Trains carry a majority of the freight in America. Manufactured goods, spare parts, fuel oil and gasoline, coal, metal ores, smelted metals, steel, wood, darn near everything. A rail strike would cut off all these things, and all the others I haven’t thought of. All the factories and businesses that depend on stuff will shut down, deepening the recession. Perhaps so deep we cannot pull out of it.
Trains use far less fuel to move cargo than trucks. A truck has a 400 horsepower diesel engine to move one big 57 foot trailer. A 100 car freight train, made up of 100 trailer train cars, flat cars built to move two truck trailers, uses 6000 horsepower to more 200 big trailers. That’s 30 horsepower per trailer, a huge saving of fuel compared to over the road trucking.
Way back when the newspapers would talk about the Taft Hartley act which empowered the government to declare a “cooling off period” in the event of a economy threatening strike. I think the Taft Hartley act is still on the books, and could be used to delay the threatened rail strike. I have not heard a whisper about Taft Hartley and cooling off periods in any of the media. Either the newsies are so poorly educated that they never heard of Taft Hartley, or someone, probably Biden, has demanded the msm not mention it.
So far Biden has let the rail strike get going while he enjoys Thanksgiving on Nantucket. If the rail strike happens it is going to be bad for all of us. If Biden does get into the rail strike at this late date would the unions and management believe anything he might say?
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