I don't think I would even want to go to Mexico as an individual, at this point the country has way to many problems to risk my life there. This risk and the risk of it spilling over into the US brings to head the possibility of the US doing more than just assisting the Mexican Government with money and equipment. I wonder whether we are looking at a possible 31 more states, starting with the ones closest to the US. An ever expanding security zone that it would be hard to believe that the residents would fight against, given how many want to come here already.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Driving in Mexico
This article gives all the reasons a US or Canadian driver will never go to Mexico. It also gives plenty of reasons to doubt any Mexican driver coming north.
Cash for Clunkers Boondoggle
Boondoggle is all I can call the $3 Billion spent on removing around 700,000 so called clunkers from the roads. With three stated purposes of reducing pollution, saving fuel, and stimulating the economy; this program fails in every respect. Actually I shouldn't say fails, it does accomplish all of those things, but at such a high cost it is mind blowing. More than a few articles can be found that back this up, and this isn't coming from crazy news outlets people have never heard of either.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/11/cash-for-clunkers-autos-economy-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gBK8ygR_GgJVJ_9QEjvOcx4J8MxQD99SA4101
Now take that same $3 Billion and spend it on something that actually does have a true cost benefit to the environment, auxiliary power units for trucks, and all the sudden we are talking about some real savings. That amount of money could purchase 352,941 APUs at $8,500 a piece, which is the high end of APU pricing. Just purchasing those would have the possibility of cutting idling by at least 10 hours a day, 300 days a year (we do get home sometimes), for 3,000 hours of idling saved per truck. That is 1,058,823,000 hours of idling saved in a year for the same amount of money that is getting the common man a new car that may save him 3-5 miles per gallon.
Lets be generous and call it 15,000 miles driven in a year (I would call that high) divided by 5 miles per gallon saved times 700,000 new cars. That gives us 2.1 Billion gallons of fuel saved in a year. Which only is saved if everyone actually drives 15,000 miles a year, most people don't even come close to that.
An idling truck consumes an average of a gallon of fuel an hour. An APU typically uses around 2 tenths of a gallon an hour (again a bit high). Now if calculate the fuel used on those trucks idling all that time; 1,058,823,000 gallons of fuel are burned while idling in a year. Now those same 352,941 trucks using an APU would only burn 211,764,600 gallons, a savings of 847,058,400 gallons of fuel.
Now you are looking at that and saying what are you talking about, cash for clunkers is saving more in fuel than buying APUs for trucks. So rather than buying them outright, lets make it more like CARS and have a rebate of $4500 which would allow the purchase of 666,665 APUs. That generates a fuel savings of 1,599,996,000 or about 1.6 billion gallons of fuel in a year. Again a difference in fuel savings, but remember we used an average of 10 hours of idling a day for the trucks. This doesn't include the time idling at a shipper or receiver, or just waiting for a load (in this economy that could be over 24 hours).
Again there are no guarantees that the cars swapped will actually be driven as much as I calculated, but it is a real guarantee that the trucks will be idling to maintain driver comfort while in the sleeper.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Back to dedicated
It has been a while since I posted in here, mostly because I haven't been doing anything that interesting. Besides trying to close on a house, I have also been doing a regular loop between Parma, Ohio, and Lake Orion, Michigan. Basically running stamped parts from GM's Metal fabrication plant to their assembly plant. It isn't the best paying run, and only goes three times a week, but with my savings of eating at home and the extra time to deal with the house stuff it is perfect. It should also last just long enough to get everything done and us moved before I need to find another run. The assembly plan in Lake Orion currently is making the Pontiac G6, and since Pontiac is going away as a brand, so will the car. So at the end of September the plant will be shutting down for a year or so for retooling. Eventually it will reopen and assemble whatever small car GM ends up putting there. Apparently Michigan gave them a huge tax incentive to keep a plant there, beating out Spring Hill, Tennessee, and Janesville, Wisconsin. The odd part about that is the Spring Hill Plant was just redone to do the Chevrolet Traverse (which is moving up to be assembled in Michigan as well), so is a very up to date and versatile assembly line.
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