2023 was an excellent year for me and any pilot car driver I know. Two chip-making factories, one in Phoenix (Chandler) and one near Albuquerque, contributed to this boom. We also had several wind energy projects in ND, IA, WY, OK, TX (3 farms), OK (2 farms), and two off-shore projects in NY.
These projects sucked up a lot of pilot cars which in turn drove prices up in the general oversize space (transformers, construction equipment, oversize farming equipment, oversize control centers, ACs, and more).
These projects caused increased business for oversized loads and pilot cars. Let’s look at the cause of this increase more closely.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TMSC) built one Phoenix plant, which is currently still under construction. TMSC plans to build three in total, and its objective is to be done by 2025. TMSC’s investment in the plants will be 39 Billion.
Samsung in Taylor, Texas, is also getting six billion-plus from the government to expand its facilities. They intend to build 4 more plants in Taylor in 2024, bringing Samsung’s investment to 17 Billion.
Another company in the race is Texas Instruments in Dallas. However, the biggest mover in the US right now is Intel. They plan on building four plants (two in Arizona and two in Ohio), and their investment will be 40 Billion. Intel broke ground in Candler, AZ, on two plants in September 2021, and 2023 was the year we moved most of the oversize equipment in.
Overall, the US Government will invest 39 billion in various chip-making plants around the US.
These mega factories are, in fact, foundries and are known to be gigantic energy guzzlers.
It is out of the question to get them powered by wind turbines or solar panels. The US will need these foundries, and my uneducated guess tells me that this is the end of the progressives’ climate-wet dream. But more on that below.
As a note, the Americans invented this entire chip-making technology, and they used to be the #1 chip maker in the world. Gradually, this business went overseas. Despite the loss in the manufacturing base, the actual designing of these chips is still done in the US.
However, a recent earthquake in Taiwan freaked out TMSC. This earthquake, combined with the generous investments and loans from the US Government, is luring them to the US.
Additionally, the US government had a freakout moment during the last pandemic, too, which caused a sudden chip shortage due to government shutdowns, thus endangering military readiness and capabilities, not to mention crashing the entire automobile industry, something they are still struggling with to this day.
Another trend is coming at us at high speed: the development and general (public) use of AI = Artificial Intelligence. To make AI a reality, gigantic data centers are needed. We all have seen the push by Amazon, the CIA, Google, Facebook, and many other government institutions to build data centers near Arlington, VA, in the last three years. This evolution sucked up a lot of pilot cars. In the 2nd half of 2023, it simmered out somewhat, but now it will come back with a vengeance, per my estimate, because they will need these AI data centers, which require lots of energy. So, here we go again — we’ll be hauling cranes, transformers, ACs, control centers, and much more!
And what else do these AI Data Centers need? Chips.
In summary, we will experience an energy crunch and need a lot of electricity in the future. So far, the trend has been to cut back on energy, but this will not work. Somebody must have had a spiritual resurgence and saw the light, or shall we say, the electricity, that was needed in the coming years.
This is why I wager the windmills and solar panels are dead. Of course, this is not going to be buried from one day to the other, but the dying has started, and I am not crying.
There is one windmill project right now in Wyoming, which started in 2022. There is also one in Alberta, Canada, which gets the windmills from Santa Teresa, NM. Are there any others?
So, where is all the energy going to come from to power all the above goodies? Nuclear.
Lot’s of progress has been made to design smaller, cheaper, and safer nuclear reactors, and they even have worked out a way to reduce waste by recycling the wasted uranium (they simply burn it again) to reduce the fuel cells in storage.
Are they going to need pilot cars to build nuclear reactors? Yes. Again, huge relay stations have to be built with transformers, construction equipment is needed, and the infrastructure will have to be modernized, including cranes, power towers, and whatnot.
The above new trends will easily compensate for the lack of wind projects.
What are the downsides? Only a few. One is the Baltimore bridge disaster. One of the three top items coming into the US via the Baltimore harbor is oversize equipment from overseas. This is mainly oversize farming equipment and construction equipment (bulldozers, cranes, etc.).
This equipment will be rerouted to Norfolk. Other harbors (New York, Savanah, and probably a few more) will take up the slack. Rerouting ship traffic and getting a port to take on more business is a challenging task. These types of operations are vast and complex to change.
I have seen no loads coming out of Baltimore, and I have seen no increase in traffic in other ports. The ships that were on the way to Baltimore were routed to the other East Coast ports, but as of a few days ago, they were still waiting at sea because the ports were not yet ready for them. It’s a sorry state of affairs, and per my estimate, it will only get better in the second half of the year.
In the meantime, the rest of the oversize load industry is humming along. It may seem a bit slow right now, but this is only temporary. The future looks bright.
