Editorial: The Price of No Policy

As dedicated as the people who make up the nation’s trucking industry are to their professional responsibilities, asking them to transport the national economy for free — or to pay out of their own pockets to haul it — is going more than a bit too far.

With prices for diesel continuing to hover around $2 a gallon in the Northeast, it’s no surprise that truckers are demonstrating from Maine to Philadelphia, demanding government action and higher rates from shippers. Some owner-operators are parking their rigs and refusing to work until fuel prices fall or freight rates rise, and frankly, they can’t afford to do otherwise.

While the rest of the nation has thus far been spared the full brunt of the recent run-up in fuel costs — triggered by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries intentions to boost prices by limiting supply — it’s only a matter of time. Already, prices are rising in the Midwest and the West, just as they’re starting to slowly decline in the Northeast.

After so many price manipulations by the oil-exporting nations over the past 25 years, you’d think we’d have a reasoned national policy for dealing with such situations. But the sad fact is that we don’t, as evidenced by the weak-kneed pronouncements that the Clinton administration has been issuing in recent days.

What we all need is firm leadership from the White House to develop and implement a plan to deal with manipulations of the world’s oil supply. No more temporary bandages to get us through the latest crisis, only to leave ourselves vulnerable to later economic blackmail.

No doubt the latest spike in petroleum prices will lead to renewed interest in research and application of alternative fuels. And just as certainly, the oil producers will at some point reduce prices to a level that they hope will kill off those efforts to develop and encourage the use of alternative fuels.

Earlier oil price manipulations led us to squeeze substantially more economy out of our fuel use, to the point where experts tell us that the only area where trucking can expect to find any substantial gains in fuel efficiency is in the aerodynamics of its vehicles.

Perhaps this latest price fiasco will be the one that ushers in the golden age of alternative fuels. Surely, we cannot continue to do business as usual, always looking over our shoulders for the next fuel crisis.