Posted on 05/26/2022 10:53:28 PM PDT by citizen
Do you know what DEF fluid is? It's Diesel Exhaust Fluid. Every Diesel truck that has been made since 2010 is required to use it. It's a product made of 67% Urea fertilizer and 33% distilled water. Every diesel truck you see driving down the road today has to have this product to drive. The engines won't start without it. There are regulators inside the engine that mix DEF with the Diesel to reduce Diesel emissions. That's the purpose of DEF.
Right now, Russia is the largest exporter of Urea by a wide margin. Qatar is second. Egypt and China are Tied for 3rd. Both Russia and China have decided to no longer export Urea. On top of that, India is the largest manufacturer of Urea in the world even though they consume most of what they make. What little they would export..........they no longer do. They are now stopping the exportation of any and all Urea minus a deal they just cut with Sri Lanka.
What does this mean for you and me? Well, first, the United States imports most of it's Urea fertilizer. We are the third largest importer in the entire world. We depend on other countries to eat, drive and ship our products.
Secondly... Flying J is the largest Service provider for Truckers around the Unites States. I'm sure you've seen their massive gas stations when traveling around the country. Flying J gets 70% of their DEF fluid from shipments via Union Pacific railroad. UP has single user access to the Fertilizer plants that Urea/DEF fluid comes from. No other rail provider has access to these distribution points. This means Flying J can't just go around Union Pacific. Union Pacific is in charge....for a reason I'm gonna mention in a few paragraphs.
Flying J provides 30% of all DEF consumed in the United States. UP has told Flying J to reduce their shipments by a whopping 50%. And if they do not comply then they will be completely embargoed. That would in effect bankrupt FJ. This means that 15% of all DEF consumed by truckers in the US is no longer available at the largest travel service center for the entire trucking industry.
Rome rotted from the inside out. It was easily invaded because it was occupied with internal problems. It appears we have discovered the Trigger. DEF fluid. If this holds up, DEF shortages will be the catalyst that causes food shortages in the coming months. Not only is there a shortage of fertilizer to grow crops in drought-stricken states (See Kansas' drop in wheat production for 2022)....but....now it looks like, unless the Federal Government intervenes via the Defense Production Act, ...which I am no longer confident they will....there is gonna be an absolute massive shortage of trucking in the coming months.
There simply isn't going to be DEF fluid sufficient to keep the engines running and moving. Home Depot is now limiting the amount of DEF you can buy in their stores. I would think long and hard about the decisions you are making right now. Where you live. What you spend money on. How you prepare. This is so real that the CEO of Flying J, Shameek Konar was summoned to a Surface Transportation Board hearing to give them all this info. From what I'm reading....Blackrock is the majority shareholder of Union Pacific railroad. How is that important? Americas biggest fertilizer producer is CF Industries. Their largest shareholder is Blackrock.
Blackrock controls the fertilizer industry in the U.S.. Union Pacific has exclusive rights to distribution points of fertilizer. Urea is fertilizer. Flying J needs Urea/DEF. Blackrock is controlling everything.
The Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute is Tom Donilon, President Obama’s former National Security Advisor. Tom Donilon’s brother, Mike Donilon is a Senior Advisor to Joe Biden. Tom Donilon’s wife, Catherine Russell, is the White House Personnel Director. Tom Donilon’s daughter, Sarah Donilon, who graduated college in 2019, now works on the White House National Security Council.
It appears Blackrock is spearheading the dismantling of the US system on behalf of the Globalists. And the first domino they are pushing over is the energy sector. They are using DEF to get the party started. This is one sector of the biggest downfalls in political repercussions this country has ever faced…
However it’s like running Red fuel in a commercial truck you get caught you wish you’d never done it
All of the people who I personally know that do it have diesel pickups, not commercial rigs.
CC
Urea is basically cow/pig pee. it used to be a byproduct of the meat packing industry along with hides, bones, fats, and other nasty things.
What is their range and how much would they weigh, empty? Recall that those scales the states run along interstates weigh the whole semi, and the batteries will replace cargo capacity.
States charge taxes on trucks for the fuel they use, whether they fill up in the state or not, just for driving thru. (Theoretically as a road use tax, but states don't HAVE to spend it on infrastructure.)
Obama isn't going to starve, freezing in the woods, but the rest of us are.
Alvin, one of the big drafting equipment and paper suppliers have folded, 2 years ago. (Vague memory that they were restructuring, but...)
