Even though the Coronavirus has wreaked havoc in the lives of people worldwide, truckers have been struggling to keep the country moving. Global lockdowns, massive shifts in consumer spending and supply chain issues, raw material disruptions, cyberattacks, canals getting blocked and backing up freight, and you name it, already put our just-in-time manufacturing and delivery systems in complete disarray. When these problems also hit the trucking industry hard, as we see now, recoveries are fragile, and further shortages become the current reality and possibly the future norm. Every year the US economy depends on ten billion tons of every commodity imaginable to be delivered to the tune of almost 700 billion dollars worth of goods. If the trucks stop running, filling stations that sell nearly 300,000 gallons per month and require multiple deliveries per day could run out of fuel in hours or days. Manufacturers, unable to deliver their products from plastic bottles to toys to tomatoes, would have to halt production and sit idly by. You would see shortages of just about everything in your stores within two days. That would spark panic buying and further complicate the problems. Within a week, the entire economy would grind to a halt if all trucks stopped running.
Are we barreling down the road towards a trucking collapse? A complete truck collapse isn’t necessary for it to get so bad that every consumer feels the impact in all aspects of their lives. Several significant problems are facing this critical piece of the supply chain. If it fails, the whole system will collapse…
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