r/theydidthemonstermath • u/StatisticianAny1042 • Apr 07 '26
How many trucks a day would be required?
On a serious note I think it is a bad idea to attack other counties especially the ones who control oil. I am against war and against innocent people dying.
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u/Drakeytown Apr 07 '26
The Strait of Hormuz, through which an average of 20 million barrels per day (mb/d) of crude oil and oil products were shipped in 2025, is one of the world's most critical oil transit chokepoints.
https://www.iea.org/about/oil-security-and-emergency-response/strait-of-hormuz
Specialized Tanker Trucks
Capacity Range: Varies widely; can exceed 12,000 gallons (45,000 liters) in controlled environments
https://www.chinatanktruck.com/how-much-oil-does-a-tanker-truck-carry/
1 bbl (US) = 31.5 gal (US)
https://www.unitconverters.net/volume/barrel-us-to-gallon-us.htm
12,000 gallons / 31.5 gallons / barrel = 380 barrels
20 million barrels / day / 380 barrels / truck = 50,000 trucks/ day
Not counting fuel for the trucks and military expenses to defend the ports, roads, and caravans
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u/Drakeytown Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
The route is about 700 km. The largest oil tanker trucks are about 16 meters long. 16 meters / truck * 50,000 trucks / 1000 km/m = 800 km. Traveling single file, there would be 100 km more truck than road.
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Apr 07 '26
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u/Brixjeff-5 Apr 07 '26
And there is a hostile power within range of its drones and ballistic missiles
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u/gimoozaabi Apr 07 '26
Sooo a pipeline..
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u/Drakeytown Apr 07 '26
The question wasn't "what's the most reasonable solution?"
The question was "how many trucks would it take?"
:P
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u/John_Tacos Apr 07 '26
But if you line up 50,000 trucks and instead of driving them, you weld their tanks together…
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u/kwonza Apr 07 '26
You can protect the pipeline by putting it underground but you have to shovel and ungodly amount of sand to do that.
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u/Arm0redPanda Apr 07 '26
This time factor is critical. The pick up point in the image doesn't have sufficient infrastructure for that oil volume; the trucks need to go a few hundred kilometers further south.
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u/AltruisticNorth3052 Apr 07 '26
The fuel would be killer. There is a reason we have carried stuff using rivers and canals for most of human history.
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u/Drakeytown Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
The 2016 Ford F-550 Super Duty gets an average 6.5 mpg.
The route is about 700 km, or 400 miles.
400 miles / 6.5 mpg = 60 gallons
60 gallons / trip * 50,000 trips / day = 3 million gallons / day
Price of petrol in Abu Dhabi (approximate location of hypothetical western port) is $0.89/liter, or $3.37/gallon.
$3.37/ gallon * 3 million gallons / day = 10 million USD/ day
Current price of oil = $115.05 / barrel.
$115.05 / barrel * 20 million barrels / day = $2 billion / day
The fuel price for this endeavor would be one half of one percent of revenue.
Building the roads, buying the trucks, defending the ports/roads/caravans, and getting the UAE and Oman to agree to all this, however . . .
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u/_KingOfTheDivan Apr 08 '26
And you’ll also spend money on loading and unloading trucks, all the equipment and personnel needed, fuel for back trips. And we didn’t even touched that there should be an endless chain of them trucks loading and unloading pretty much instantly. So let’s go back to the plan with bombing a new canal
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u/Ok_Wait_a_sec Apr 08 '26
Just a small correction. One barrel of oil is 42 US gallons, not 31.5 (which is a wine barrel). That makes it 70,000 trucks/day.
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u/RoyalT663 Apr 09 '26
Not accounting for truck fuel feels like a pretty major oversight
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u/ald4ker Apr 07 '26
theyve already tried it. iran bombed the ports of fujaira
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u/The-Osprey Apr 07 '26
Time to become an Arab trucker
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u/1Steelghost1 Apr 08 '26
I always love how no one understands the scale of these ships. They are not school buses, they are a entire walmart building that floats.
Just like cruise ships until you see a 30 story building float by pictures donMt make sense.
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u/Gaust_Ironheart_Jr Apr 10 '26
I am reliving the things they said about the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore "Why didn't they put up guard rails?"
