Elon Musk, Tesla Deliver First Electric Semi-Trucks To Nevada PepsiCo

On December 1st, 2022, history was made when Tesla delivered its first electric semi-trucks to a PepsiCo factory in our great state of Nevada!

Tesla formally delivered three electric Tesla Semis to the factory near Reno, Nevada, and the event drew a large crowd. According to Fox 5, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Elon Musk, drove one of the Tesla Semis inside the factory. One was white, one was painted with a Pepsi logo, and another with Frito-Lay colors. The delivery was livestreamed on Twitter, which Elon Musk now owns.

Tesla Semis are said to be able to travel up to 500 miles on a single charge and can go from 0 to 60 mph in just five seconds. That’s pretty impressive considering the average semi-truck can weigh up to 80,000 pounds when fully loaded. The fact that these trucks are electric also means that they are much quieter than their diesel counterparts, which is good news for both drivers and residents living near highways.

Of course, the biggest selling point of these trucks is that they are far better for the environment than traditional diesel trucks. The trucking industry is vital to business and society, and with so many trucks consistently en route from one destination to another, the economic footprint of these 18-wheelers is vast. Semi-trucks are responsible for a huge amount of pollution, so anything we can do to reduce their emissions is a step in the right direction. With any luck, these Tesla Semis will help pave the way for a cleaner and greener future for all of us!

The delivery of these first three electric Tesla Semis definitely marks a major historic milestone - not only for Tesla, but for the state of Nevada and the country as a whole. It’s great to see companies like Tesla leading the way when it comes to innovation and environmental responsibility. Here’s hoping that the Tesla Semis are just the beginning of a new era of electric vehicles that will help make our world a better place for generations to come. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a trend, and we will start to see more and more electric semis taking over the roads within the next few years!

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If you've walked into a store in the last couple of years and found empty shelves, you've experienced the perfect storm of a supply chain crisis and years-long shortage of American truck drivers.

The American Trucking Association (ATA) estimates roughly 72% of American freight is transported by trucks, and further posits that the U.S. is short more than 80,000 truck drivers. Experts have gone on the record to dispute such high estimates, but there's generally agreement on how dependent American consumers are on the trucking industry for the delivery of goods.

To learn more about the industry, Stacker put together a timeline of the history of trucking in America. It’s a long and winding road complete with stunning innovations, larger-than-life personalities, bloody conflicts, shipments delivered, and deadlines met.

The supply chain disruptions we've been hearing about since early in the pandemic continue into 2022 as the Canadian government is scheduled to enforce a vaccine mandate beginning Jan. 15 for truck drivers crossing the border. This would apply to all federally regulated trucking operations. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has required truck drivers working for companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated or partake in weekly testing. The Supreme Court on Jan. 7 listened to arguments related to overturning two Biden Administration policies meant to raise coronavirus vaccination rates.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates that anywhere from 12,000 to 16,000 border-crossing truck drivers could be lost if the border-crossing vaccine requirement goes into effect. More than two-thirds of goods traded between Canada and the U.S. are transported via roads and highways. The ATA is one of several groups seeking to appeal Biden's mandate. The ATA argues that though they encourage vaccination for members in the trucking industry, there's concerns regarding the impact of the federal mandate such as intensifying driver turnover and further creating supply chain disruption.

Keep reading to learn about the evolution of the industry that’s responsible for delivering 70% of everything you eat, drink, wear, and own.

Inventor Gottlieb Daimler in 1896 converted a horse-drawn cart to be fitted with Phoenix, which was the name he gave to a rear-mounted, four-horsepower, two-cylinder engine he’d designed from a modified passenger car engine. It was the world’s first truck: an automated version of the carts pulled by horse or donkey for millennia. Four years later in 1900, Jack and Gus Mack of Brooklyn, N.Y., founded the company that would become Mack Trucks, which would become the standard-bearer of the modern trucking industry.

