You may have heard about the shortage of truck drivers, and its impact on the movement of freight around the country. There's a simple solution to the problem, and it is environmentally friendly. Line the trucks up one behind the other, have a single big engine pull the whole line, run it on low friction steel wheels, and have the truck lines away from the highway on their own steel tracks.
We already have the infrastructure I described. Trains and tracks. Trains move things 4 to 5 times as far per gallon of fuel as trucks.
Trains are safer. 97% of the people killed in semi-truck vs passenger-vehicle crashes are in the passenger vehicles.
Road damage goes up by the 4th power of weight per wheel. Those grooves in the freeway are not from studded tires - they are from heavy trucks - here and in stud free states too. Trucks cause over 95% of the road damage but pay only one third of the fuel taxes. That's a $60 billion subsidy for an inefficient, dangerous, polluting, climate altering industry.
In Switzerland, trucks are required to be moved through the country on trains to prevent pollution from choking alpine valleys with diesel smoke. The law is in their constitution.
Trucks - ideally electric trucks - will still still be used for the last leg of a journey, but most of the negative impacts of the labor short industry would be alleviated by sending most of the freight most of the way via train. And the current diesel electric train engines could be converted to full electric to bring their fuel consumption to zero.
Why is trucking so common here? First - the hidden subsidies on fuel and infrastructure. Second, your desire- not need - to get that macramé plant holder tomorrow instead of Friday. Just protect the spider plant from the cat for three more days - and help stop climate change.
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