Delivery Man....Out of Gas

Google and Amazon are competing with one another to build bricks and mortar shipping centers so we all can get same day delivery of all the goods we order on-line.

Local retailers, who order merchandise in bulk, and then sell it to us when we visit their stores are reeling.  On-line purchasing is nothing new, it was one of the first innovations driving the dot-com economic bubble in 2000.  The big idea was grocery delivery via the internet.  Thankfully it failed.

But next day delivery is new.  It requires putting large warehouses close to urban centers, then using inventory control run by computers of course, and robot retrieval of merchandise from the shelves, to be placed on an army of trucks and sent to your door.

This weekend we will all troop into our cars and travel, anywhere, to celebrate Labor Day.  We will consume millions of gallons of gas, at  inflated prices (for the United States anyway), not realizing that this practice will soon be doomed because we are running out of gas.

That's right, we are running out of gas.  Regardless of  all the stories you have been reading about fracking, that   produces natural gas that still doesn't run  most vehicles, it does nothing  to produce an  substantive increase in the supple of petroleum.  

If you have driven on I-5 lately, you will notice the multitude of trucks roaring up and down the freeway.  Trucks have literally taken over I-5.

And we are the reason they are there.

I remember when I was a kid I ordered a Flash Gordon decoder ring from the back of a comic book.  I can remember going to the mail box every day for over a month to get my ring.  It finally came after about five weeks.

That was the way mail order worked in those days, it took a long time to get your stuff.  And we waited, and waited.  If we wanted something quicker, we went to the store.

Today, the store sits on our desktop, and we order everything.  And the trucks keep rolling, burning up gas and diesel and record rates, so we can have what we want right now.

And retail stores either close, or are consolidated into Wal-Marts and the trucks roll on.  Amazon, Wal-Mart and the rest make a few people rich, using robots to quench our endless thirst for speed.

And gasoline prices explode; so we can get our Nintendo NOW without even driving, or pray not, walk to our corner electronics store.

We are the problem.  Most of the nation is once again setting all time records for heat this summer.  The polar ice caps are mostly gone.  Every indication there is says global warming is accelerating.

And anyone with any common sense would tell you that the global demand for gasoline, is depleting the finite resource fast.

And Google and Amazon are coming up with next day service, that only serves to increase the use of gasoline.

This is what we should be doing right now.  We should renovate trains.  We should put a tax on gasoline and diesel that would force us out of trucks for long haul delivery, and back to the rails.  We should have a program that helps truck drivers find jobs with the railroads as this painful transition takes place.  We need to force retailers like Google and Amazon to build real stores in local areas, stock their shelves with produce delivered to their areas by trains, and put those train depot areas closer to populated areas.  There still will be the need for short haul trucking of course, but it needs to be regulated.

Will that be a strait jacket for retail?  To a point yes, But do we need to do it?   In a nutshell we have no choice

And, just think of all the jobs we have eliminated in retail markets, by automating all this.  Literally, robots hunt the shelves of warehouses, and fetch items, carry them to the trucks and pack them.  Stores, people, and jobs, have been eliminated so we can get things right now.

Jobs are lost, and precious gasoline is squandered.

The delivery man will soon run out of gas, and little boys will wait forever to get their decoder ring.  We need to change NOW.

We need to reinvent stores and delivery systems around the conservation of fuel, not on the maximization of profits.