Truck drivers at the turn of the 20th century worked 12- to 18-hour days, often seven days a week, for $2 a day in dangerous conditions with no protection or job security. They were also liable for any lost or damaged merchandise. In 1901, 1,700 frustrated and fed-up drivers formed the Team Drivers International Union (TDIU) to organize for better wages and working conditions, but a year later, a breakaway group formed the Teamsters National Union. They soon realized they were stronger together and in 1903 merged once again to form the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the most powerful trucking union in history.

The Teamsters in 1905 joined virtually every union in Chicago in striking against the unfair labor practices of the Montgomery Ward department store. The walkouts and strikes—called interchangeably the Teamsters' strike, the Montgomery Ward Strike, and the Chicago Teamsters' strike—soon involved thousands of workers and affected the entire city. The moment put the power of union solidarity on display and revealed the forces union workers were up against when challenging the established power structure.

The strikes were also a sign of more bloody battles to come. With the backing of powerful business interests, police engaged in a brutal and bloody campaign of violence against the workers, leaving 21 dead and hundreds injured when the strike was finally broken after more than 100 days.

The Teamsters in 1907 elected Dan Tobin as the union's general president. Tobin, in his early 30s at the time, was an Irish immigrant and self-educated man who was known as a tough, controversial, and visionary leader. He would serve as president of the IBT for an unprecedented 45 years until 1952, growing the organization from fewer than 40,000 members to more than 1.2 million. Tobin was eventually widely understood to be one of the most powerful men in America and is revered as the godfather of the Teamsters.

In 1912, a five-man crew of Teamster drivers from the Charles W. Young Company of Philadelphia departed with three tons of Parrot brand olive oil soap bound for Petaluma, Calif. With virtually no maintained roads and a complete absence of creature comforts, the crew arrived at City Hall in San Francisco in a record 91 days. As the first transcontinental delivery, the dangerous journey captivated the nation and started a new chapter in the story of American industry. The era of over-the-road trucking had begun.

Otto Neumann and August Fruehauf in 1914 invented the semi-trailer. A year later in 1915, Hermann Farr and Martin Rocking unveiled the fifth wheel, a coupling device that made it possible to quickly and safely hitch and unhitch semis to trailers. The modern tractor-trailer was born.Fruehauf in 1918 established the Fruehauf Trailer Company in Detroit. That business, which acquired more than 1,000 patents, exploded into a global powerhouse with 16 plants 80 distributorships in the U.S., as well as locations throughout the world. 

Fractures within the family-run corporation resulted in various legal suits. By 1964 the company was out of Fruehauf family hands; further proxy battles in the 1980s eventually led to a 1997 filing for bankruptcy proteciton. Wabash National acquired what was left of the company in 1997.

The state of Maine in 1918 enacted a law prohibiting any truck weighing more than 18,000 pounds to travel its roads. Weight limits would quickly become the norm and long lines of tractor-trailers queued at roadside weigh stations would soon become a common sight. Seven decades later, in the 1980s, the first weigh station bypass systems emerged to replace the inefficient scale system.

Although pneumatic air-filled tires had emerged years before, most trucks were still riding on solid rubber tires during the second decade of the 20th century. By 1920, however, most trucks had been fitted with air-filled tires. The innovation allowed for much greater speeds and far smoother rides, but the moment signaled the arrival of a headache familiar to every trucker who has come since: flat tires.

The American Highway Freight Association and the Federation Trucking Associations of America merged in 1933 to form the American Trucking Associations (ATA). The ATA is the nation’s largest trucking industry trade association and includes affiliated trucking associations from all 50 states.

Trouble had been brewing for a long time in the major Midwest shipping hub of Minneapolis before the Teamsters declared a general strike on May 16, 1934. The city’s fiercely anti-union administration cracked down hard, massive street brawls between workers and so-called scab replacement drivers ensued, and on July 20—known as Bloody Friday—police fired indiscriminately into crowds of striking truckers. The National Guard was deployed and the strike finally ended, but the city bowed to most of the Teamster’s demands and the moment was the catalyst for the industrial unionism movement of the 1930s.

