Energy Musings - May 7, 2024
We just made our migration from Houston to our summer home in Rhode Island. We always report on our experiences and impressions of driving 1,800 miles from the Gulf Coast to New England.
One Of Our Worst Road Trips
Long-time readers of Energy Musings are familiar with our annual trips to and from our summer home in Rhode Island. We chronicle our experiences and impressions of what we see and encounter as a check on the health of the economy and our energy system. It is roughly a 1,800-mile drive. During the 25 years we have owned the house, we have made one or two round trips yearly. Unless we are planning a sightseeing detour, we usually do the drive in two days. Two long days!
As you can imagine, we have experienced many good and bad trips. This year’s may have been one of our worst. We judge the trip by the distance we cover on day one. A good trip from Houston has us reaching Knoxville, Tennessee for the night. A really good trip would see us getting to Bristol, Virginia, an additional 115 miles. On both trips, we would arrive at a reasonable hour even after gaining an hour from the Eastern time change. A poor trip has us only getting to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
How bad was this trip? We didn’t get beyond Alabama and the time change in Georgia. What happened? We encountered bad weather, several delays for accidents, and stretches when oversized loads took up both lanes and slowed traffic until space to pass became available. There is nothing you can do about the weather. Torrential rains, whiteouts, and tornado weather caused traffic to drive 20-30 miles an hour UNDER the speed limit. Nor can you do anything about accidents and oversized load delays.
As we settled in for the night, the plan shifted to a two-night, three-day trip. That changed the following morning as we were leaving the hotel. The big screen television in the lounge showed the damage to an overpass in Norwalk, Connecticut, which had I-95 shut down in both directions. The primary route from New York to New England was closed. That is our route. The media talked about traffic needing to seek alternative routes. We joked about all the commuters who would use the chaos as an excuse for a three-day weekend.
While Connecticut scrambled to tear down the overpass, haul away the debris, and grind and resurface the roadway, the message was: that work would be finished before the Monday morning rush. Besides encouraging people to find alternative routes, a key message was don’t travel here.
Our first thought was to use I-84, the northern route in Connecticut to Harford, and then head south to I-95 and on to Rhode Island. We thought about taking the Hutchison River Parkway from Westchester, New York which connects to the Merrit Parkway in Connecticut. That route takes you to Milford where there is a connection to I-95.
My idea was to push to complete the drive in one day. It would mean going through New Jersey and New York late at night and not getting to Rhode Island until early am on Saturday. This assumed we did not confront other traffic delays along the route. I figured there would be less traffic on the alternate routes late Friday night compared to late Saturday morning or early afternoon.
Fortunately, there were only a few scattered showers all day. Construction delays were minimal. There were no accidents on our side of the highway, just slight delays from rubberneckers looking at what happened on the other side. Lunch was a sandwich purchased at a Tennessee Buc-ee’s. Dinner was at a Cracker Barrel in West Virginia, which fortunately had plenty of staff, therefore, no waiting lines and fast service. The plan worked. We pulled into our Rhode Island driveway at 1:15 am Saturday, roughly 15 minutes ahead of my initial estimate.
The other factor that made this one of our worst trips was losing our portable refrigerator. We have used it for years to bring refrigerated items we would otherwise throw away when we left home. We usually bring milk and orange juice, allowing us to eat breakfast at home before heading for groceries. When we unloaded our car at the Fort Payne, Georgia hotel, we discovered the refrigerator’s cooling unit had failed. It was blowing hot, not cold air. The food needed to be discarded, meaning a breakfast stop on Saturday morning.
What did we see and learn on our trip? We encountered the heaviest traffic in recent memory, which goes back to before the pandemic. For example, the traffic on I-10 heading into Baton Rouge backed up for several miles before the Mississippi River bridge. We could not recall ever having it backed up so far.
Another area of heavier-than-normal traffic was in Mississippi. On I-59, between Picayune and Meridian, traffic has always been light. It is a relaxing stretch before the truck traffic begins building in northern Alabama. It was not relaxing on this trip. The heavier traffic started before Hattiesburg and continued to Connecticut. It wasn’t just truck traffic – it included cars, pickups, commercial vans, and oversized loads. Amazingly, the traffic moved at or above highway speeds.
