Trucking in the time of a plague

I stood in front of the large windows in the office we had worked so hard to build. Outside was a strip of

landscape bushes, and tall reedy, waving grass then a paved entrance road. To the right, the gate that

magically opened when you pull up to it; always a wonder, and a touch of secret pride to watch it

activate and slowly slide aside.

But straight away, a wide flat yard leads the eye cross the pavement, onto the smooth gravel,

and across that smooth expanse to a mesh fence. Our trailers ring the outer yard edges, the rolling

wagons of many sizes, styles, uses, but mostly open decks, flat or a single step. There’s a lot of steel and

reflective tape, but all in order, ready; a lot of tires sitting.

It’s a quiet time and the yard for that moment is silent. The Pandemic has forced a silence onto

our world.

The view beyond our property is not a suburban or pastoral scene. It is a ring of highways, and

overpasses; a traffic blood flow that rarely stops. This is our world, the trucking, transporting, loading:

for us, it’s the perfect view.

We can hear the wind sliding off the sides of the cars, the diesels low growls as they accelerate

into higher gears on the on – ramp. But it is strangely quiet, the whistle of the traffic a mere whisper.

That unstoppable movement which I’ve always seen as the life blood of the cities, and our transport

duties a tiny part of that urban body, now a clotted crawl.

The office was so quiet, most of the staff were at home. Myself, Doug our GM, my wife and one

dispatch, are all that’s left. Thank God we haven’t been totally shut down, sitting at home would eat

me alive. I suppose I’m here because I’m always here. We’re careful though,; and have COVID protocols

in place, the sanitizing, the masks, the distancing. And we are an essential service; most of our work

being for the power company but they too are working on split staffs, yet we are fairly busy, fighting one

crises after another; the pipeline glut, the rail blockade, the oil price war, and now the pandemic, and

the flooding. How many battles does Alberta have to fight and all at once?

But this germ warfare; the lock-down, the isolation, the waiting while a pestilence creeps thru

the population; so foreign a strategy; a battlefield on someone else’s planet.

We are active people, willing and ready confront, to fight, to slave day and night, but no we

must wait and distance ourselves, and sit and wait it out. The waiting, that is devastatingly hard for a

people known to be success driven, fast drivers, impatient shoppers and fast food gobblers. We line up

at Tim Horton’s because we don’t want to get out of the car and skip breakfast cause there’s no time to

cook. We’re quick horn honkers, loud laughers, hard partiers, fun drunks, sports nuts, kid spoilers, team

drivers, glaze eyed shoppers and bargain snatchers, working fools and family crazy.

But we’re Lousy at waiting. I feel the tension and frustration eating me every day, don’t know if

it’s a massive hole I’m afraid of stepping in, or some huge darkness will drop out of the sky on me; It’s a

lurking but real Covid tension. Yet we ‘are’ doing it. The days are passing, the curve is flattening, Deena

is my heroine. Every day at 3:30.

I checked my blood pressure, haven’t in weeks, it was perfect last time I checked. This morning,

peak readings, so high like my mom! I’m not particularly busy, or stressed, till now; not sick yet; so I

checked it 4 times laying down, sitting up, still high. I’m checking again now. Its perfect, but low 88 over

49. Must be a wrong reading, check again; deep breathe, relax, 139 over 79. What, Better check again.

Man those things really squeeze; 149 over 88, its going up, but that sounds more realistic, lower end of

high. Check one more time, 148 over 77. Still pretty high. It’s that damn alien virus invasion. I know it.

The phones are quiet, we are doing what we can to find work, but the sales calls are a little

depressing, we try; but for many companies, there’s just no work. Once our units have dispatched

we’re left with the clicking of the printers, soft tone reminders of mail and the rustle of paper. We

check on our people, watch the screen GPS to track our units, check times and speed. It’s the waiting

game.

Out the window the yard sits wide and clean, under the big sky. Our trailers and power units

ready. Trucking has traditionally been a solitary form of work. A guy in a truck, so our manner of work

has not been terribly affected; there’s just not as much of it. And our other work, the picking and

lifting, we have managed to find enough life in the business to work most of our people everyday.

I see now the wisdom of our early choices, our direction, when we tried to find specialty

methods, learn and develop custom systems, specialized equipment; just to find work; but now we see

these specialties; like our giant knuckle booms, carrying us. Before they were a valuable catalyst for our

regular tasks, but now they are one of the fires driving the company, not into the black ledger; but we

are still standing, still rolling. I can’t help but feel, that’s all we have to do. Just stand our ground.

