In The News
How trucking, infrastructure fare during campaign
One has to wonder if trucking and the state of roads and bridges have been forgotten amid the hue and cry of the presidential campaign trail.
Following are some comments made about trucking and the infrastructure by presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, presumptive GOP candidate Donald Trump and Clinton's rival Sen. Bernie Sanders.
On Fox News, Trump said recently, "We have to rebuild our country. Our country is a mess. Our airports are no good. Our roads are no good ... they are falling apart.
"I was with someone the other day... [from] one of the biggest trucking companies ... He said, 'Mr. Trump, we can't even drive on the roads anymore they are so bad. They are ruining their trucks ... they are hitting massive potholes.'
"We've got to get back to business. We have to rebuild our country. We've got to rebuild our infrastructure. Remember this, almost five trillion dollars spent in the Middle East and we don't have enough room to fix a road that's right outside, which by the way, I looked at just now and it's in horrible shape. OK. We can fix our highways, our tunnels and we are going to get it going folks."
Bernie Sanders said back in March if elected president he would build a "state-of-the-art rail system which takes trucks off the road," which raised the ire of truckers. It's all water under the (crumbling) bridge, now, but it wasn't clear if he meant all trucks or if it was just a turn of phrase.
Clinton has not mentioned trucks or trucking directly, but on her website said she would increase federal infrastructure funding by $275 billion over a five-year period, paying for it through business tax reform, which political analysts say means levying more taxes on the wealthy.
Of these funds she said she would direct $250 billion to direct public investment and would allocate the other $25 billion to a national infrastructure bank "dedicated to advancing our competitive advantage to the 21st century economy."
The Trucker staff can be reached to comment on this article at [email protected].