The sole cause of this “crisis” is a demented diktat from Gavin Newsom forbidding trucks more than three years old from loading at California ports. The logic behind this is unknown, but presumably has something to do with Gaia being angry.
Just another indicator that politicians have no bloody clue how things work.
That's three years of payments on a truck that costs between 150K and 200K (and up, depending on the setup) if an owner/operator can find one. Those payments are easily north of three thousand a month for a fraction of the truck's service life. Those trucks can go a million miles or more with maintenance and upkeep, but the decree keeps expenses up, because the penumbra of debt is eternal for the owner, and all at the high end. Then add in ridiculous fuel prices, and God only knows what other requirements from the State, and I'm simply amazed that anyone even hauls there.
Just bouncing around on the web, there are not a huge number of these trucks available, and for those that are, the dealers want you to call for a quote, so the price range I mention may well be low.
Unlike government, businesses have to run at a profit, or why bother?
But behind it all, it is a small wonder the Leftists fail. After teaching generations to have a short attention span and crave instantaneous gratification, the very mechanisms by which they had hoped to tear down Western Civilization become their enemies, too. Within sight of their evil goals, they lack the necessary patience to follow their formula of incrementalism through to the end, and instead try to make that home stretch run in a single jump. The increase in heat will snap most of the somnolent frogs in the bath out of their reverie and awaken them to the very real threat the Left presents to the way of life they'd barely noticed had changed, over generations.
We're Americans, the people who put "Oh, Hell no!" on the map. We are going to resist, and that resistance will reach a magnitude that even the mavens of ABCNNBCBS and the other Ministry of Truth media will not be able to conceal nor confine it, especially with the various means of getting the word out.
Repression will not succeed, it will only entrench the resolve to fight back, to rebel against the evil empire, no matter on whose shores the despot's heel lands.