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8 • June 15-30, 2019 Nation
THETRUCKER.COM
Infrastructure woes: Crumbling roads,
poor internet bad for small businesses
Joyce M. Rosenberg
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Every hour that one of
The Advance Group’s trucks is stuck in highway
or bridge traffic, it costs the moving company
around $200. And with 40 trucks trying
to get into Manhattan daily and contending
with the New York metro area’s deteriorating
infrastructure, the price of lost time runs up
quickly.
“Getting to and from a job site is not really
billable to a client,” says Anthony Parziale,
president of The Advance Group, based in the
suburb of Farmingdale.
Parziale’s company and other small and
mid-size businesses want the federal government
to follow through on a promise to rebuild
the nation’s infrastructure — not just roads and
bridges, but also extending broadband coverage
to rural areas where internet and cellphone
service is poor or nonexistent.
Improving and fixing the roads in New
York would help traffic flow faster even with
the area’s congestion, Parziale says. He wants
to see officials deal with New York’s ongoing
pothole problems; damage to his fleet from the
area’s pitted roads costs the company $65,000
each winter.
“It’s becoming more challenging to conduct
business,” he says.
The Trump administration and Democrats
in Congress last month publicly agreed that
the nation needs $2 trillion for infrastructure
upgrades. But quick action looks unlikely —
President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t negotiate
with Democrats while they are investigating
his administration. And a bill would
have to win support from both parties. The No.
2 Republican in the House, Steve Scalise of
Louisiana, has already said the $2 trillion figure
is too high.
In a January survey of 1,001 small business
owners and operators released by the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, 56% said the quality
of their high-speed internet was good, and 58%
said cellphone network coverage was good.
Those somewhat slim majorities reflect dissatisfaction
among a considerable portion of
owners.
Roads and bridges got lower marks: 62%
of the owners rated local roads and bridges as
having between very poor and average quality,
and 52% gave the same ratings to highways.
Owners in the Northeast gave the lowest marks
to infrastructure compared to ratings by owners
in other regions, but across the country owners
were most dissatisfied with highways.
All businesses must deal with the added expense
caused by poor infrastructure, but smaller
companies don’t have the revenue cushions
large businesses use to absorb the costs of lost
time and repairs.
At the 225 franchisees of AdvantaClean,
a company that cleans building air systems,
staffers spend about half their time traveling
from one appointment to another, and highway
and road problems cut into the amount of time
spent doing the real work, President Matt Phillips
says.
“Significant changes to our infrastructure
could reduce our expenses as much as 35 percent
and help increase revenue by 25 percent,”
Phillips says. It’s not just the time, but also fuel
wasted by slow-moving traffic that drives up
costs, he says.
Phillips’ crews have the most problems in
the Northeast, which has older, more dilapidated
infrastructure, and the Southeast, where
roads are crowded due to the region’s fast
growth.
In many areas, it’s not possible to build
entirely new highways. But roadways can be
widened in projects that can take years but ultimately
allow traffic to move faster. A 35-mile
stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike was widened
to six lanes in each direction from three; it
took five years to complete. When bridges are
replaced, lanes can be added; when the Governor
Mario M. Cuomo Bridge replaced the Tappan
Zee Bridge across the Hudson River north
Associated Press: JULIO CORTEZ
This April 17, 2019, file photo shows a general view of the construction site of the new Route
7 drawbridge in Kearny, N.J. Small businesses want the federal government to follow through
on promises of $2 trillion to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
of New York City, the new double span was
given eight traffic lanes, compared to seven on
the old bridge.
For many small businesses, including those
in rural areas or whose customers are located
far from metro areas, the infrastructure problem
is about broadband coverage needed to
move information across cellphones and the
internet.
