The Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association joined a manufacturing coalition urging Congress to advance a long-term infrastructure bill to help keep products moving efficiently to customers.
ILMA’s 2020 Advocacy Agenda includes infrastructure as a priority issue. “ILMA seeks to ensure its members’ goods and products can be transported efficiently to compete in the global economy, and policies in any bills that make it easier for small businesses to win public infrastructure contracts that are bid [on] by the federal and state governments,” the organization stated in the agenda.
“Infrastructure issues have always ranked at the top of advocacy surveys that ILMA has conducted of our manufacturing members,” ILMA CEO Holly Alfano told Lube Report. “Our members rely on roads and bridges, ports and rail infrastructure to move their products to their customers.”
Alfano noted that crumbling infrastructure, traffic congestion and other issues can cause significant delays, which cost money. “In recent years, with a severe driver shortage that is predicted to get worse in years to come, efficiency is more important than ever,” she said.
More than 115 organizations, representing all parts of the manufacturing supply chain and manufacturers across all 50 states, signed the letter, which was dated July 15. “We encourage you to come together in a bipartisan manner to provide historic investment and pass a surface transportation reauthorization ahead of the Sept. 30, 2020 deadline,” they state in the letter.
The organizations noted in the letter that during the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturers in the country have continued operating. “Transportation and logistics partners across the manufacturing supply chain went into overdrive to provide our sector with the capabilities to meet the immediate challenges posted by COVID-19,” they stated. “These partners enable industry’s efforts to increase production, retool supply chains and adapt to quickly evolving circumstances to get critical supplies to the parts of the country that needed them most. Manufacturers’ ongoing response efforts depend on our nation’s infrastructure system and taking action now to invest in and modernize our infrastructure can advance the next steps of recovery and renewal.”
They added that the country “desperately” needed robust infrastructure investments, even before the pandemic. “Congressional action is necessary to address the revenue shortfalls facing state transportation departments due to unexpected decreases in road travel,” the organizations asserted. “Forward-looking, long-term investments in all kinds of infrastructure are needed to renew and expand our economy, grow jobs and compete globally.” Alfano said a traffic analysis firm Inirix found that congestion cost the U.S. economy $87 billion in 2018, and that those numbers were expected to grow significantly.