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Governor declares emergency ... for lack of trucks 
Huge wheat crop demands 86,000 18-wheelers to reach market

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has declared a disaster emergency, suspending some state regulations for the trucking industry, so that producers of wheat will be able to get their crops to market.

According to a report in the Denver Post, Tim Larsen of the state agriculture department estimates that about 86,000 18-wheelers and 22,000 rail cars are needed in the coming weeks to move the crop.

"Storage facilities are full because this year's crop is 119 percent bigger than last year's and one of the best in 10 years, thanks to back-to-back blizzards in December and January," said Larsen.

Ritter's order came because farmers harvested a "blockbuster" crop estimated at 87 million bushels, but there are not enough correctly registered commercial trucks available.

So a 45-day suspension of a number of ordinary rules was announced.

"Thank goodness they've done this," Wiley grain merchant Kelly Spitzer told the newspaper. "We've got 1.8 million bushels of wheat out on the ground and can't find enough freight to get it moved."

At a site in Kiowa County, there's a pile of wheat 20 feet high, 100 feet wide and 300 feet long – estimated at 400,000 bushels.

State officials said the last six years – largely drought in Colorado – meant that many truckers serving about 9,000 wheat farmers went out of business, and rail cars were moved elsewhere.

"The infrastructure shrinks, and we have a record crop," Larsen told the newspaper.

The problem is that if wheat is on the ground, it gets wet, and spoils.

Spitzer said much of the state's crop will move to markets east, many in Kansas, so Colorado needs cooperation of its eastern neighbor to let the otherwise-unapproved trucks on the roads.

"We're waiting to hear what Kansas is going to decide. They need to allow this, or we're still going to have a lot of problems," he said.

About 80 percent of the wheat from Colorado ends up going to Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It's mostly a hard red winter wheat, the classic ingredient in bread.

"It's really an emergency situation," Darrell Hanavan, of the Colorado Association of the Wheat Growers, told the newspaper.

I think someone is trying to be funny here and substantiate the reason for Mexican trucks coming into the U.S. There are many truck drivers already here in the U.S. whose trucks are sitting idle that would love to have that work. These trucks served areas where crops were destroyed by floods so there is no work in those areas for them and they are trucks that are legal for any area in the U.S.