Internet service is poor in the Catskill
Mountains 130 miles north of Manhattan. Lita
Wall, who owns Cold Spring Lodge, has Wi-Fi
through her cable provider for her guests and
also to run the business. But the internet service
is spotty because of the mountains, often
failing during poor weather, and cellphone service
is equally unreliable. The area, which has
many “dead zones” where there is no service,
needs more cellphone towers. Wall has a landline
phone for voice calls.
Wall also owns a restaurant in Manhattan’s
East Village neighborhood, but even in the
heavily populated city, she struggles with poor
internet connections.
“Sometimes it is down and we don’t notice
until later and so have issues with the customers
who send orders during the time the system
is down,” Wall says. At those times, she needs
to connect to the internet using her cellphone as
what’s known as a hotspot, an added expense
each month.
Even companies that have good service
can be forced to contend with their customers’
poor connections. John Royster owns a
design firm, Big Muddy Workshop, in Omaha,
Nebraska, located near military installations
whose presence guarantees excellent internet
and cellphone service in the area. But Royster
has clients in more rural areas, and their internet
systems, when they’re working, can’t accommodate
the large electronic documents and
files that architects routinely email.
One client, who lives on a ranch about
300 miles away, couldn’t receive large documents.
So Royster sent them to a print shop
40 miles from the ranch where they were
printed. The client had to drive two hours
round trip to get it.
“These delays in exchanging information
can easily add a week or two to a project. This
negatively impacts my bottom line and delays
progress for my clients,” Royster says. 8
Trucking image campaign leader calls for lawmakers to invest in better roads, bridges in U.S.
THE TRUCKER STAFF
WASHINGTON — Trucking Moves
America Forward (TMAF), the industrywide
education and image movement, has
advocated lawmakers to invest in better and
safer roads and bridges.
“With 3.5 million truck drivers on our
highways every day working to deliver
America’s goods, it’s imperative that we
have safe and modern roads,” said Kevin
Burch, co-chairman of TMAF and president
of Jet Express. “A strong infrastructure network
is critical to the success of the trucking
industry and all of America. Our lives,
businesses and economy depend on it. Our
leaders must address the nation’s infrastructure
gap and provide the proper funding to
#BuildforTomorrow because, as the industry’s
latest television commercial shows,
life won’t wait.”
To help promote a better infrastructure,
TMAF published an op-ed article in the publication
Morning Consult titled, “The Time
to #BuildForTomorrow is Now” speaking
to the importance of excellent roads and
bridges.
Morning Consult is a global technology
company revolutionizing ways to collect,
organize and share survey research data to
transform how decisions are made, according
to its website.
“Despite poor road conditions and the
traffic that results from it, 3.5 million professional
truck drivers travel America’s roads
every day,” Burch wrote. “Trucking professionals
travel over 462 billion miles each
year to make on-time deliveries to every corner
of America. That’s because more than 80
percent of American communities rely solely
on trucking for the delivery of their goods,
including the gas in our car, food in our
fridge, supplies in our office and medicine in
our cabinet.”
But, Burch noted, a faulty infrastructure
is threatening to slow down the trucking industry
as well as America as a whole.
“According to the American Society of
Civil Engineers, one of every five miles on
our highways is in poor condition. More than
one in eight bridges are considered functionally
obsolete, which means that they can’t
serve the current traffic demand. Congestion
and traffic, which result from poor and inadequate
infrastructure, are also problems. The
ASCE found that more than two in every five
miles on our interstates are congested, which
costs Americans $160 billion in wasted time
and fuel each year. In fact, the average commuter
wastes 42 hours a year in traffic, costing
us an average of $1,600 annually. Poor
roads and congestion also have a very personal
impact because life won’t wait when
it comes to missing out on important life
events.”
Throughout Infrastructure Week, TMAF
is sharing messages about how strong infrastructure
is critical to the success of the industry
on its other social media properties,
which include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
and LinkedIn.
In addition, TMAF provided social media
content for the industry to use throughout
Infrastructure Week, including shareable images,
in their monthly social media content
calendar, which is available to members of
the trucking industry. 8