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  According to a study by the Federal Railroad Administration, intermodalism is up to five times more fuel efficient than long haul trucking because the cargo travels most of the way by ship or train.  Even on short trips, ships and trains are twice as efficient as trucks.  If they were legal, intermodal vehicles would eliminate our need for foreign oil.  

    Big trucks frighten motorists, so people buy large pickups and SUV's to protect themselves—gobbling twice as much gas as cars and exacerbating problems of air pollution.  Without big trucks terrorizing the roads, motorists could drive smaller, more fuel efficient cars.  High gas prices resulting from a shortage of refinery capacity triggered the 2008 recession by popping the housing bubble in outlying suburbs that were no longer economical to commute to.  
 
    The Government Accountability Office estimated that the pollution, accident, and congestion costs of trucks are six times more than trains ( p.27).  Approximately 65% of trucks could have been replaced by intermodalism if Presidential Candidate Ron Paul's 'Safer Truck Act' ( HR 1248, 108th Congress) had been enacted in 2001.   Intermodal vehicles could have replaced ten percent of long haul trucks every year since 2005—an accumulated savings of 88 billion from 2006-2010.  

    Three hundred truckers died in 2007 and 2008 who could have been saved if their trucks had been equipped with the modern safety features that cars have.   In a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the American Trucking Associations and Owner Operator Independent Driver Association both agreed that rollover crashes account for approximately 63 percent of fatal injuries to truckers and that fatalities could be reduced 23 percent if cab structural integrity was improved sufficiently to prevent crushing in rollovers.  

    Though I filed litigation in 2005 and 2007 to legalize intermodal vehicles and modern safety features, after President Bush fired a dozen US Attorneys for no apparent reason, a US Attorney provided the court with false information to get my case dismissed.  There is a 95% probability that President Bush's Staff Secretary was appointed to be the judge in my case in a non random manner.  When I appealed to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts, another Bush appointee, denied my petition.   After leaving office, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator explained, “The political people tell the appointed people what they’re going to do.”

    The FBI investigated several House and Senate committee chairmen to determine why Presidential Candidate Ron Paul’s 'Safer Truck Act' never received a hearing while a bridge to nowhere was to be built in Alaska.  The same month that $4 per gallon gas allowed the nation’s largest oil company to announce record profits of 14 billion, plunging the nation into a recession, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, a former Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, was convicted of receiving gifts from an oil company.  The nation's largest trucking company also announced record profits during the recession.

    Despite being found guilty by a jury of his peers, charges against Stevens were suddenly dropped less than a month after I sent the FBI a complaint alleging that a dozen truck drivers killed in Texas had a greater than 50-50 probability of being victims of wrongful death.  The number of truck drivers killed in daytime crashes with other vehicles doubled after the Senate Commerce Committee allowed political appointees to pose as safety professionals, permitting non-union trucking companies to overwork inexperienced trainees.  The station chief who received my complaint resigned from the FBI a month later.  Instead of spending the rest of his life in prison, Senator Stevens died suspiciously in a plane crash.  

    The International Brotherhood of Teamsters filed suit together with a number of safety advocates claiming that allowing non-union companies to overwork their drivers violated their collective bargaining agreements.  Unionized trucking companies began going out of business and emerging from bankruptcy as non-union companies once they were allowed to overwork low wage trainees.  I filed a brief alleging that the Bush Administration’s union busting scheme killed three thousand Americans (p.17) and demanded that they settle the case.  

    Less than 24 hours after the Department of Justice agreed to settle, the Senate Commerce Committee confirmed a lobbyist with no apparent qualifications to head the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.  When I called the Committee to ask when this vote took place, none of the staffers I spoke to were aware that the confirmation had occurred.  Predictably, the lobbyist violated our settlement agreement.

    President Obama promised during his campaign that he would not appoint lobbyists to head government agencies.   Violating his pledge, he appointed the President of the Maryland Motor Truck Association—a person who as former head of Maryland’s driver’s license office regularly issued licenses to unqualified truck drivers having as little as two weeks of training.  President Obama violated the law because the President of the Maryland Motor Truck Association had never driven a truck for a living, much less accumulated the hundreds of thousands of miles without a crash and numerous safety awards needed to qualify for employment as a motor carrier safety professional as required by the Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act. 

    While a senator in Illinois, Barak Obama collaborated with convicted Illinois Governor George Ryan to ban capital punishment.  Governor Ryan was sentenced to six years in prison for issuing commercial driver’s licenses to unqualified trainees in exchange for campaign donations.  It is difficult to imagine how the head of Maryland’s driver’s license office could have become president of Maryland’s trucking association without granting special favors like Governor Ryan did when he was head of Illinois’ driver’s license office.  The president of a trucking association would normally be the owner of a successful trucking company—not a driver’s license office.  