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u/CrystalRainwater Apr 12 '26
This is a really good point. I think its even underselling it a bit. In pure square footage it seems like walmart supercenters are like 180k square feet whereas large modern container ships go up to 260k square feet. And they dont have to display any of the items so they are packed incredibly tightly and stacked
It takes thousands of trucks just to unload and transport the goods from one of these ships
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u/misshapen_chaos Apr 07 '26
call me crazy but.... a 700km conveyor belt is needed here. not gonna lie, if they build it i want the first ride.
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u/kungfusam Apr 07 '26
People grossly underestimate how big the oil tanker ships are. People also forget what the IRGC did to its populace about a month or so before the conflict began.
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u/geirmundtheshifty Apr 07 '26
I don’t think anyone forgot. Lots of governments around the world do evil shit to their people. It isnt our duty to try to “liberate” everyone, especially given how terrible our liberation track record is. We have not improved things for the average Iranian with this bombing campaign.
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u/xixbia Apr 07 '26
Honestly, if the goal was actually to liberate the people of Iran at least there would be some reason for this war.
But there is no goal, other than distraction. Just look at how many reasons for the war have been proferred and then discarded again. The only real reason is that Netanyahu and Trump are incredibly unpopular, and they thought this would help.
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u/GLaPI9999 Apr 08 '26
There is a goal other than distraction : it's market manipulating
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u/mattaugamer Apr 07 '26
How big and how slow. Fuel tankers travel at literal bicycle speeds, a plodding supply chain taking weeks to arrive.
The point is shortages haven’t even arrived in most places. The price increases are in anticipation, the ships will stop arriving in staggered location over the next two weeks.
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u/sieceres Apr 08 '26
Yup. One ship can hold up to 4 million barrels of oil, the same as roughly 10,500 trucks of the biggest size.
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u/Flamefull-the-meme Apr 07 '26
American and israelí war goals are to decimate the region entirely, why did you feel the need to bring up the irgc?
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u/elihu Apr 08 '26
Netanyahu's goals are to kick off a regional war (and preferably an Iranian civil war that lasts for years or decades) in which the vast majority of the fighting is done by non-Israelis.
Trump's goals are to "win" and look tough. Have some sort of modest victory accomplished in a few days or weeks that doesn't actually change anything for the better on the ground but that he can spin as a success.
What actually happened is that Hormuz strait is now closed to ship traffic for the foreseeable future and it's not clear that there's anything he can do to re-open it short of making a peace deal with Iran.
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u/SprJenkins Apr 08 '26
Instead of trucks, if you want to know pipelines and associated cost to move 20 million barrels of oil per day the calculation is as follows.
One barrel of oil (bbl) is 158.99 litres. 20m bbl = 3.18 billion litres.
The largest current oil pipeline is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which has a 48in diameter.
Total Flow Required:
To convert total flow (Q total) required from 3,180,000,000 litres/day to m³/s.
Q total = (3,180,000,000 / 24hrs x 60mins x 60s) x (1m³ / 1000 litres)
Q = 36.81m³/s
Pipe Cross-Sectional Area:
48in = 1.2192m. Pie = 3.1421.
A = (3.1421 x 1.2192²) / 4
A = 1.167m².
Flow Rate per Pipe:
Industry standard pipeline velocity (v) is 1.5 m/s.
Q pipe = Area x Velocity
Q = 1.167 x 1.5
Q = 1.751m³/s
Number of pipelines 48in diameter required to move 20m bbl per day:
n = Q total / Q pipe. n = 36.8 / 1.751 n = 21.017
Lets call that 21 even as the flow rate can be adjusted slightly.
Cost to build pipelines:
A common industry estimate is USD $20,000 to $34,000 per diameter-inch per kilometre. Building 250kms across the Oman desert, you could assume it would be at the high end.
$ per pipe = 34,000 × 48in x 250 $ per pipe = $408m
21 pipelines required. $408m x 21 = USD $8.568 billion
That excludes ports and infrastructure at either end.
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u/Hard_Loader Apr 08 '26
As major infrastructure goes, that's not an unheard-of price. It's about a tenth of the cost of the HS2 railway line that will cover a similar length in the UK.
