Dot This

“So catch me up,” I asked my friend Clutch Crankshaft as I slid into our favorite booth at the Greasy Wheel Truck Stop. We get together for lunch about once a month, whenever Clutch is passing through. Caught in the vortex of fuel-price protests and our Top 100 issue, I was feeling out of touch. How’s the truck running? Any good obnoxious-driver-recruiter stories? Did that cab noise work itself out? Whatever happened with that Wal-Mart consignee?

As Georgette topped up our coffee mugs, Clutch settled uncomfortably into the hard plastic seat. “I’m going to have to sell the truck,” he said, lowering his eyes. “I’m seeing dots everywhere.”

Spots?

“Dots, Steve. As in dot-com’s,” Clutch grumbled. “Everywhere I turn, somebody wants to sell me something on the Internet. Truck parts, backhauls, new trucks, used trucks, driving jobs. I’m dot-com’d out. I don’t have time to check out all the sites I hear about, and half the ones I do see aren’t even up and running yet. Probably waiting for the venture capital firms to pony up some dough.”

Competing in the dot-com world is all about creating hype, building excitement, and becoming the talk of the town, I said. “You’re caught up the buzz,” I told him.

“Buzz, bah,” Clutch said, leaning back to give space to the Western omelet and hash browns being set down in front of him. “What’s buzz? Buzz is noise, Steve. It’s about getting investors excited, about boosting stock prices. If there’s a dot-com in your company’s name, people want to get in on it. I’m not so sure I do.”

I reminded Clutch that he’s well-placed. He’s a cog in the great logistics machine that’s going to help fulfill the enormous promise of buying and selling things on the Web. “Someone has to warehouse and deliver the stuff people are ordering online,” I said. ” ‘If you bought it, a truck brought it’ applies to Web transactions, too, whether you’re buying a book or a printing press. As a trucker, you’re part of that supply chain. You’re in good shape.”

“Right,” he said. “A few months ago, I bought a fly rod from L.L. Bean over the Web,” he said. “You know what they offered as an incentive? Free shipping. How confident do you think that makes me feel?”

Clutch stubbornly chased a cube of ham around his plate.

“What worries me more is the potential to be left out of the loop,” he explained. “Speaking of Wal-Mart, I saw an article in the New York Times about how Wal-Mart increased sales last year by something like 12%, while their inventories rose only 4%. Those guys have chopped $1.5 billion from their inventory costs in each of the past two years. They did it through more efficient electronic supply chain management. I’ve gotta ask myself, Is the company I’m leased to a link in that kind of chain with its own customers?”

Staring out the window into the sun of a postcard-perfect afternoon, Clutch took a long sip of coffee and a contemplative look came across his face. “Right now, these dot-com guys find a technology, see what it does, and take it to the market. I hope they put on the binders one day and start looking at what the market wants. Today, online auctions are all the rage. Great. But I want to know how, when someone hits the ‘ship now’ button after they’ve bid on that used conveyor belt, Schneider Logistics or whoever is brokering the transportation will know how to find me.”

How ’bout www.clutchcrankshaft.com?, I offered.

“Hmm,” he said, his eyes round as saucers. “There’s an idea… D’ya think that Web address is taken?”

——

THE DIRTY WORD IN OTTAWA

The whispers persisted for months: the 2000 federal budget would include cash to rehab Canada’s national highway system. Not the 10-year, $17.4 billion investment a recent study says is needed to patch up the 25,000-kilometre network. But we could at least expect Ottawa to use more of the $4.5 billion a year it collects in fuel taxes to fill a few more potholes.

Instead, the feds will spend about $750 million a year on infrastructure over the next six years (that “whoosh” you hear is the sound of Canada’s truck lobby deflating). Most of the money will be dedicated to municipal infrastructure projects-sewers and the like.

Sorry-“dedicated” is a dirty word when you’re talking about taxes in Canada. About eight years ago, a federal-provincial committee proposed that Ottawa earmark two cents a litre of fuel taxes to highway improvements. Eighty percent of this trust fund would be available to provinces based on how much fuel is consumed in each jurisdiction. The remaining 20% would be available on an ad hoc basis after the 80% allocation was spent. The plan would have raised about $1 billion a year for highways. But bureaucrats shot down the idea, saying dedicated taxes limit their fiscal manoeuvring room.

Can there be a better reason to support a dedicated tax?