Hi Marc,

Yes I did notice a lot of cattle trucks on the roads. I had not noticed so many of them were from Canada before.

Driving along I got thinking that if you say those cattle being hauled from Sask. or where ever will have about a 60% carcass weight and about a 60% dress beef rate or whatever the final trimmed saleable beef percentage is called, only about 0.6 x 0.6 or say 40% of the live cattle weight being hauled around is useable beef. Seems there is little value in the byproducts except maybe enough to pay to dispose of them. Most of the value of the shipment would be beef?

Since I was in the process of putting about $400. worth of diesel fuel into a pickup (plus my transfer tank) I was wondering how the economics of hauling all those fat cattle around 1000 mi or so at today's truck operating costs ($3.60 diesel fuel) could make any sense since only 40% of the weight being hauled is saleable product....

Seems like economics would lead to packing plants being located closer to the animal sources then haul beef rather than live cattle a thousand miles especially at today's high trucking costs.

Maybe I am missing something.

Jim at Dawn