For nearly a decade, inflation hawks such as yours truly have been the stopped clocks of economic forecasting — except that we’re still waiting to be right once, much less twice, a day. As central banks throughout the developed world ran their money-printers furiously in hopes of jolting the economy from its swoon, we fretted at the prospect of overheating. It was as if we were offering lemonade during a blizzard. My defense when reality-based colleagues called me out was that I’m old enough to have firsthand experience of roaring inflation — back in the 1970s — and it’s no picnic. While it is true that inflation is a nifty way to file down the fangs of the national debt while boosting the take-home pay of workers, the lived reality has its darker sides. For families such as mine back then, living paycheck to paycheck, the rising wages never seemed to catch up to the soaring prices. Eventually, rather than let things spiral out of control Venezuela-style, the Federal Reserve slammed on the brakes with double-digit interest rates in the early 1980s that threw the economy into an unpleasant recession. So at the risk of being wrong again — an occupational hazard for all opinion columnists — allow me to ring a faint alarm on inflation once again. This time, I’m spurred by a recent conversation with a veteran of America’s freight-hauling industry, a bellwether sector given the number of lives it directly affects. For a variety of reasons, trucking prices have gone through the roof over the past year, with no end to the upward trend in sight. The problem starts with a shortage of drivers. Interstate truckers have a long history as the ill-treated workhorses of the US economy — underpaid, disrespected, pressured to put in long hours and battling loneliness far from home. With unemployment down to unusually low levels, blue-collar workers have plenty of alternatives to this life. According to a report last year for the American Trucking Associations , US freight companies were short by about 50,000 drivers last year. Given that the median age of private-company drivers is 52 and that young Americans are shunning the field, the shortage could more than triple by 2026. Widespread adoption of self-driving trucks is too remote to offset the problem. This explains the sign-on bonuses that major freight haulers are offering to new drivers. The going rate, according to one industry insider, has climbed tenfold over the past couple of years, from $1,500 to as much as $15,000, collectible after six months on the road. The chance to collect two bonuses per year is fueling rampant driver turnover: as high as 95 percent annually at major fleets. Important safety advances are adding to the labor shortage, most notably the new requirement that rigs be equipped with an electronic logging device, or ELD. Designed to tame the problem of overtired drivers skirting federal requirements for adequate rest, the tamper-proof ELDs record precisely the number of hours each driver has been on the road in a given day. My new friend from the freight industry estimates that more than 800,000 noncompliant trucks were pulled from circulation when ELD enforcement began on April 1. These trends, along with rising fuel costs and strong consumer demand for shipped goods, are driving the price of freight sky high — up from last year by about four times the rate of inflation, and the worst may be yet to come. Demand for truck space is growing while supply is shrinking. Given that 70 percent of America’s freight moves by highway, this runaway cost engine is felt in all corners of the economy. At a time when high stock prices reflect expectations of growing corporate earnings, one manufacturer after another has reported that freight costs are weighing noticeably on profits. The story repeats itself across the iconic brands of America’s grocery stores: Coca-Cola, Hershey, General Mills, Tyson, Procter & Gamble. You name it. The heat from this inflationary fire is singeing farmers, food processors, manufacturers, big-box stores, restaurants, and e-commerce giants such as Walmart and Amazon (whose founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Post). I know: Calm down. Labor anomalies in a single industry won’t spark runaway inflation by themselves — though consumers are already seeing higher prices because of shipping costs, and they are sure to see more. And Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell signaled last week that he’s keeping a close eye on core inflation and won’t let it spoil what he called a “very strong” economy. The Washington Post