June 28, 1979

Fear Motivates Trucker Violence

Truckers are frightened.

That's the word best describing the reaction of independent haulers to the high cost and shortage of diesel fuel.  Nothing else explains the beatings and shootings that have killed one of their number and injured 40.

Snail-crawl convoys, blockades and farmer boycotts, however, are counter productive to protest.  All other motorists are equally inconvenienced by the gas panic and resent the additional hassle created by disruptive tactics.

But frightened men rarely respond to their fears rationally.  The truckers instinctively sense a severe threat to their livelihood and investment with good reason.

The party's over.

Years of cheap fuel, subsidized roads and guaranteed rates which enticed haulage from over-regulated railroads are rapidly coming to an end.

Politicians no longer feel constrained to hold gasoline prices below the world market.  With de-regulation, cost to consumers will skyrocket.  -- no matter whether resulting profit goes to "big oil companies" or government tax coffers.

With the vast Interstate Highway System now almost completed, the cost of keeping it in repair will eat up available budget allocations from here on out.  New roads - meaning new markets for truckers - soon will be a fond memory.

Hauling rates also are slated for release from government regulations in the manner proven so successful with airlines.  No longer will there be recompense to truckers for empty return trips, sweetheart routes or specialized loading.

The cruel world of cut-throat competition beckons.

Truckers are not the only ones faced with far-reaching changes in their personal economies and life styles.  The rest of us who do not have our jobs riding on 18 wheels have not sighted the revolution down the road.  Yet, our moment of truth also is at hand.

For the next decade or so, oil will be too precious to fritter away on Sunday driving, daily trips to shopping centers and suburban commuting.  Even with strict rationing there wouldn't be enough petroleum for essential transportation, polyester suits and furnace heat.

Oh, there certainly is a lot of oil and gas still buried somewhere in the ground.  And there is unlimited energy in the atom to be safely liberated by fusion.  But we have wasted precious years stifling the incentive to find new petroleum deposits and neglecting research into alternate energy sources.

Now we must play catch up, and we haven't yet learned the rules.  A generation of Americans must pay the price for a generation of folly.

Until capitalism is turned loose on the problem and rebuilds our starved technology, we will have to manage our shortages.

The four-cylinder four-passenger auto will be the next decade's luxury model.

Scores of nuclear power plants will have to be built.  The coal-burning locomotive will have to be reinvented.  Wind driven sailing ships must make a comeback.  Rustic streams now inhabited by rare minnows and midges will surrender to hydroelectric dams.

Belching smokestacks will become the badge of a successful factory.

This is not to say we will return to the bad old days of massive pollution and waste.  We have learned to appreciate recent improvements in our environment.  But the high water mark of environment control has been reached.  Practical necessity transcends idealism.

Americans, and the world, stand at a watershed of history.  Hard choices face us.  Whether to settle for the status quo, a life of social sameness; or whether to gamble that a free wheeling enterprise will discover an energy breakthrough that opens doors to progress..

In the past, status quo adherents drifted into oblivion.  The future belonged to those who domesticated horses, invented windmills, built steam engines, discovered electricity, developed internal combustion motors, tamed atoms.

The universe in powered with limitless energy.  Science unlocked nature's secrets step by step.  There is no reason to expect less in the years ahead.  Our choice is that of encouraging or discouraging -- of speeding the process or slowing it.  

In recent years Americans pushed science and technology to the back burner while we tried to even out the disproportions of life.  Funds that otherwise would have been used for new machinery and new processes were channeled instead into a "social contract."

It was a choice consciously made.  There has been some success in the endeavor.  A new middle-class was created from labor which undoubtedly will survive.  Joe Trucker has found a permanent niche in society even though he is bumping the ceiling for his service.

Nevertheless, this achievement came at the expense of capital expenditures.  The means of production are worn out.  There must be immediate, extensive replacement to gird for a new leap forward.

Either we will do it, or other more eager nations will trample us in the dust as they surge ahead.

Present oil shortages are signals for new effort, new direction.  Nothing ever again will be the way it was.

Change is unsettling, but those who overcome fear can adapt to changed situations and move through adversity to new heights.

NOTE TO EDITORS:

A letter received this week from Jim Purks, assistant press secretary to President Carter, regarding my recent column on SALT II may be appropriate for "Letters To Editor." It' discloses an hitherto unpublished White House view about the CIA.

"I believe many people will agree with you that too much publicity has hurt the CIA and it needs to be submerged again so it can quietly go about some very essential business of helping protect our nation's security.  We think this can be done, while at the same time avoiding the abuses of the past that have been rightly brought to public attention and scrutiny."

L.W.

Author: Lindsey Williams