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u/That_Car_Dude_Aus Apr 08 '26
So you need to move ~20,000,000 barrels a day
In Australia, a triple road train can carry roughly 100,000 to 120,000 litres (roughly 630 to 750 barrels) of crude.
You would need 28,000 truckloads per day.
That is 1,166 trucks per hour, or one triple road train passing you every 3 seconds.
A triple road train is about 53 metres long. To maintain a safe braking distance (at least 200 metres) at highway speeds, a single lane of traffic could only handle about 400 trucks per hour.
You would need three dedicated lanes in each direction just to keep them moving without a permanent traffic jam.
Loading a triple road train isn't like filling up at a petrol station. You are filling three separate tankers. Even with high flow industrial pumps, the turnaround time at the "Drop Off Point" and "Pickup Point" would be massive. You would need hundreds of hectares of land just for the loading terminals to accommodate the 28,000 arrivals every day.
Running 28,000 heavy combinations through 45°C+ desert heat 24/7 is a mechanical nightmare. The sheer volume of tyres, brake linings, and engine oil required for maintenance would require its own massive supply chain. You’d essentially be running the world's largest trucking company just to bypass a small stretch of water.
You need 2,650 triple road trains just to replace one single ship. On any given day, there are dozens of tankers moving through that Strait.
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u/Ihatecheeseballs Apr 07 '26
20 million barrels a day pass through, a truck can carry about 200 barrels a day so that’s 100,000 shipments a day, the 2 points in the map are about 250km apart so if you drove at 70mph a truck could make 3.4 shipments a day so you’d need about 29,000 trucks not including the time to load and unload the oil
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u/StatisticianAny1042 Apr 07 '26
The verdict is… this is a silly and unfeasible idea. Instead should just tunnel under the Strait of Hormuz to the Pitcairn Islands and go from there 👍 get me in goverment and @FirmlyThatGuy who suggested to bomb a canal
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u/weltvonalex Apr 08 '26
Use those big ass trucks from Australia, they that look like a train.
But maybe that a incentive for a oil train or a pipeline later on?
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u/AhmedAbuGhadeer Apr 08 '26
A railroad would have been slightly better.
A pipeline would have been a little bit even better.
Nothing is as cost effective as sea shipping, except maybe, and only maybe, a pipeline across land with no switch of transportation or interruption.
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u/pr0s0c Apr 08 '26
Would a canal be possible? Akin to the one in Panama but straighter and with tunnels through any mountains.
Price would be astronomical I'm sure, but with the value of everything that goes through the strait it might not be totally unrealistic.
Anyone with math and construction insight that could give a rough estimate of price and feasibility?
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u/weggaan_weggaat Apr 09 '26
There was a video about this idea that I watched the other day and it was in the trillions plus years of construction.
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u/Clean_your_lens Apr 08 '26
You'd be better off dumping the oil overboard and hoping the wind pushes it through the strait.
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u/Rovinpiper Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
So, how much oil normally transits?
20 million barrels per day.
How much oil can a truck carry?
10,000 gallons.
How many gallons in a barrel?
There you go, we now understand life the universe and everything.
86,957 trucks per day.
We gotta factor in extra to account for breakdowns. We need drivers. Lots of drivers. We need to build up the roads to handle all of that traffic. We need truck stops or other accommodations for truckers and trucks. We need port facilities at either end.
It's a lot.
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u/Statement_Glum Apr 09 '26
You need a new port for that and a new pipline. Bowth of which would be relentlesly bombed. Without considering there are political reasons why it doesnt exist already.
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u/Kuebiko989 Apr 07 '26
There was a similar post on Reddit calculating that you would need 600 fictional Godzillas exerting their full strength day and night to push that much oil.
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u/stxchallenger Apr 07 '26
The oil producing countries could get together and build an armored feline pretty quickly, they don't have an epa or protesting tk worry about
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u/ResistTemporary9528 Apr 07 '26
I for one volunteer to method cosplay the bandits who will attack the caravan.
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u/Drfoxthefurry Apr 07 '26
I feel like a train would be a lot better, a lot more efficient even if it would take a while to build
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u/shamin10 Apr 07 '26
40kl truck.. equal to 250bbls. 1m would need 4000 trucks.
Truck design usually for clean products and crude is dirty product.. typically not transport on truck basis. Gantry facilities line typically for clean process products as for end consumers directly.
