A little more than two weeks ago, Robert and Jan Van Liew felt hope for their one-truck independent operation Van’s Logistics fading. Their main accounts hauling loads of West Coast imports and paper products had run dry as the COVID-19-caused economic stall took hold in late March.
To try to make ends meet until business could come back, the Van Liews applied for one of the forgivable bridge loans offered by the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program. But their application fell into pile of others, and funding ran dry before it could be considered.
This week, however, “we’re feeling a lot more hopeful,” said Jan, buoyed in large part by having their application for PPP’s second round of funding approved. They hadn’t received the funds as of Tuesday afternoon, but they were expecting to receive the money by week’s end. The parameters of the loan require that the money be spent on payroll for it to be forgiven. “It won’t help with truck payments, insurance” and other business costs like permits, Jan said, “but it’s going to help us pay our bills.”
Seemingly, small-business truckers had slightly better luck in PPP’s second round of funding, part of Congress’ expansive efforts at helping prop up small- and medium-sized businesses through the downturn. Still, just 14% of owner-operators and small fleets surveyed last week by Overdrive report having applied and been approved.
Another 26% of the 338 respondents said they had applied but had not yet heard whether they’d be approved or denied, and 8% said they had applied but were not approved. The remainder, 51%, said they had not applied for a PPP loan. The $310 billion refill of the PPP fund, passed by Congress two weeks ago, is expected to run out this week. All told, Congress allocated some $660 billion to the program.
Anecdotes and survey data point to the importance the loans have carried for many owner-operators and small fleets. For those that received them, they’re bounties that help such truckers see tomorrow. Those who missed the money say they’re at risk of losing equipment or their business altogether.
In some instances, fleets and owner-operators appear to simply be hung up in the queue of the millions of applications filed for the PPP loans, according to interviews conducted by Overdrive and the weekly survey data. Other fleets, even those that employ drivers, were denied because of the way they pay their drivers. That’s despite the money being specifically allocated to help small businesses make payroll.
