Drug Cartel Delivery Trucking

Monster Semi-Truck

Being in the trucking business has got to be very exciting these days, well, exciting if you like turmoil and unexpected problems. Kind of like the ancient Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times'. You wouldn't expect that given that the trucking business is like the foundation of modern commerce. Every single cotton pickin' thing gets delivered by truck. Okay, except for air, water, natural gas and electricity. Those just appear by magic, everything else comes by truck.

If you ever try to ship anything you will find out how expensive it is, and it can be steep. I mailed a couple of  packages of drill bits that only weighed a couple of ounces and it cost me four bucks each. No wonder free shipping is so popular. We've got Amazon Prime and we use the heck out of it. If I need something, I dial it up on my computer and in a short while it shows up on my doorstep, often the next day, sometimes later the same day. It's almost freaky how well it works. Okay, it's freaky when it works, but it doesn't always work. Sometimes I order something and a week later I wake up and say, hey, where's the whatsit I ordered last week? And I find that next day delivery wasn't offered on that particular item and it's not going to be here for another week. So you need to keep your eyes peeled, your eye on the ball and your nose to the grindstone when flying your desk through cyber-space, Chucky.

Amazon may be destroying the American retail industry, but Walgreens and Costco have already got us well down that road. I dunno, maybe we do need a guaranteed basic income. Give a tax break to employers based on the number of employees they have. But that's a whole 'nuther can of worms. We'll leave that for another post.

Amazon Prime isn't free. I think it's like a hundred bucks a year now, but that's a pretty good deal considering it costs a hundred bucks to fill the gas tank these days. Driving used to cost about 50 cents a mile, but with the recent gas price increases, it's more like 75 cents per mile. If Amazon Prime saves me from making a trip to the store just once a month, it pays for itself.

And then there's Walgreens. They also offer free shipping on mail-order prescription drugs. I am on a permanent regimen of half a dozen drugs, so I need a constant supply of them. Walgreens reliably ships them out on a regular basis, except when they don't. A month ago I noticed I was low on Losartan, a pill that is supposed to help control high blood pressure, so I dialed up Walgreens website and placed an order.

Now the modern world sticks it's pointy little beak into my affairs. Losartan is no longer available, as least not from any of Walgreens suppliers. Call the doctor's office, talk to the nurse, she talks to the doc, the doc talks to me and a couple of days later, we've got a new script crawling its way to Phoenix over our mostly stable communications network.

Drug Delivery Tracking
In Reverse Order - Most Recent Event at Top

Eventually Walgreens  gets the new script, packages it up and hands it off to DHL (the German version of UPS (United Parcel Service)) who takes a week to get it to Seattle where it is going to be handed off to the USPS (United States Post Office). So maybe it will get here this week.

Obviously things are not going as smoothly as you or I or Walgreens or DHL could want. Seems I've been hearing conflicting news about the trucking industry this year. Seems like earlier some people were complaining that there was a terrible shortage of trucks or drivers or something, and now some people are complaining that high fuel prices are impacting the shipping business and we have a bunch of trucks and drivers sitting idle. So there you have it, exciting times in the trucking industry.

P.S. Walgreens used to offer automatic reordering for permanent prescriptions, but that stopped recently, possibly because I turned 70 years old or possibly because of a rule-change with Medicare. No point in shipping drugs to a dead man. If you are still alive and still need these drugs, you need to tell us.

P.P.S. Could it be that the War On Drugs is being fought between the North American and South American drug cartels? Which one should be given a bigger tax break based on the number of employees? Which one sells more drugs? Which one has more customers?