On March 31st, President Joe Biden unveiled plans for a colossal spending bill known as the American Jobs Plan. Most people know this plan as the infrastructure bill/plan.
Basically, this plan will invest trillions of dollars into infrastructures like roads, bridges, and ports. So, what does that mean for the trucking and freight industries?
Keep reading below to find out how Biden’s infrastructure bill will impact trucking and freight industries across the nation.
What Parts of the American Jobs Plan Affects the Trucking and Freight Industries?
The entire infrastructure package is for a whopping $1.2 trillion to be spent over the next eight years. Here are the parts of the bill that directly affect the trucking and freight industries:
- Roads and Bridges – $110 billion is being used to repair and construct highways, roads, and bridges.
- Railroads – $66 billion will go into upgrading and maintaining America’s passenger and freight rails.
- Electric Grid – $65 billion will fund updates to power lines and cables and build more clean energy.
- Broadband – Another $65 billion will be spent to expand broadband across the nation, especially in rural areas.
- Water – $55 billion will go into water infrastructure to replace pipes and clean up chemicals.
- Ports – $17 billion will be used to repair port infrastructure, with the rest going to ferry terminals and the Coast Guard.
- Electric Vehicle Charging Stations – $7.5 billion will be spent to build more charging stations for electric vehicles.
How Will This Impact the Trucking and Freight Industry?
The most significant part of the bill is for roads and bridges, and this money goes to constructing and repairing 20,000 miles of highways and roads. It will also be used to improve the most economically important bridges as well as other small bridges.
It’s estimated that there are about 45,000 bridges across the country that need a fix. For example, the I-40 bridge closure between Arkansas and Tennessee in May 2021 cost the trucking industry $2.4 million per day.
As the infrastructure across the US crumbles, so do the profits of the trucking industry. That means that the repairs will be good for trucking companies’ bottom line.
Safer roads and bridges present less risk, and less risk means more profit and safer driving.
Furthermore, freight bottlenecks due to road congestions lead to a loss of 1.2 billion hours of lost productivity every year. Lost time and fuel add to the already high operating cost in the trucking industry.
Expanding roads and highways will ease this problem, reducing wasted fuel and time spent in traffic.
Now you might be wondering, what does expanding broadband, fixing water pipes, and adding new power lines got to do with the trucking industry?
Well, in one way or another, these operations will require construction materials. That means that the trucking industry will be indirectly involved with transporting materials for new construction.
A Much Needed Fix
The infrastructure plan is ambitious and a much-needed fix for the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. It will aid and strengthen the US’s supply chain and trucking industry overall.
However, the bill hasn’t yet passed, and it will take years for the changes to start taking effect. Hopefully, the plan will pass before the end of the year, but in politics, nothing is certain.
