Tom's Tidbits- What if your car had $23 BILLION in deferred maintenance?

Greetings,

Here’s a peek behind our curtain for you. Imagine our Service Advisors going through their day when the phone rings with a potential new client. That’s always good news, but all too often the person will tell us “It’s been a great car for many years, and the only thing I’ve had to do was oil changes! Never had a problem!” THAT’S when our Advisors will cringe, because they know there’s bad news on the horizon.

Just because you HAVEN’T done anything for your vehicle doesn’t mean you DIDN’T NEED TO do anything! Your vehicle, whatever it is, is designed with periodic maintenance needs that MUST BE MET or the vehicle will fail. If you haven’t been doing maintenance you haven’t been saving money, you’ve just been putting off (and growing) the expenditures. That’s not (just) Big Auto trying to push profit, it’s physics. And you can’t escape physics.

That was the first thing I thought about when I recently heard that our National Park Service, the group responsible for “the crown jewels of America”, is facing almost 23 BILLION DOLLARS in deferred maintenance and repair. That’s not money for improvements or a blue-sky wish-list, it’s billions of dollars that our government was obligated to spend and just… didn’t. It wasn’t saved, it just wasn’t spent. And the need is growing exponentially as crumbling foundations lead to crumbling structures and growing expenditures down the road.

Few things, once created, continue their lives without maintenance. Cars needs oil, replacements for consumables like brake pads and tires, and replacements for components as they wear. Roads need to be cleaned and resurfaced, drainage needs to be cleared, paint wears out. Buildings plan for small ongoing repairs to keep small damage to walls from becoming structural hazards. Schools need building upkeep as well as investments into libraries, computers, and supplies. Starving any system of maintenance is like starving a car of gas… you’ll still have the car, but it will only decay from disuse.

While the National Parks caught my eye most recently, the need for general maintenance has been growing for decades. Look anywhere you choose; federal, state, or local governments, parks, roads, bridges, sewage, housing, mechanical, or environmental, every sector of US infrastructure has suffered. In its latest “Bridging the Gap” report analyzing infrastructure maintenance, the ASCE found that for all 11 infrastructure categories they covered, it would take $2.9 TRILLION DOLLARS of additional investment to bring them up to spec. That’s DECADES of inaction and irresponsibility; kicking the can down the road to the next Congress, or Legislature, or County Commission to handle.

And I can’t, just can’t, get past the fact that with our maintenance backlog at almost 3 trillion dollars, the recent “Big Beautiful Bill” will coincidentally plunge us 3 trillion dollars further into debt. Among all its other faults, it will give tax cuts to the richest among us without spending a dime to care for the infrastructure we all share.

Our National Parks have been called “the best idea America ever had” but they’re slowly dying. Our airports, interstates, ports, and more were once the envy of the world, now they’re crumbling embarrassments. That’s not inevitable or mysterious, it’s the obvious result of our “representatives” defaulting on the promises they made and the responsibilities they had. It’s all left for us to pay if we accept the responsibility they abrogated, to our kids to pay if we also choose to default.

Make a great day,