Big wtf here. The drivers of these trucks allege that they are being given utterly pointless missions that end up costing American taxpayers big time. Haliburton (oh, I’m sorry, a subsidiary of a subsidiary of it-all-ends-up-in-the-pockets-of-Bush-allies-no-matter-what-we-pretend) claims that the extra empty trucks were needed to provide more security (what, instead of, like, hiring more armed security, which at least would make some sense and not endanger unarmed drivers)? No, wait, they were to have containers where they needed to be (the drivers object that many of them drove with empty payloads back and forth). No wait, maybe no one will notice so who cares thinking up excuses anyway.
Even if there were some legitimacy to the reasons for driving completely empty trucks back and forth, you’d think this is something that would be admitted to and explained as a strategy. Instead, it was kept hush hush until the drivers themselves exposed it, leaving the company to come up with reasons after the fact. And whatever the reasons, the bottom line is that they ended up with a big fat wad of cash for choosing THIS particular strategy over other options.
Having worked in the transportation field for years, I can tell you that this sounds suspiciously like a tempest in a teapot.
The term for running empty loads is “deadheading”; here in Seattle, we do it literally every day. Full railcars coming north from Californica are returned empty as a matter of course. We are a consumption region of the country, rather than a producer, FYI.
In short: empty flatbeds, reefers, railcars, etc., have to be returned to point of origin one way or t’other.
One slight correction: empties do not actually have to be returned to point of origin: there isn’t necessarily such. However, when a high producer such as California runs short of transportation equipment, said equipment is deadheaded to them. As as I already noted, we send lots and lots of empties to California every day.
While there has been some growing suspicion that my nation’s involvement in Iraq has been inspired by intelligence insulting action cinema, this is not a reassuring analysis. If some time during the course of the President’s talk at the Army War College (there’s a complacent audience it there ever was one) the phrase “Make my day, Punk,” it will confirm all those suspicions.