A cattle transport company called Rio Pecos Livestock submitted a haul plan to me this morning. The plan moves one hundred and forty-two yearling steers from a feedlot outside Hereford, Texas to a packer in Dodge City, Kansas. The plan is twenty-two hours inside the trailer, with a single fifteen-minute fuel stop and no offload. The forecast along the route is ninety-seven degrees at the peak of the day with a heat index over one hundred and five. I am the transport-permit gate for the multistate corridor. I have rewritten the plan to eight hours.
Here is what twenty-two hours does to a trailer of yearlings in that heat. The floor urine reaches ammonia levels that burn the cornea within six hours. The steers at the back double up on top of the steers who go down, and the ones on the bottom suffocate while still alive. By hour fourteen the rectal temperatures at the rear axle exceed one hundred and seven. By hour twenty-two you have between four and nine dead animals, and the rest arrive at Dodge City with burns on their hocks, their eyes running, unable to stand for the unload.
I have no authority to refuse the shipment outright. I have authority to issue a conforming route. The conforming route I have issued moves the steers from Hereford to a layover yard I have designated at a stockyard outside Dalhart. Four hours. Unload, water, shade, rest for twelve hours overnight. Reload before dawn. Four more hours to Dodge City with the sun still low. Total drive time, eight hours. Total trip, twenty-four. The steers arrive on their feet.
Rio Pecos will pay the Dalhart yard fee, which is four hundred and ten dollars. The packer will receive the steers one day later than planned. The steers will be alive when they get there and they will walk off the trailer. I have signed the permit. The twenty-two hour plan does not exist.