Agricultural trucking took a great leap forward in 1938 when Minnesota trucking executive Harry Werner got bad news from a phone call at the country club where he was playing golf. Werner had lost today’s equivalent of $80,000 when a truck carrying raw chicken broke down, leaving the meat to fester in the hot sun.

Mechanically cooled warehouses had been in use for more than half a century by 1938, but truckers were still packing cold shipments in ice. Doing so forced drivers to make frequent, expensive, and time-consuming stops to re-ice on long journeys. When delays like breakdowns occurred, the cargo was lost.

Werner invented the refrigerated truck, which transformed the regional, seasonal agricultural shipping business into the modern, any-food-anywhere-at-any-time supermarket culture of today.

When America entered World War II, Teamsters became the driving force in America’s military campaign—literally. While even the highly mechanized German war machine was still relying heavily on horse-drawn carts, American troops and supplies were ferried across Europe and beyond by highly skilled, highly experienced Teamsters—125,000 of whom were enlisted in all branches by 1942.

The difficult, dangerous, and often deadly work of combat trucking—high-speed, no-headlight night runs under heavy fire on mined roads—often fell to segregated African-American units, most notably the famous Red Ball Express.

The economic boom that followed World War II launched American trucking into the modern era as Americans began spending their newfound wealth on luxury goods that had been rationed during wartime. The trucking industry skyrocketed thanks to innovations like the powerful diesel engine, the refrigerated truck container, and a maze of new roads: The country went from 521,000 paved miles in 1925 to 1.72 million in 1945. In the post-war era, trucks surpassed trains as the primary conveyor of goods and products for the first time since the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869.

Citizens Radio Corporation owner and walkie-talkie inventor Al Gross in 1945 invented the Citizen Band, or CB, radio. The two-way communication device launched generations of amateur ham radio hobbyists—but for the trucking industry, the moment was a revolution. By the 1970s, virtually every trucker in America had a CB, which they used to inform each other about police activity, to give directions, to ask about nearby gas stations and weigh stations, and just to network, chat, and pass the long, lonely hours that are intrinsic to the occupation.

During the post-war boom, small roadside pull-offs began beckoning weary truckers with the promise of diesel fuel, which was rarely offered at traditional filling stations, and a few minutes to rest and stretch their legs. These new truck stops, which soon began offering snacks, coffee, and other comforts, would quickly become a defining characteristic of trucking culture. In 1972, Truckstops of America (TravelCenters of America) became the first truck stop chain. Truck stops today are massive service centers with restaurants, shower facilities, movie theaters, salons, and even casinos and amusement rides.

By 1951, what had started as a small, fledgling group of disgruntled and powerless truckers had grown into a million-member-strong heavyweight force in American politics, industry, and labor. The union now had seven-figure dues-paying membership rolls. Remarkably, the entire journey had taken place under the stewardship of one man—IBT founding father Dan Tobin (pictured here), who retired the following year.

Country star Terry Fell recorded “Truck Drivin’ Man,” a tribute to the triumphs, hardships, work ethic, and free spirit that defined the American trucker, on Feb. 17, 1954. The song caught fire and enshrined the trucker as an icon of American culture. “Truck Drivin’ Man” would later be covered by the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Willie Nelson, Conway Twitty, Charlie Walker, the J. Geils Band, and New Riders of the Purple Sage.

Twentieth-century Teamsters history can be divided into two parts: the era of Dan Tobin, and the era of Jimmy Hoffa. When James Riddle Hoffa was elected president of the IBT in 1957, the hardscrabble and aggressive union boss cemented his power, destroyed his rivals, got in bed with the mafia, took on Bobby Kennedy, served time in prison, and became both a revered blue-collar hero and a despised labor-racket criminal all at once. The July 30, 1975, disappearance of the most famous, most controversial, and most powerful boss ever to preside over the union remains one of the greatest mysteries in American folklore.

