First off, my hat’s off to the truck drivers in the US. They put up with a lot of nonsense ranging from uneven law enforcement to drivers of little cars who cut them off, to soaring fuel prices (diesel fuel is now well over $5.00/gallon) and so on.

On my walk form the office to the bus stop, I pass a warehouse. Yesterday, as I was making this walk, I watched an 18-wheeler pulling into one of the loading docks. It looks to be a long, painful process, involving much back and forth, and minor realignments, and probably wastes a lot of that very expensive fuel. I started to think about how this could be improved.

Freight trains, on the other hand load and unload from the side. Buses load and unload from the side. I’ve noticed that some truck trailers have a side-door to them, so I am left to wonder why we aren’t using them more? I grant that you wouldn’t be able to pull as many trucks up to a building (the mechanics would be similar to those of pulling cars up to a gas pump), but you would be able to get the truck lined up and ready to unload a lot faster, possibly making up the difference.

The other option is to ditch the tractor-trailer design altogether and use only straight-jobs (6-wheelers or 10-wheelers). This has its own set of problems, but one of the problems that goes away is that these are far easier to back into a loading dock, hence less time and fuel is wasted in the effort.

I’m sure there is an answer out there somewhere.