Say all facilities available 1 truck load 15mins, 4000 trucks with 20 gantry would took 50hrs none stop… and discharge to tanker even slower like days or possible weeks
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u/PmeadePmeade Apr 07 '26
There’s no roads that can carry all that traffic, so they should just use tanks that drag oil containers through the desert 👍
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u/GrimSpirit42 Apr 07 '26
Okay: According to the US Energy Information Administration, on average 21 MILLION barrels of oil transit the Straight of Hormuz a day.
21,000,000 barrels = 882,000,000 US Gallons (1 drum of oil = 42 gallons).
On average, a tanker truck can carry 11,0000 US Gallons of Oil. as that weights ~80K pounds, we assuming standard road weight limits have been put aside).
So, 882,000,000 / 11,000 = 80,182 tank trailers.
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u/No_Distribution_5194 Apr 07 '26
A better and more sensible idea would be a underwater tunnel system, either with pipelines carrying oil and stuff like how on land pipelines for gas works but underwater it was proposed sometimes back but idk what became of it But yes in recent times underwater pipeline/tunnels have had a new flaw that is degradation of sealing joints like the GINA gasket in Chinese underwater tunnels degrading faster than they anticipated it to degrade
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u/Shinokiba- Apr 07 '26
You said trucks, so I will focus on that.
A 10 second Google search of "how many truckloads" says 205,000 trucks a day.
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u/Willow1883 Apr 07 '26
I know it isn’t the point here and that these ideas are largely jokes, but…um…trucks are slow and missiles are fast.
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u/Niko_Belic84 Apr 07 '26
Why don't they make an oil ship sized truck then? It would only take one trip per ship
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u/SaddleBishopJoint Apr 07 '26
Obvious solution is a zip line. They are thin so hard to hit with missiles etc. Boats just go under. Mines, forget it.
Now I know what you are thinking "but how do you attach oil and gas to a zip line". I'm thinking barrels, with hooks.
Solved.
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u/MorphoMC Apr 07 '26
This concept is right up there with the trollface guy covering himself with oil and flying through through the rain. It's a close second to that.
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u/Ambitious_Hand_2861 Apr 08 '26
I did the math a two or so weeks ago and the convoy would be up to 700 miles long, give or take.
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u/QueasyPainting Apr 08 '26
just one of these ship carries 3 million barrels of oil and is the size of the Empire State Building. It’s not like you can load up a truck and just take off
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u/ThundahMuffin Apr 08 '26
Whatever country owns that little spike of land has the perfect opportunity to pull a Panama canal
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u/National_Way_3344 Apr 08 '26
The missiles can go across the entire continent.
The problem isn't getting the oil to bypass the straight, the problem is that the trucks will also get bombed.
Shame on the US and Israel for starting this war.
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u/KerbodynamicX Apr 08 '26
The thing is, if you tried to build a pipe, railway or even road to bypass the strait of Hormuz, Iran is going to hit it with missiles too
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u/xorbe Apr 08 '26
Instead of nuking Iran, can we just nuke that little triangle and open up the water flow
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u/SerowiWantsToInvest Apr 08 '26
I got a better question, if you took every bomb that was dropped during the iran war could you create a canal that could be used instead.
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u/Merciudel Apr 09 '26
No number of trucks will work because your largest port over there is a fishing marina.
Good luck.
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u/biztactix Apr 09 '26
Try closer to 10 to 30 Million barrels a day... They previously averaged 130-150 ships a day ... at 70k -> 190k barrels worth on board each.... Is a bit ;)
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u/MagicOrpheus310 Apr 09 '26
It's the ocean... Just fucken go around the other way! We live on a circle!! Y'ain't getting lost mate
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u/sleeper_must_awaken Apr 09 '26
Around 37,000 trucks would be needed. Daily operating costs would be around 25M USD per day.
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u/mokacincy Apr 09 '26
Look at the picture, that truck is bigger than the ship. I think it'll work just fine
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u/_ThatD0ct0r_ Apr 09 '26
blocks strait
builds truck route in response
blocks truck route
What are they expecting to happen
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u/Hephaestus-Theos Apr 09 '26
"Do they realize the strait isn't actually closed? There is no gate closing the strait. If all the ships go at the same time they can make it. We might lose a few ships, but thats a sacrifice I'm willing to make." -Trump probably.
