Pain at the pump

Like so many other things-- good and otherwise-- occurring anew in modern-day America, it's happening first in the Golden State. Four-buck-a-gallon gasoline, that's what.

Now, hold on, I know the rocketing cost of fuel is having a far bigger impact on truckers.

No matter how many times good scouts in the "mainstream" media, not to mention trucking advocates, point out the suffering of truckers and how the ridiculously high cost of diesel is boosting the prices all Americans pay for consumer goods, nothing will grab the attention of the Average Joe and Jane like forking over a C-Note every time they've gotta gas up their own four wheels. If that happens enough, may be more voters will vote this Fall and may be more voters will think long and hard about who they will vote for-- this Fall and for a long, long time to come. One can hope, anyway.

This and a buck-eighty-five will get a four-wheeler filled up... and buy a cup of coffee.

We pause here for a tip 'o the editorial eyeshade to one of those good-scout mainstream journos-- NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.

I don't catch him every night but it seems every time lately that he has started off a broadcast on the high cost of fuel he has done so by referencing right off the bat how hard-hit truckers are and then reiterates how what they are paying for diesel impacts all of us at the grocery and every other store.

I have heard Mr. Williams described pretty much as a self-made and self-effacing regular guy out of New Jersey. The Garden State is a trucking state for sure, so may be that explains it. Or may be he drove a truck once upon a time or has some truckers in his family tree.

Whatever the provenance of his informed view of trucking, it pleases me no end that at least one member of the much maligned Fourth Estate-- outside the Trucking Press Corps, that is-- cannot be accused of exercising an automatic bias against trucking.

NBC's Brian Williams: He's not all wet about trucking.