You will please indicate where Obama cares if we starve.
We used to export oil, too... The US isn't going to produce the crops, this year, either. That fertilizer thing. Another exported industry. The EPA regs were killing the plants, so PRESTO! Outsourced.
What is the big deal? Read Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal."
Well, maybe not 40 years, but yeah. Now nearly all digital.
Similar subject, I wonder if any company is making new slide rulers.
EV is fine if you don’t need to go far. Most of these trucks range is less than 100 to 200 miles. In case you didn’t know, that is nothing for a truck making a haul.
The problem is not the motors or the mechanics of EV, it is the fuel. Everything but that is compelling, even to a person who loves the smell of diesel. The Magna eBeam axle-motor combinaiton is a simple idea and if it were available for less than $3,500 to $4,000 I’d get one for conversion of a classic truck to EV but the problem is batteries and their range and weight.
EV vehicles are experiencing tire wear about 3x higher than normal from packing around that extra 1,000 lbs of batteries all the time. Tire wear at that rate is contributing a whopping 1,800 times the particulates to pollution that diesel and gasoline engines are.
We are being driven to EV in a colossal disaster because it is not ready for prime time. Limited range, batteries not so safe, charging not available, inadequate power generation to fill the need, added weight, a separate pollution issue.
What do you do with all the used batteries, windmill blades and solar cells. They all wear out pretty quickly, take considerable energy to make and transport, take petroleum resources to make. They are not a free lunch.
Although, since it is offroad...
1 ton trucks are subject to the inspections as well. Anything 10,000 pounds or heavier on the GVW.
High price is what happens when you have a mandated, captive and sometimes subsidized market.
They're begging for it.
"I will leave your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your carcasses. I will water the land with what flows from you, and the river beds shall be filled with your blood." --from the Book of Ezekiel
We had a thread on here not long ago that calculated the change in electricity demand to replace all highway transportation fuels. The answer is that electricity consumption would just about double.
As for distrubution, think of all the new copper wire needed?
An EV takes about an hour to charge at fast charge? It takes less than 5 minutes to fuel a car. That implies we might need something like 10 to 12 times the number of charging stations as we now have gasoline and diesel pumps. Imagine the parking lots filled with people just cooling their heels waiting on their vehicle to charge.
Batteries will not be feasible. Something else is required. Hydrogen fuel cells? Where will all that hydrogen come from? How will it be transported? How will it be stored?
This EV push is too much too fast and we will suffer for it very soon and suffer much. Only a sociopath would push this agenda and we seem to have plenty of those.
No fuel tax on red diesel. That is the point of steep penalties for using it in on road vehicles.
People who use off road red diesel can and do get caught and regret their choice very much. The fines make it not worth the trouble. The dye also persists in the tank for a very long time. All the weights and measures guys around here have a detection kit in their vehicle. It is an easy check.
Especially Blackrock. I think it has 3 or 4 folks installed that are within air,s reach of CornPop at any given time.
Could give you a precise number. But I’d say a truck that runs 3000 miles a week might go through 15-20 gallons. Maybe more
“And electricity costs are just going through the roof, so you can kiss all your gas savings goodbye!”
It appears, based on how the current market works, that the cost of electricity versus gasoline or diesel, will continue to cost much less for the same amount of work it produces. However, the market is fluid and dynamic. The law of supply and demand kicks in.
What we have to compare is the overall cost of ownership. There are factors that give diesel trucks an advantage, but this advantage is probably temporary. We will see.
“those trucks will not replace long haul trucks”
I predict they will.
True, long haul trucks can currently do something EVs cannot. But even those trucks usually have a lot of down time. Even driving teams take breaks. And EVs could mitigate range issues with hot-swappable batteries.
Self-driving capabilities will also play a role in this competition.
Most electric vehicles are not competing head-to-head on total cost of ownership yet.
I’m personally more attracted to them because they do not necessarily require as much societal infrastructure for some use-case scenarios. For example, if we have a grid collapse, it is possible to keep them on the road using solar.
Neither solar nor EVs have reached price parity with existing tech, but they do provide some advantages other than cost.
I also think parity is not absolute because the market adapts. If there is cost savings built in, the markets will capitalize on it. This means that if an EV can save X dollars over its life, then the sellers or current owners will sell them based on their VALUE rather than their cost to make or the prior cost to acquire.
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