However, the heavier traffic added to the challenge/stress of navigating the extensive road construction we encountered. Miles of new roads are being built. Along the Gulf Coast, the highway is being elevated in stretches – a yearslong process we have dealt with. Only this time, we dealt with it in torrential rain and watched work crews scattering for shelter.
We are not sure we have seen as much road construction in years. It had to be the federal infrastructure spending associated with COVID-19 finally reaching the construction stage. There were stretches where we would go for miles in narrowed lanes with concrete barriers on either side, or we detoured to the other side of the highway where we went single file and shared the road with traffic going in the opposite direction. Given the stages of construction, we are not optimistic that many of these projects will be completed by the time we head back to Houston.
Although truck traffic seemed similar to recent years, we noticed fewer trucks parked in rest areas from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. However, as dusk appeared, the number of trucks on the side of the road increased. Many began lining the onramps and offramps at highway exits and rest areas. Not surprisingly, we found numerous sections of the roads through New Jersey leading to the Gov. Mario Cuomo Bridge (formerly the Tappen Zee Bridge, named after the Tappen tribe that inhabited the area and the Dutch explorers who sailed up the Hudson River) had trucks parked for driver rest periods or overnight. We would not be surprised if many were planning to drive through the area congested by the bridge disaster in the middle of the night, hoping for less traffic.
Surprisingly, Tennessee did not have its truck parking information signs working as in past years. We wondered if that was a technical problem with the signs/information system or a decision that they were no longer useful.
Another issue we confronted was staffing problems at restaurants. We stopped at three Cracker Barrel restaurants on our trip – Lafayette, LA, Tuscaloosa, AL, and Martinsburg, WV. The first two had limited dining room space open. There were usually only one or two servers. It meant a wait for service and delivery of the food. When we asked our server or the person seating us if there were staffing issues, we only got shrugs or eye-rolls.
The staffing issue was further demonstrated at the Lafayette location. There was only one checkout person, and she was tied up scanning and wrapping the numerous gifts a family was buying.
A final experience was stopping at Buc-ee’s in Sevierville, TN. As we left Knoxville, we knew we would soon need gas. We spotted the familiar Buc-ee’s billboard announcing a location 35 miles ahead. When we reached the highway exit, we were shocked to see a row of gasoline pumps lining the hilltop ahead of us. There was even a new road up the hill called the Gateway. We could not get over the number of cars occupying the pumps and filling the parking lot. When we walked into the store, we were struck by its size. It was laid out like other Buc-ee’s we have visited.
We asked the checkout lady how long the store had been open. She responded nine months. Later we researched the store and found out it is the largest in the Buc-ee’s universe, but soon to be surpassed by the Luling, TX location. This Buc-ee’s has 120 pumps and 74,707 square feet of space. Luling will have 75,000 square feet and the one in Ocala, FL scheduled to open later in 2024 will have 80,000 square feet. Both new stores will have 120 gasoline pumps.
The staffing issue in the restaurant business is a problem for the economy’s growth. When we went out to dinner in Rhode Island at 5:30 pm Saturday, our favorite seafood spot had at least a 30-minute wait in the dining room and a 45-60-minute wait in the bar. We left and went to our favorite Italian restaurant in town, which fortunately had no wait for a table. Across the street is the town’s McDonald’s. It had a banner announcing it was hiring 14/15-year-olds. We asked our waitress about it and she said they have busboys that are 14/15, which means they are limited in the hours a week or how late at night they can work. That banner was another sign of the economic challenges facing fast food and restaurants. It means higher labor costs that translate into higher food bills.
Based on what we observed and encountered on our trip, the U.S. economy is percolating. Having experienced the highest traffic volumes in years, we are convinced the economy is ok. The Buc-ee’s visit also confirmed that view. It was packed with shoppers and travelers. The business is backed by serious investment and significant customer activity. The Buc-ee’s employs 350 workers. We suspect they are paid well. Our staffing observations suggest there are issues within the economy that may retard growth and keep inflation elevated. We will be monitoring these issues.