From the organization’s earliest days, the Teamsters were among the most inclusive labor organizations in America—out of pure necessity, if nothing else. Unlike other unions, which often advocated for white workers first, African Americans and other minorities were welcomed into the IBT ranks and women played prominent roles long before they had an equal say even in their households—as early as 1917, the Teamsters made public calls for equal rights and equal pay. When the modern civil rights movement began in the mid-1950s, the Teamsters provided money, organizers, vehicles, and their all-important political clout to the movement. Many of the famous Freedom Rides took place on Teamster buses driven by Teamster union members—murdered civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was the wife of a Teamster business agent.

The fear of having to mobilize for a nuclear attack compelled Congress to create—and President Eisenhower to sign—the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. The bill authorized tens of billions of dollars to build 40,000 miles of interstate highways in what was the largest public works project in American history. The result was a continental network of well-paved, well-maintained highways that enabled anyone—on four wheels or 18—to travel between any two points in the country without encountering a muddy dirt road.

The Volvo brand is synonymous with safety, and the genesis of that branding can be traced to 1959 when Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point seat belt: one of the most important and consequential safety innovations in the history of the world. The device, which was so important that Volvo opened the patent so all automakers could use it, has saved more than 1 million lives, many of them truckers. Even still, a 2015 report from the CDC found that hundreds of truckers die every year in fatal collisions because they didn’t buckle up. One in three annual trucker fatalities can be prevented with the simple device Nils Bohlin invented 60 years ago.

In 1964, the force of nature that was Jimmy Hoffa (pictured here) willed into reality something that had long been deemed impossible. That year, decades of IBT sacrifice and struggle came to fruition with the passing of the Master Freight Agreement, which extended to “non-craft” laborers like truckers the basic benefits and protections that had long been enjoyed by other blue-collar workers. Nearly half a million truckers marched into the middle class.

Although maximum-speed laws date back to animal-drawn wagons in 1650s New Amsterdam (now New York), speed limits had always been inconsistent, arbitrary, and sometimes non-existent from state to state and county to county. That all changed in 1974 when President Richard Nixon signed a bill that mandated a national 55 mph speed limit across all 50 states. The move was designed as a fuel-saving measure in the wake of an oil embargo, but it also helped auto fatalities to drop from 4.28 per million miles traveled in 1972 to 2.73 in 1983.

In 1995, Congress repealed the law and handed speed limits back to the states.

At the end of October 2016, a truck hauled 2,000 cases of Budweiser 120 miles from Fort Collins, Col., to Colorado Springs. It was the kind of delivery that countless truckers had made countless times before. But this time, there was no driver. In partnership with Anheuser-Busch, a start-up called Otto launched one of its new self-driving trucks on a successful mission that the company claims is a window into a future without truck drivers.

In July 2019, Bloomberg reported on a massive trucker shortage that had been brewing for several years. The driver deficit had grown from 10,000 to a whopping 60,800 in just one year ending in 2018, and it’s expected to grow to 160,000 unfilled driver positions in the coming decade as the aging driver pool retires. Today’s average over-the-road trucker is 46.

Although companies have been recruiting heavily and offering higher salaries and better benefits, the lifestyle—characterized by weeks on the road, poor diet, little exercise, and isolation—is becoming a harder sell in the modern age. Otto might have arrived just in time.

As Twitter CEO, Elon Musk is giving his employees an ultimatum: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and leave.

The directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, according to The Verge. Twitter is currently planning to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe to the higher charge or lose their blue verified checkmark. Additionally, employees who are working on the project were told on Sunday (October 30) that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired.

Leading up to his acquisition of the social site, Musk has been clear that he wanted to revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots. On Sunday (October 30), he tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now” in a response to one user asking about help with verification.

So far, “Chief Twit” Musk has fired at least four top Twitter executives as his first order of business (CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust, and safety, Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett). He has brought in Tesla engineers as advisors and is planning mass layoffs aimed at middle managers and engineers who haven’t recently contributed to the code base. Those cuts are expected to begin this week with managers creating lists of employees to cut.

The Twitter Blue subscription was launched about a year ago as a way to view ad-free articles from some publishers and make other tweaks to the app, such as a different color home screen icon. Advertising remained the vast majority of its revenue and with this plan, Musk seems keen on growing subscriptions to become half of the company’s overall revenue.

