Mid-week last week, a driver for Quality Transport Company, a 31-truck fleet out of Freeport, Illinois, was hooked to brokered load bound for a Costco distribution center in Tracy, California. The operator happened upon a sight he’d not seen before seen before in his 30 years behind the wheel: An approximately 200-truck line — and growing — waiting to drop off.
“We didn’t know what to do,” says Amanda Schuier, senior vice president at Quality, who was communicating with her driver at the time. Of course, the driver had another load after the Costco drop-off awaiting a pick-up at another facility, but he was stuck with the dry van full of food-safe containers.
It was uncharted territory for all involved, says Schuier. “Do we try to reset the appointment and attempt to deliver again? Do we take it back to the original shipper? We ended up pulling him out of the line and getting him to a safe place to park for the night so we could try to figure out a plan,” she says.
The driver then waited at a nearby truck stop for two days before he was able to get to the facility and deliver the load. But the delays obviously rippled through the fleet’s scheduling. As of Monday, Schuier was making plans for her in-office personnel to work remotely, but “most of my drivers seem to want to continue to do their jobs the way they always do,” she says. The fleet has “communicated to them to limit exposure and contact in truck stops the best they can, but they want to stay on the road.”
What the Quality driver faced was likely an extreme example at a retailer, Costco, who faced a nationwide swell of consumers seeking food items and other household goods last week as fears surrounding the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus ratcheted up. But he’s not the only trucker to report a variety of headaches in pick-ups and deliveries surrounding the unprecedented effects of the pandemic.
Trucker Eli Vaughan, for instance, noted that as a result of COVID-19 precautions “my main shipper will not allow drivers or visitors to enter their facility. Back up near the door, take the chains, straps off. … Or vice versa. Can’t use the bathroom or break room” at all, he says.
Many respondents to Overdrive polling conducted in recent days report business as usual, though almost 20% reported either cancelled appointments or a sharp decline in demand for their service. “We haul fuel, and there are now no loads, yet the bills continue,” says Iva Ludlow, awaiting word with others on whether relief packages coming out of Washington could ultimately deliver support to small business and/or wage workers impacted by the crisis.
