According to the Mayan calendar, the world ends tomorrow in a violent and cataclysmic manner. If that happens, shippers won't need to worry if their trucked goods get to market or not.
Presumably, though, the sun will rise and set on the planet as it has every day since the Big Bang. And per usual, shippers and retailers will worry about whether their products moved as scheduled.
But what if there were no trucks? At all?
As dubious a possibility as the world ending tomorrow, to be sure. But it hasn't stopped a Tuscaloosa, Ala.-based media and information company from creating an online "infographic" to show what would happen to the nation if its three million trucks stopped rolling.
Here is the scenario, which the company, Trucker Classifieds, labeled
"Truckpocalypse":
- After three hours, major gas stations would run out fuel. Manufacturers would face component shortages. Hospitals would begin running out of critical supplies.
- After a day, grocery stores would experience food shortages.
- After several days, garbage would pile up, threatening public health and the environment. Airlines would stop flying. Banks could not process routine transactions. Consumers would begin panicking.
- After a week, hospitals would exhaust their available oxygen supplies. After two to four weeks, available drinking water supplies would run dry with no way to replenish them.
- After a little more than a month, nail polish and lipstick would be gone. Nail and hair salons would run out of supplies to perform manicures, pedicures, haircuts, and hair coloring. Justin Bieber posters would not reach retailers. Coffee supplies would be cut off. There would be riots in the streets, and the court system would be swamped with cases involving otherwise well-balanced adults pushed to the limits of their endurance.
Trucker Classifieds is a division of the Randall-Reilly Publishing Co. LLC, which manages 30 websites aimed at matching truck drivers with available driving positions. It touts itself as a leading media and information company focused on the trucking and construction industries.
The infographic illustrates a fact that everyone knows, but rarely takes time to think about: That a truck, at some point in the process, moves virtually every product in the United States. The American public, by and large, takes it for granted. One very big exception is the supply chain, which must come to grips every day with an increasing shortage of available and qualified drivers.
Years ago, the trade group American Trucking Associations coined perhaps the most memorable phrase in the industry's history: "Without trucks, America stops."
It would be arrogant if it wasn't true.