Jason Calacanis (one of Musk's top advisors) ran a poll on Twitter Monday asking, "How much would you pay to be verified & get a blue check mark on Twitter?" A majority of the results (81.4% as of Monday) opted that they would not pay to be verified on the social site.

Musk replied to the poll, "Interesting."

See what other verified users had to say below:

Elon Musk struck a deal on Monday to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion, according to The New York Times. Twitter agreed to sell itself to Mr. Musk for $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the company’s share price this month before he revealed he was the firm’s single largest shareholder. Musk has said that he plans to take the company private.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement. He said he wanted “to make Twitter better than ever.”

Before the deal was closed, Musk tweeted, "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means." It's noteworthy that Musk has a history of trying to shut down, silence or punish anyone who goes public with criticism of a his projects or practices (Fortune has a lengthy report on that). Musk has also blocked people on Twitter, including 19-year old Jack Sweeny, who created a Twitter bot that tracks Musk’s Gulfstream private jet and posts real-time updates of its location from publicly available data.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1518623997054918657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1518623997054918657%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxbusiness.com%2Ftechnology%2Felon-musk-takes-to-twitter-to-explain-what-free-speech-means

Check out how some Twitter users are responding.

Anyone who has ever flown during the holidays knows that it can be a special kind of hell.

If you're reading this, chances are you're about to embark on a holiday travel adventure. And if you're anything like me, that means hours spent in airports and even more time cramped in an airplane seat. From dealing with packed airports to spending hours crammed into a tiny seat, holiday travel is not for the faint of heart. And while I can't promise that flying during the holidays will ever be fun, I can at least offer a little bit of advice for what NOT to do on your voyage this year.

Thanks to The Daily Record, we now have a list of the 5 biggest holiday travel annoyances. The Daily Record asked their readers to list their top travel pet peeves, and their readers certainly hit the nail on the head. These were not one-time travelers. Nay, nay. These people have seen some stuff. Experienced some junk. These people knew what they were talking about.

Ugh. Don't get me wrong, I love to travel. I even love flying... so long as the conditions are bearable. Traveling amongst inconsiderate folk... I could live without. It can create a travel experience that is uncomfortable, stressful, and just downright annoying. Please. I beg of thee. Be aware of your surroundings and those you're sharing a space with. Traveling is tough. Don't make the experience even more challenging for everyone.

So whether you're already in the thick of holiday travel for Thanksgiving this week, or just starting to get mentally prepared for your travels over the next couple of months, read on for a little bit of comic relief (and, more importantly, a little bit of wisdom). Don't be one of these travelers. Please.

This. I mentally cannot handle this. And I can't figure it out. Do these people just not pay enough attention to know they aren't supposed to be unbuckled, or do they just think they're the single exception to the rules? Like... Excuse me? Where do you think you're going? We're on an aircraft... And you're in a rush to go WHERE?! Sit down. GAH.

When I ride as a passenger on planes, I make a conscious effort to give those seated on my side(s) the majority of the armrest. Because how awful is it to not be able to rest your arms for the entire duration of a flight? Pretty miserable. But others are not that mindful. And it's annoying. And I really can't stand it.

I just have one question... WHO ARE YOU YELLING AT? They can hear you. And so can everyone at the gate/on the plane. Please. Be respectful of everyone you're sharing the space with. We don't want to hear your conversation.

I'm not sure what exactly is MOST annoying about this one - the fact that you can't move a muscle when the person in front of you does this, or the fact that they are that unaware and inconsiderate of the possibility of a passenger behind them. Please don't be this traveler just so you can lay back 180 degrees and snooze the flight away. By all means, recline your chair slightly. But please don't ruin another traveler's experience. We're all in this travel game together this holiday season.

Having your back kicked repeatedly on a four hour flight? Yeah... Nothing will make you consider searching for a parachute on that plane faster than repetitive kicks to the lumbar. So miserable, and lowkey PAINFUL! To all travelers - please keep your feet off of the back of the seats!

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Listen to Sammi Reeves weekday afternoons from 3-7 on 102.7 VGS