen if the trucking industry suddenly disappeared. And this information is it’s just, it’s unbelievable how quickly things would deteriorate.
So in the first 24 hours, if the trucks stopped running, here’s what obviously would happen.
Deliveries would stop, but let’s talk specifically, especially since the pandemic has medical supplies on our mind, the most let’s talk about the delivery of medical supplies. So those would cease to be delivered.
Hospitals would run out of basic supplies, such as syringes and bandages and things like that. Never mind pharmaceuticals and all of the other things necessary to keep people alive.
Service stations would begin to run out of fuel within the first 24 hours that people would be emptying the tanks and they’d be filling up and all of a sudden fuel wouldn’t be available. So it’s not just fuel for the trucks, delivering doing the delivery service, it is fuel for all of your personal vehicles as well.
Manufacturers using just-in-time manufacturing would develop component shortages and within the first 24 hours. Now we all know anybody that’s in the heavy-duty parts industry serving the trucking industry knows about parts shortages and how badly that affects the entire world.
The U.S. mail and other package delivery services obviously would have to cease as well, because even if the planes were still going, once they got to their airport destinations and they unloaded there’s no trucks to deliver any of those mails or packages. So the ease of using Amazon would be over.
Automobile fuel availability and delivery would dwindle leading to skyrocketing prices and long lines at the gas pumps. We’ve seen evidence of that back in the seventies, there was an energy crisis where there were long lineups.
In North America right now, 2021 today, the UK is experiencing that there’s possibility that energy crisis will spread across the world right now because of the pandemic. So if the truck stopped running, though, this would trigger this and you know, you just imagine, once you’re out of fuel, you’re out of fuel, that’s it, you can’t use your vehicle.
So now getting groceries is more difficult. Getting to work is more difficult. Society as we know it, within 24 hours would start to dramatically change for the worse.
Now let’s push this out to two to three days.
What would happen within two to three days?
Well, according to CDLlife.com and this information, food shortages will escalate, especially in the face of hoarding and consumer panic. We’ve all seen that. We saw the panic at the beginning of the pandemic, where we ran out of things like toilet paper.
Now, Brian just commented here. Hello Brian – just happened with the hack of the colonial pipeline. That’s right. I forgot about that. In the, in the Southeastern U.S. Colonial pipeline was hacked and there was long lineups and people weren’t able to get to to fuel. So you’re absolutely right.
So think about something like Costco. They only stock three days worth of inventory for the surrounding area that they serve. So within two to three days, food shortages would escalate, supplies of essentials, such as bottled water, powdered milk, canned meat at major retailers would disappear. This is within two to three days, no more food at the grocery stores, no more supplies at the supply stores.
ATM’s you, the digital natives don’t even know what that is cause they just Venmo everything, but ATM’s will run out of cash and banks will be unable to process transactions, service stations completely now we’ll run out of fuel. So now there won’t even be long lineups because it’s just, all the tanks will be empty.
Garbage starts to pile up all around your home, all around the urban areas. And well, what does that lead to? That leads to an increase in rodents and pests, not good, not good at all.
Container ships sitting idle. Who would have thought containerships would ever sit idle. And yet we’ve seen that because of the pandemic, but if the trucks stopped, it would be exponentially worse than everything we’ve experienced already. So container ships sitting idle at the ports, transport would be disrupted.
Eventually, everything would come to a complete standstill within three days of the trucks stopping, delivering, and doing what trucks do. You see how essential the trucking industry is to every aspect of life.
Now, things get really bad after the first few days, within the first week, all automobile travel will cease, of course, because now you haven’t been able to get to a service station in a while, you’ve been using your vehicle, and pretty much everybody’s out of fuel.
Hospitals will begin to exhaust oxygen supplies. So people relying on oxygen would start to die. Within the first week, society is crumbling and people start to die if the trucks stop.
Does that highlight how important the trucking industry is?
