Watch Now


Drilling Deep: A greater private sector role on the nation’s highways?

Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

Governments are strapped as a result of the pandemic, the nation’s infrastructure isn’t any better than it was at the beginning of the year and states are faced with keeping their roads in good shape. What’s the solution?

On this week’s Drilling Deep podcast, host John Kingston speaks with Bob Poole of the Reason Institute about bringing the private sector into the mix to turn toll roads into privately owned and operated highways. But that always raises the prospect of higher tolls, and Poole explains why users of the roads shouldn’t be worried about that.

Kingston will also talk about how three seemingly disparate developments about the future of truck fuel this past week ultimately come back to the fact that the internal combustion engine powered by diesel might turn out to be a tough competitor after all.


More articles by John Kingston

Drilling Deep: New drivers aren’t coming out of CDL schools and that’s a problem

Drilling Deep: Staymetrics data digs into driver retention during pandemic

Drilling Deep: trucking market on fire; diesel market not reacting to Laura


John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.