They’re building a new bridge across the interstate near the community where my mother lives. When she and my father moved there 25 years ago, the traditional four lanes of traffic with a left turn lane across the highway was adequate. In the intervening time, distribution centers grew up around the interchange and the area’s population continued to grow along with the interstate’s traffic. That bridge and the roads leading to it needed something better.
Simply widening the lanes across the interstate was one option, but new ideas in bridge design suggested another. The new traffic flow is designed in such a way that it will eliminate left-hand turns to enter the interstate. With the increase in truck traffic in the area, allowing traffic to make safe left-hand turns will end the practice of trucks piled up into the left turn lane and still allow traffic flow to continue across the bridge to the right.
There also have been changes in the way the bridge is being built. Improvements in construction techniques and strategies have allowed traffic in the area to continue to move effectively despite the chaos of construction. Drivers made adjustments, of course, but for now everyone gets where they need to go and, when it’s all completed, the bridge will be an improvement over the previous model. The users of that bridge—the long-time area residents such as my mother and the new developments such as the distribution centers—will benefit from this improvement for years to come.
And yes, this is a parable.
When we reconvene next month with Power & Motion, we will have finished building our bridge to the future of fluid power. That bridge will have been built after a year of conversations with industry leaders. They observe, as we have, that this industry has changed and evolved rapidly in recent years. The way to deliver information about the industry has changed.
Power & Motion is doubling down on fluid power—on the technologies, the innovation, on the people and on the constantly improving best practices. It is a far more complex industry today than 30 years ago, one that includes electrification, sensors, motion control and hybrid systems. Power & Motion arrives as the off-highway vehicle industry faces a new push for autonomous vehicles and as the U.S. embarks on a long-needed and comprehensive infrastructure overhaul—one in which hydraulics will be the primary mover of earth, and of progress.
Such progress requires we change as well. And so we have. We expect you’ll access our new website at www.powermotiontech.com starting Jan. 3, 2022, and that our website, Power & Motion magazine, our newsletters and webcasts and video conversations with industry experts and our special reports will be more than just a name change. Power & Motion is a bridge to the future.