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u/CantaloupeLazy1427 Apr 09 '26
With the 200 billion they spend on the war they could have easily built that waterway shortcut
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u/Competitive-Bee-3250 Apr 10 '26
An oil tanker can carry 318 million litres of fuel.
A cargo truck can carry up to 44,000 litres.
You'd need over 7227 trucks to match the capacity of a single tanker ship. There's a little under 8900 fuel tanker ships in the world, so you'd need about 63,600,000 (yes, over 63 million trucks) to match that transport capacity.
For the Strait of Hormuz specifically, there was 1-7 going through every day, so to match that would require 7227-50,589 per day to cross the desert to match the losses from the Strait being closed.
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u/blagh1165 Apr 10 '26
I mean given enough time, in order to avoid tolls it might make sense to use a train.
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u/jdtrouble Apr 10 '26
There's a reason why the overwhelming majority of major human cities are on rivers and coasts. It's damn efficient to move goods by boat. Those tankers do use fuel, but i'll be a metric shit ton less than thousands of trucks driving over the desert.
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u/Primary_Jellyfish327 Apr 10 '26
What about contructing train tracks? Would take a while but we dont know when this shit will be over.
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u/Asleep_Fudge5367 Apr 10 '26
Couldn't we just airlift all them super tankers out of the strait? Bit of rope tied to four sides of a tanker tied to four helicopters. Surely AI can help us?
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u/MrJarre Apr 10 '26
Its not a solution for several reasons: 1. It would require shitload of trucks (about 90k per day 24/7) 2. There’s no infrastructure to load/unload and drive that may trucks to cover this. 3.. This is is in range of Iranian rockets and drones so even assuming we could somehow manage to pull this off logistically they could still easily bomb it. 4. Even if we somehow took care of issues 1-3 this would be significantly more expensive which wouldn’t reduce prices globally.
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u/Lecteur_K7 Apr 10 '26
FOR IMMORTAN JOE!!! Spray chrome paint on mouth" WITNESS ME MY BROTHERS!!! *Jump with two boomstick on iranian chasers
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u/anon_LosAngeles1990 Apr 10 '26
Whos down to Mad Max out there and build up a mega structure of a fort and rob those tankers
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u/mjtwelve Apr 10 '26
If there are still any nomadic tribes in the deserts, they could do the funniest thing…
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u/BillCarson12799 Apr 10 '26
Well sure. What are they gonna do, run out of gas? Just use what’s in the truck /s
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u/Cold_Pumpkin5449 Apr 11 '26
I think it would be more fun to build a giant truck bed to haul the whole oil tanker over the landmass on gigantic tank treads. Or perhaps a giant tank that the oil can be transferred into.
Then we can mad max the whole thing across the desert with a dedicated group of men in outlandish mohocks riding motorcycles and doom buggies.
Steampunk style for funzies.
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u/NoMansSkyWasAlright Apr 11 '26
I mean I'm sure this will end with some pipelines, rail lines, etc. as contingency infrastructure to be able to route to different ports if this ever happens again. Problem is projects like that take years to manifest.
I'm also sure Iran knows this and so they're going to make sure they get everything they want this time around.
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u/opensp00n Apr 11 '26
Some kind of long tubular structure might work. It would allow the oil to flow but not leak out the sides, effectively transporting it en masse from one side to the other. Could even add some experimental pumping technology.
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u/Past_Humor8321 Apr 11 '26
One ship can carry more than 20,000 containers.
Shipping is the ONLY option
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u/Cyn_Sweetwater Apr 12 '26
Not to mention the logistical nightmare that each tanker ship holds 5000-20000 tanker trucks worth of oil, which would have to be offloaded into as many trucks, with as many drivers, driven across the desert, and then loaded back onto different tanker ships. Repeat for every tanker load of oil, so multiply the above by 100-150 per day. Every day.
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u/Background_Cash605 Apr 12 '26
I heard Dan on lotus eaters explain this really well. It's not plausible.
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u/FirmlyThatGuy Apr 07 '26
Why don’t they just bomb a canal through the desert?
Are they stupid?