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California Drove Truckers Out of Business. Now Store Shelves Are Empty-Democrat regulations are holding the entire economy hostage
Frontpagemagazine ^ | Oct 22, 2021 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 10/25/2021 7:21:04 AM PDT by SJackson

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

After a long cross-country flight, I made it out of LAX and into an Uber. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but the driver was. And hearing that I was a journalist, he wanted to tell me a story. I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years, but this may have been the most important one I let go.

He hadn’t always been driving an Uber at 11:30 at night. Not all that long ago he used to have his own business with 7 trucks before he was bankrupted by California’s insane regulations.

I listened, but didn’t pay enough attention. The impact of California’s Democrat legislative supermajority on truckers was just another data point alongside what was happening to freelancers of all kinds and a lot of small businesses. Stories like this were everywhere and there was little interest in them even in conservative circles outside the tarnished golden state.

Back then we still lived in a world where you could walk into a thousand stores with fully stocked shelves. People ordered from Amazon and expected its burgeoning last mile delivery service to make products magically appear overnight. Just in time inventory systems were more efficient and any day now products would be delivered by self-driving cars or aerial drones.

2020 and 2021 have given this Big Tech fantasy world and the rest of us a good kicking.

The massive supply chain mess that’s leaving stores empty and orders unfulfilled doesn’t have a single point of failure, but dozens of them. China’s energy shortages, the overhyped predictive powers of Big Data, the fragility of the global economy, fuel costs, and welfare state worker shortages are all players. But California’s truck bans are a key link in the great failure chain.

While I was riding home that night, California trucking companies were going bankrupt at a rapid rate. Few outside the industry were paying attention or understood what that might mean.

2019 was described as a “bloodbath” for the trucking industry with 640 trucking companies across the country filing for bankruptcy in just the first half of the year. Thousands of truck drivers were left unemployed. Many went into the expanding last mile delivery business, some as contractors for Amazon. But California truckers and businesses had their own special woes.

Two years ago, Governor Newsom signed the Democrat supermajority's Assembly Bill 5 into law. While AB5 was billed as a crackdown on Uber and Lyft, forcing the companies to treat l freelance contractors as employees, the gig economy companies pushed Proposition 22 so that they were the only ones exempt from the law. (A Democrat judge has since illegally blocked the approved ballot measure while falsely claiming that it was unconstitutional.)

AB5 however was less about Uber than it was about outlawing freelance employees in order to force them into unions. The union power grab inconvenienced Uber and Lyft, but crushed freelance workers in a variety of fields including journalism. One of the fields was trucking.

Over the summer, the California Trucking Association actually went to the Supreme Court to fight AB5 and allow owners and operators to use independent contractors. The CTA listed 70,000 owner operators. In the years since AB5, Ubers have become scarcer and more expensive, which is what the law was actually designed to do, but the consequences to the trucking industry have been far worse albeit invisible to most people until now. While truckers are still protected from AB5, many in the industry are not willing to bet their future on SCOTUS.

AB5 was not only the assault on the trucking industry by California Democrats who were aggressively trying to unionize the industry and to impose environmental regulations on it.

Last year, the California Air Resources Board issued a press release boasting that it had taken a "bold step to reduce truck pollution". The bold step required switching to electric trucks.

"We are showing the world that we can move goods, grow our economy and finally dump dirty diesel," Jared Blumenfeld, California’s Secretary for Environmental Protection, sneered.

Jared and California certainly showed the world something.

While the ultimate truck ban was scheduled for 2045, an initial phase-in of 5% to 9% begins in 2024. Last year, California's DMV began refusing to register thousands of trucks with an estimated 100,000 trucks under threat. With "green" trucks costing $70,000 more, this was a non-starter for already troubled independent owner-operators and even larger companies.

That was part of the plan.

California Democrats and their environmentalist special interests had set out to crush the state’s ports and trucking industry. Had everything gone as planned, this would have been a slow and gradual process. Costs would have crept up and deliveries would have fallen off without an immediate catastrophic impact. But then the pandemic and its consequences arrived.

Business at California’s ports dropped during the pandemic. The loss of traffic convinced trucking companies and owner operators who were already battered by AB5 and the green truck ban that it was better to just downsize or pull out entirely. And when port activity rebounded, there was a huge hole in the delivery infrastructure that backed up the entire system.

Biden called for ports to operate around the clock, but that’s not going to magically bring back thousands of trucks or truckers. California Democrats still haven’t changed their regulations and without that, there’s no incentive or even legal structure that would allow trucks to operate.

The resulting disaster is likely to accelerate the ongoing shift of shipping from California ports. Democrats imposed their green shakedown not only on truckers, but on shipping. With companies moving to Texas, Houston was already becoming a more appealing alternative. It’s now at capacity as everyone is looking for alternatives to the California economic disaster area.

But much of our imports and exports still depend on the California bottleneck that begins with Communist China and ends in Communist California. The red-to-red pipeline has savaged our economy and wrecked imports and exports. Newsom’s survival and the Dem legislative supermajority which passes more extreme leftist regulations every session means that things will only get worse. A radical party that actively seeks to dismantle the economy is in power in Sacramento and its regulations have the ability to hold our entire economy hostage.

