Blog Right

We recently wrapped up a two-week trip to Portland, Oregon, and Little Rock, Arkansas, that included some great conversations with truck drivers, truck manufacturers, and truck company executives. We’ll talk more about those interviews in the coming weeks because you can’t really understand the importance of our interstate highways until you talk with the folks who live and...

We are headed north to Portland, Oregon, this week. As we mentioned in a recent blog post, we are verrrry anxious to speak with the folks at Voodoo Doughnut about, oh, wait, we mean the innovative people at Daimler Trucks North America about the future. Last year when we first began researching the subject of freight transportation it...

As we face our final few bittersweet days of watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, we thought we’d post a video clip from last summer that pretty much covers the ongoing struggle to get a Highway Trust Fund bill passed and funded.   The Daily Show "First of all, I can't believe our Federal Highways have a...

  Winter is coming…   That was my first thought when I heard the Tex Wash bridge on I-10 near Desert Center, California, had been torn away by a wall of water racing down a normally dry channel. Dusty, dry California is looking at a windy, rainy El Nino-driven winter and there are hundreds of bridges similar to...

One of the first things a documentary filmmaker learns to let go of is anything resembling a predictable schedule. Trying to capture a story as it unfolds can be tricky, so we’ve had to roll with things as they come our way here at Be Prepared to Stop.   Last week we were supposed to be in beautiful...

Why do a documentary on infrastructure and the freight industry?   This film started for me long before I was born. It started before the interstate highway system. It started with a young boy in the early 20th century who, to help his father’s business, would help secure a pick-up truck full of pallets by traveling across miles spread...

A lot can happen in a week.   The Be Prepared to Stop crew met in Washington, DC to do some filming and found ourselves caught up in everything from a torrential downpour to assorted confusing traffic circles to landmark Supreme Court decisions – all of which made us a little dizzy.   Interviews with folks like economist...

After months of preparation and research, Delaware Park Productions will begin production next week on Be Prepared to Stop, a documentary about the breaking down of the delivery system that brings us most of what we need every day. These days the phrase “crumbling infrastructure” is heard on news reports almost as often as the word “pothole”. We...

Last month just off the coast of Santa Barbara county in California an oil pipeline broke. The Los Angeles Times reported that the section of pipe that cracked had worn down to 1/16th of an inch. When the pipe gave way, about 21,000 gallons of Exxon Mobil’s crude oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean near Refugio State Beach....

I found out long ago It’s a long way down the Holiday Road -- Lindsay Buckingham   Ah, summer. School’s out, the weather’s fine, and you just put new tires on the family car, so let’s roll! We Americans love a good road trip. The siren song of the open road, the wind rushing through open windows, Mom...