    Trucking is the most dangerous occupation in the United States.  One in every seven Americans killed on the job is a trucker.   A sober motorist is more than twice as likely to be killed by a heavy truck as by a drunk driver.  A 1999 University of Michigan study showed that driver error was responsible for only 26% of truck crashes.  Because of unqualified trainees, driver error rose 46% in the latest Large Truck Crash Causation Study.   Crossing over a lane line, departing from the roadway, or loss of control was recorded for almost a third of truck drivers studied and driving too fast for conditions was coded at a rate almost fifty percent higher than ordinary motorists.   To protect themselves from unqualified truck drivers who were killing an additional 500 people per year, motorists purchased 160% more gas guzzling SUV's in 2002 than they did in 1995.  SUV registrations only rose 49% from 1982 to 1995.

    According to a recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, computer systems intended to help trainees control large trucks increased fatal rear end crashes 44% (p.20) while reducing non fatal crashes up to 77% (p.9).  Not unlike autopilots on airplanes, computerized controls allow unqualified trainees who in the past would have been fired for minor fender benders to continue driving until they kill people.  When the recession forced trucking companies to stop hiring unqualified trainees in 2008, truck crashes fell 30%!

    It is not yet known what motivated Chairman Rockefeller to confirm the lobbyist in violation of parliamentary procedure.  He is thought to possess a vast family fortune benefiting from lower wages for truckers.  Presidential Candidate John McCain, the former Chairman of the Commerce Committee not convicted of receiving gifts, had a conflict of interest in confirming Administrators whose policies were favorable to his family business—a trucking company that distributes beer.  His additional profit gleaned from paying lower wages and working his drivers longer hours was likely many times the value of the gifts received by Senator Stevens.   The nation’s largest truckload carrier, J.B. Hunt, earned a record profit of $60.3 million in the third quarter of 2008; Landstar reported record revenue of $733 million; while Conway, Celadon, Marten, Knight, Werner, Old Dominion, Covenant, and UTS all saw revenues increase 10 to 24 percent the same month $4 per gallon gas plunged the nation into recession.  Because almost all of the revenue increases resulted from fuel surcharges when the price of Diesel fuel exceeded $4 per gallon, it is unlikely that any of the non-union companies that replaced their skilled professionals with low wage trainees would have remained in business very long if their former employees had been allowed to compete against them with safer, more efficient intermodal vehicles.  

    The main benefit of intermodal vehicles is actually not safety or efficiency, but their ability to deliver freight absolutely anywhere at ground level without a loading dock.  18 wheelers have cargo decks three feet above the ground making them extremely difficult for small businessmen to load and unload.  Before low wage truckload carriers drove them out of business, unionized common carriers used smaller trucks equipped with lift gates to pickup and deliver freight.  After filling up most of a long haul truck at a large corporation, smaller shipments from small businesses would be loaded on the same trailer so that small businesses could ship goods at the same cost as the large corporation.  

    Today, almost all large shipments are hauled by low wage truckload carriers, so only big box retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target are able to consolidate loads efficiently.  Small business retailers are now dependent on the much more expensive mail and parcel services.   Cutting off water or power would not have been as harmful to small businesses as cutting off their access to cheap and efficient transportation.  Because it costs less per pound for large corporations to ship goods all the way from China than for small businessmen to ship small quantities of freight across the United States, one in seven Americans is now unemployed.

    If intermodal vehicles were legal, small business entrepreneurs could compete on a level playing field with giant corporations.  Billionaire campaign contributors would be a thing of the past.  Unemployed people could start home industries to prevent their homes from being foreclosed and farmers could sell milk and produce directly to consumers over the internet at half supermarket prices.  People would no longer feel the need to buy large gas guzzling pickups or SUV's to feel safe around big trucks.

    Half of all trips are shopping trips.  If people could do most of their shopping at home, there would be fewer car crashes, less highway congestion, less oil consumed, less pollution, cars would last longer, insurance rates and cost of living would be lower, and war in the Middle East would be unnecessary.  Needless to say, the trucking, oil, auto, food, insurance, and retail industries are all against it.

    If intermodal vehicles were allowed to deliver freight a mere five miles around industrial parks, demand for rail transportation would dramatically increase and track electrification would become economical—reducing noise and pollution.  Like most nations, the US has a surplus of night time generating capacity that could be used to power trains.  A trucker with a modern intermodal truck that traveled less than five miles could use plug in power and go home from work every night without having to drive long distances and never buy Diesel fuel again.  This is why oil industry executives are willing to risk prison by bribing government officials—and why a United States Senator was convicted of receiving gifts from an oil company.

     How much does our obsolete long haul trucking industry cost taxpayers?  In the 2006 highway bill, the following money was allocated for cover the costs of trucks:

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