What happens in California unfortunately doesn’t stay there unless it’s waiting on a ship.



TOPICS: Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: ab5; beltandroad; california; ccp; china; commerce; logistics; ports; shipping; trade; trucks; youshallnotpass
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1 posted on 10/25/2021 7:21:04 AM PDT by SJackson
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To: SJackson

And I bet some peeps thought we were years away from a Venezuelan economy . . . oh well, they keep voting for it - they’re gonna get it.


2 posted on 10/25/2021 7:25:16 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress (http://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com/BYTOPICS/tabid/335/Default.aspx D)
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To: SJackson

Wait till the fuel transports stop running.

Since everybody in Kalifornia has an E.V. I guess they will be ok.

ENJOY THE SUCK!


3 posted on 10/25/2021 7:26:22 AM PDT by unixfox (Abolish Slavery, Repeal the 16th Amendment)
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To: SJackson

The fed’s should invoke one of their few legitimate Constitutional powers—the regulations of international and interstate trade—and revoke the California regulations.


4 posted on 10/25/2021 7:29:06 AM PDT by Petrosius
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To: SJackson

A very good read.

A collapse is coming.


5 posted on 10/25/2021 7:29:35 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi (We are being played by forces most do not understand)
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To: 100American; 21twelve; 2nd amendment mama; A Conservative Thinker; Absolutely Nobama; ...
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Ping out to the Daniel Greenfield Ping! List.

As always, please FReepmail me is you want on or off the Daniel Greenfield Ping list.

Another column discussing the effects of AB5, a payoff to the unions that run CA.

6 posted on 10/25/2021 7:31:27 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: SJackson

Leave it to California to ban something they deem as bad and fail to over up a replacement or alternative.

Saying this as someone who was born and raised there. The last of my family just moved out last week and are starting to now realize just how bad they had it.


7 posted on 10/25/2021 7:32:25 AM PDT by Marko413
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To: SJackson

That’s how communism works, the government suffers you into submission of its will!!


8 posted on 10/25/2021 7:35:25 AM PDT by drypowder
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To: SJackson

I know exactly one long haul trucker - so not a statistically significant sample but... While he runs nation-wide, he will not make pickups or deliveries in CA. I think he got talked into one run in there in the last two years - for a stack of cash.


9 posted on 10/25/2021 7:37:34 AM PDT by ThunderSleeps (Biden/Harris - illegitimate and everyone knows it.)
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To: SJackson

You people keep voting for it.

So what do you want me to say?


10 posted on 10/25/2021 7:41:09 AM PDT by Tzimisce ( )
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To: SJackson

Regressive libtards want to live in the Stone Age 🤪


11 posted on 10/25/2021 7:46:01 AM PDT by NWFree (Somebody has to say it)
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To: SJackson

Already posted here:

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4006207/posts

With about 100 comments. But a worthwhile repost. Greenfield gets it.


12 posted on 10/25/2021 7:51:49 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: SJackson
Many years ago I loaded out an independent trucker that was shut out of california due to cost of conversion.

This insane legislation began at least a decade ago.

13 posted on 10/25/2021 7:57:02 AM PDT by chief lee runamok (Anti Socialist Derelict at Large)
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To: SJackson
Saw a couple of interesting videos over the weekend.
14 posted on 10/25/2021 8:08:21 AM PDT by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
being at see sea. Homophones are of the devil.
15 posted on 10/25/2021 8:09:42 AM PDT by DannyTN
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To: SJackson

No matter; when the full self drive electric trucks swarm in, this will all be moot. They are building factors to make them now. Good or bad, they are coming. I hope all the truckers have been contributing to their retirement funds.


16 posted on 10/25/2021 8:10:07 AM PDT by Born to Conserve
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To: Pilgrim's Progress
And I bet some peeps thought we were years away from a Venezuelan economy . . .

I figure it's going to be another month for the full effects of Bidenzuela to manifest. Hide your pets if you don't want them to be eaten.

17 posted on 10/25/2021 8:13:28 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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To: SJackson

” Last year, California’s DMV began refusing to register thousands of trucks with an estimated 100,000 trucks under threat. “

Because their engines are pre 2010.

They are mostly farm trucks.

OTR trucking doesn’t keep an engine that long.


18 posted on 10/25/2021 8:17:18 AM PDT by Mariner (War criminal #18)
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To: SJackson
California's stupidity is helping Alabama thrive. Port activity at Mobile port is up 34% over this time last year. Year to date is up 27%.

https://www.marinelink.com/news/port-mobile-reports-record-growth-490690

19 posted on 10/25/2021 8:17:58 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: NWFree
Regressive libtards want to live in the Stone Age

Perhaps, but the suburban female voters that got upset with Trump's manliness and honesty are going to reap the rewards of their votes for a demented commie like Biden et al.

20 posted on 10/25/2021 8:22:17 AM PDT by 1Old Pro (Let's make crime illegal again!)
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