Our people need assistance, this near economic shut down has eroded their hours, left

everyone fearful, nervous. We have a great staff of skilled, competent people, from admin to

maintenance, drivers, dispatchers, and operators. All types of character, and skill dimensions. A group

of hand picked, trained souls that show up every day, think nothing of leaving town at 3am, or going on

a rescue hot shot at 5pm, heading into the maddest storms, the deepest bush, lifting a voodoo cluster of

odd, off times heavy creations with the confidence of a Jordan or a McDavid.

We could not lose this team and survive. We still had ‘some’ work, and a few bucks left in the

bank; so we announced to all our staff. No lay offs, no pay cuts, all monthly salaried people were to

receive their exact same wage and our hourly people, operators, mechanics, drivers, all of them, get a

min of 80 -88 hrs per pay period.

We knew these brave words would cost us, and it has; but not as much as we thought. Nearly 7

weeks into this thing, and the boat is still afloat.

We looked at the alternatives, lay everyone off, or as many as we could and still keep the office

open, the paper flowing and our trucks rolling. That’s a tough call, we don’t have too many boat

anchors we can just toss overboard and still run. Everyone’s pretty important. They ‘could’ get a quick

$2000 top up, I believe, and then about 400 plus a week from Employment Insurance. Unemployment

was a more honest term. But 400, or whatever a week? these people have mortgages, rent, car

payments, kids, dental bills; they couldn’t survive on EI.

The Federal Government was asking companies to keep their employees on and get reimbursed

form the Feds to the tune of 800/week. All right, so we looked at that, but the first available month we

didn’t qualify. After a half month of skidding down the Covid grind ramp, we never lost quite enough

money. Hard to lose a lot more cash when your revenues are already thin as a razor.

Not to complain though, April will be different, we are definitely going to make that 15% loss

ratio, oh wait a minute now the ratio is 30%. Our calculations look like a 20-25 % drop, so nothing again.

We’ll keep subsidizing.

Now there’s a conflict, am I supposed to be happy we didn’t lose enough money to get a little

help? Or lose the money, feel worse, but get propped up by a fat check; like taking a starving kid and

instead of feeding him a three course meal, you stick a lollipop in his mouth.

There’s always a 40,000$ payroll loan, zero interest and you only have to pay back 30,000. Nice!

Only if your payrolls too high; like over app 85,000 a month, your not eligible. Ok, missed that one too.

We soldier on.

The banks are allowing us to defer the principle payments on some of our loans; not the

interest, that would still have to be paid. So we did that in a few of our smaller loans. And we

understand that the folks who did get principle and interest deferred, they will still have to make up that

interest in future payments. Maddening. But there’s a lot of other pain in this world, and in our home

province the oil moves by the Russian’s and Saudis, in the middle of the Covid, seem especially evil,

callous; beyond my understanding.

But the insurance companies are raising their rates too I hear, and wait, our benefits people

doubled their bill just last week. It just appears that the larger institutions don’t feel they have to share

any of the pain, when they have your signature etched in stone into a fixed rate document that is now

out of touch with the new world order.

I had just borrowed a boat load of money to buy out my brother; split between he and the

banks. These first two years, the payments have been tough, as Lois and I had anticipated. Now Covid

had paralyzed our economy, but everyone benefits if we can stay healthy and get the ship out of this

storm.

Brother Jim, dropped all interest payment for 3 months. That was a start.

I know our bankers, honest, first rate people; we switched banks to join them; that’s a journey

in itself; but we kept up a string of pestering inquiries, and wailings. And was there any possibility we

could DO something to these now bloated rates on our fixed loans. Finally we got a meeting, a phone

meet with the head of Alberta Commercial, our rep, myself, our GM Doug, our accountant, and Lois, my

wife, head of admin, who has worked late, nearly every night for 2 months, ever since the staff left for

home. We were excited, they must have something for us.

The good news was yes, they could change the loan, do a SWAP thing or just break the loan; and

we could save tens of thousands in interest per year over the next 3.5 years of term. Wow, I knew the 3

month interest penalty would sting but over time, this would work out. Hallelujah!!

Then it turned out there was another clause in my mortgage penalty detail, 3 months, OR, loss

of interest, the greater of the two. And the loss of interest was a six figure elbow to the head. (this is

hockey country remember?)

Doug let his pen fall on his desk, got up and left the room.

So the banks were stuck too. They explained that the funds they borrowed from, would

penalize them. Ok; who are these vile creatures. Never heard.

It doesn’t matter, its just another storm and we have a hell of a boat, and a crew of confident

prairie sailors.

We’re getting used to being on our own,

With no direction, home.

Just a sitting stone!

(Thanks Bob)