Doesn’t that make it just so real? Because you know, if we had reviewed this, when CDL Life put out the first blog article back in 2012, or when they updated with this infographic, I mean, this was all theoretical. This was just what the data told us would happen. And yet we’ve seen how just a small disruption that the pandemic caused. I mean, it’s not small, but still the pandemic caused these disruptions, the supply chain issue, and all these issues have started to sprinkle through society and we’ve been able to continue on, but if trucks stopped, there was no continuing on within a week people are dying.
In the second week, the nation’s clean water supply would begin to run dry.
You think people were panicking at the beginning of this event where they’re hoarding food, wait until clean water runs out. Now, do we need militia law just to keep law and order within two weeks, things would begin to get very, very desperate.
So by the fourth week, one month from the trucks no longer doing what trucks do, the trucking industry coming to a standstill, within one month, the entire nation will exhaust its clean water supply.
Illness therefore will begin to increase rapidly, further taxing an already weakened healthcare system and thousands upon thousands of people begin to die.
Now, going beyond the CDL Life information that is provided, I’ve also looked at some information that was published by a former CIA member who, in his work as a CIA agent, did analysis of these kinds of global events or nationwide events in North America that would potentially cripple society.
And what’s really, really interesting about the work that he did, now because he was a CIA agent and he was now retired he wasn’t at liberty to disclose any of the classified information that he had worked on ,but instead, what he did is he wrote a fiction version of what would happen in North America.
If one of these catastrophic events happened at everything ground to a halt, and of course, it was fiction so we have to take it with a grain of salt, but it was heavily rooted in the scientific data that he had been personally involved in during his career, working for the CIA and helping the U.S. Government to prepare for one such of these catastrophic events.
And after a month, martial law is in full place and things start to devolve very, very quickly. You don’t want to be living in an urban center if one of these events happened, the pain and suffering and misery that goes on in the urban centers and that loss of life through violence, through uprisings, through the application of the military and martial law, it’s terrible.
I mean, we’re talking about the possibility of within one-month public executions to try to keep people in line. It’s insane what could happen. And so, you know, we of course never ever want to even get close to that. And certainly with all of the things that have happened with the pandemic and all of the consequences, the know we see the global nature of our society and how everything is interconnected and the thought of some of this just completely unraveling.
Basically, within 90 days, we are reverted back to a dark age that would be comparable to the actual dark ages, electricity stops, all the clean water, food production. People starving. There is, basically society devolves into tribal groups and they go to war.
So it is incredible how amazing our society is and what we’ve been able to do in just a couple of hundred years to move all of humanity, at least in the west, out of abject poverty.
But the whole world has benefited from the industrial and digital revolution and in countries where we’re fortunate enough to have the freedoms that we have, we get to take full advantage of that.
And it is something that is precious that we should really, really take seriously because within 30 to 90 days in a fully catastrophic event, it could all be taken away from us and millions of people would die. So we all, I know personally myself, I deal with my own personal issues, family challenges, the stress of making a living and taking care of my family and striving for things that I’m trying to accomplish and dealing with my own physical and mental health.
It’s an ongoing battle, but it’s good every now and again, to take a moment and just consider how much we have, how much we get to enjoy, and to not take that for granted to show appreciation and gratitude, and to just be reminded how important the trucking industry actually is and how fortunate we are to find the trucking industry and make it a career.
To play our part in supporting a national system that holds society together, that allows society to be as prosperous and successful as it is here in North America. We are so, so fortunate. So never forget that, hold your head up high, be proud to work in the trucking industry, and make sure that you share some of this information with people who don’t work in the industry so that they can expand their viewpoint and see just how fortunate we really are.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this live broadcast. We’ll be back next Friday. We have now moved into Q4 of 2021, and as we move towards 2022, we’ve got some exciting things happening at The Heavy-Duty Parts Report that we’re going to share with you, but make sure you tune into the podcast, heavydutypartsreport.com.
And if you are a heavy-duty parts company, and you’ve been struggling with your digital marketing and transitioning to a digital sales channel, reach out to me directly on any of the social platforms, or give me an email, [email protected]. I’d love to help you. I’m a consultant that specializes in that area of working with companies who support this wonderful, great trucking industry that we are a part of.
Have a great weekend. We’ll talk to you next week.
