Transportation Posts

In 1926, Henry Ford's River Rouge plant was the largest factory on Earth—a vertical integration marvel where iron ore entered one end and finished Model T automobiles emerged from the other. The assembly line had reduced the time to build a car from twelve hours to ninety-three minutes. What had been a toy for the wealthy was becoming transportation for the masses.

"But what about road trips?"

In 1908, filling a Model T's ten-gallon tank took about five minutes. A century later, filling a modern car still takes about five minutes. The fueling experience improved—credit cards instead of cash, pay-at-the-pump instead of walking inside—but the basic time equation stayed constant.

In October 2023, a Cruise robotaxi in San Francisco struck a pedestrian who had been hit by another vehicle and thrown into the autonomous car's path. The robotaxi detected a collision, stopped, then attempted to pull over—dragging the injured pedestrian twenty feet. The incident led to Cruise suspending operations nationwide and losing its California permit.¹

At any given moment, approximately 3.5 million semi-trucks are rolling on American highways. They carry 72% of the nation's freight by value—$800 billion worth of goods annually. Nearly everything you buy traveled by truck at some point: the food in your refrigerator, the phone in your pocket, the furniture in your home.¹