Editorial: It’s Time to Spur the Economy

As 2000 draws to a close, the rest of the nation is discovering what truckers have known for months: The nation’s economy is slowing down markedly.

Trucking is a bellwether industry. Be it good or bad, when it concerns the nation’s economy, we get there first. And truckers know that the economy has been ailing for some time, based on the drop in shipments that virtually all market sectors are feeling.

The Federal Reserve last week finally acknowledged this change by officially shifting its focus from controlling inflation to steering the nation away from a potential recession.

While the Fed’s acknowledgement is a step in the right direction, trucking’s recent experience shows that it’s already time for a cut in interests, not more soul-searching.

Trucking, like most of the nation’s economic sectors, is counting on a soft landing from our unprecedented period of high growth. A hard landing, in the form of a recession, would wreak havoc and threaten to undo everything that we’ve achieved in the past eight years.

The nervousness from the retailing sector that we have all been reading about in our newspapers and seeing on our TV news shows is the latest, and most obvious, sign of the economic slowdown. Perhaps the Fed members haven’t been reading the financial pages.

Nevertheless, it’s now clear that the next step the Fed plans to take will be to cut interest rates in a move to spur investment and spending.

Meanwhile, the good news is that fuel prices are finally falling, dropping 10 cents over the past three weeks.

The not-so-good news is that the oil cartel is already moving to trim production to make sure prices don’t fall very far.

No doubt the drop in the economy has helped the fuel situation by lowering demand. As a result, inventories are finally rising, which is taking much of the pressure off of prices.

Now, weather will apparently call the tune on diesel rates in upcoming months, as it usually does.

Despite a 10-cent drop in the past three weeks, retail diesel prices are still 25 cents a gallon higher than they were a year ago. And we’re no closer to a national energy policy than we were last year.

Perhaps the new administration will make the creation of such a policy a priority, and help mitigate against the wild price swings we have suffered through over the past 18 months.

For the full story, see the Dec. 25 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.