There’s 32 million trucks traveling our nation’s roads, bridges and tunnels each day. The professional truck drivers behind the wheel work tirelessly every day to complete their deliveries safely and on time to ensure that our communities are stocked with the goods that we all rely on.
But, time, weather and lack of investments in our roadways are quickly giving way to aging infrastructure in America. If policies don’t change to support new roads and bridges, the trucking industry won’t be able to safely do our job, threatening the flow of our economy.
Across America, more than 80 percent of U.S. communities rely solely on trucking for the delivery of their goods, which keeps our local businesses thriving and our economy moving forward. The industry is a huge contributor to the economy. Trucks move more than 70 percent of our nation’s freight and stimulate economic activity in every sector of the American economy, including the healthcare, agriculture, finance, and retail industries. Overall, the industry provides over $739 billion in revenue each year and supplies over 7 million jobs.
Strong infrastructure is critical to the success of the trucking industry and all of America, which is why Trucking Moves America Forward is proud to once again be an affiliate and supporter of Infrastructure Week and its message, “The future won’t wait. Neither can we. It’s #TimeToBuild.”
TMAF joins with a diverse coalition of transportation and infrastructure groups that are dedicated to rebuilding our roads, bridges, railways, airports and more, to help educate and bring awareness to the role that infrastructure plays in our daily lives and how important strong infrastructure is to our economic success.
When it comes to our technology and infrastructure systems, America has always been a leader among other nations. But over time, our once new and high-tech infrastructure has become old and outdated. In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers released its infrastructure report card and gave the U.S. an overall score of D+. They found that by 2020, our deteriorating infrastructure will cost the economy nearly 1 million jobs and hurt GDP growth by $1 trillion.
Sadly, this is not a new trend. The state of our infrastructure has been in rapid decline over the past several years. We’re now faced with crumbling infrastructure that is quickly threatening to not only slow down our deliveries and economy, but also jeopardizes the safety of our families on the road. The same roads that our trucks travel are also the same roads that our families travel on, our children take to school and our emergency vehicles drive on.
As the president and Congress work toward passing an infrastructure bill this year, our industry will continue to push the administration and our state and federal lawmakers to work with us to close the nation’s infrastructure investment gap and strengthen our roadways. That is the only way to ensure that the trucking industry remains the thriving industry it is today, and help keep our economy strong and create jobs.
From our community’s safety to our nation’s economic success and security, so much is dependent on strong infrastructure. That’s why it’s so important that we make investments to modernize our nation’s highway systems and prioritize the safety of the motoring public. When it comes to structurally sound and safe roads, we all deserve no less.
Kevin Burch is the co-chairman of Trucking Moves America Forward (TMAF) and president of Jet Express Inc.
