What Does A Quarantine Due To Coronavirus Mean For Truckers?

On the financial front, trucking stocks are getting crushed along with everyone else. Down an average of 25%. Heartland, KnightSwift, Schnider, Werner, etc. The Dow Jones was down 2300 just today. Hope everyone has moved their 401k's into govt bonds. Only makes about .5% a month but that's better than the alternative. Financially, Covid-19 is a stone cold killer.

I hope you are all right and this turns out to be. . . uneventful. Science, economics . . . they are telling a different story.

Stay frosty, my friends. It might be a bumpy ride. Or not. Maybe this will all go away. Please God . . . make it go away. People are suffering a lot in real life. I'd love to see this end. I hope it doesn't effect anyone here.

Buy on the dips. Look at crashes as an opportunity. If you sell on the way down - you lose.

Long term is the key.

Are you old enough to remember all the hype and the money spent on the looming Y2K disaster? I am, and many more false national panic attacks. As a trucker, living this unique lifestyle, I do move about an awful lot, yet I have very little human interaction or contact. The isolation of this job is one of the many difficulties of it that people can't handle.

We have been under our own unique type of quarantine for generations.

I worked for a huge software company in 1999. I was working from home New Years Eve 1999 waiting for armageddon.

It never happened.

All the USN ships that were seaworthy were out to sea at least three days before Y2K, just incase anything happened.

Are you old enough to remember all the hype and the money spent on the looming Y2K disaster? I am, and many more false national panic attacks. As a trucker, living this unique lifestyle, I do move about an awful lot, yet I have very little human interaction or contact. The isolation of this job is one of the many difficulties of it that people can't handle.

We have been under our own unique type of quarantine for generations.

I worked for a huge software company in 1999. I was working from home New Years Eve 1999 waiting for armageddon.

It never happened.

All the USN ships that were seaworthy were out to sea at least three days before Y2K, just incase anything happened.

I remember reading about that.

What's weird is I'm now working with "kids" that were BORN during that timeframe. (argh)

Are you old enough to remember all the hype and the money spent on the looming Y2K disaster? I am, and many more false national panic attacks. As a trucker, living this unique lifestyle, I do move about an awful lot, yet I have very little human interaction or contact. The isolation of this job is one of the many difficulties of it that people can't handle.

We have been under our own unique type of quarantine for generations.

I worked for a huge software company in 1999. I was working from home New Years Eve 1999 waiting for armageddon.

It never happened.

Been in IT since '84. Damn did I make some REAL $$ in '99. And I TOLD EVERYONE IT WAS BS - but they went ahead and spent anyways.

Interesting notion there Brett - of this being a "fire drill".

Had breakfast with some friends (regular meeting of the minds on Saturday). They're like "if we stay safe for 30 days" it'll all be over.

I'm like - until that ONE GUY walks into a crowded room of people, and it starts all over again.

Sheep will follow.

I'll never claim to understand the lack of logic, that goes along with the above...

Or we could look at the "fake oil war" between the Saudis and the Russians (getting ZERO AIRPLAY because of the Zombie-Virus) - all designed to make oil CHEEPER TO MPORT, THAN TO PRODUCE - so we SHUT DOWN OUR OIL FIELDS. Then it takes at least a year to get them back up to full production, AFTER THEY JACK THE PRICES BACK UP.

But with the "global distraction" of the media invoked "pandemic" - no one is even watching all the other "shady dealing" that's going on. ESPECIALLY THE UPCOMING ELECTION...

Rick

That's my alternate identity for the tracker, and my TT name, too.

I'm really in Iowa right now, hauling grocery store loads.

My wife sent me this from a Walmart in MInnesota. This whole thing is nuts. She also said Nursing homes are also all on lockdown (which actually makes sense)

I’m concerned as Brett mentioned with the doggy daycare about the service and travel industries. Those will be harder to bounce back. The good news is that there will be some crazy good cruise deals coming up In the summer and fall for those brave enough to go.

There will need to be a strong ramp up in manufacturing ti resupply all those stores and warehouses. The bright side for us is we get to haul all the goods to fill those stores back up again.

New York State is talking about implementing Martial Law. I think that just supports my thesis about this being a fire drill for the real thing. I mean, really? Martial law because a few thousand people have the flu?

The only way this makes sense if it's a real-life test run for the real thing someday. Of course, they can't tell us it's a test run or it defeats the purpose of the exercise. They won't get authentic reactions from us.

By the way, for those of you who follow politics and vote and believe we're a democracy run by a government of the people, by the people, for the people - how do you feel about your level of participation in our government about now?

I think they've proven overwhelmingly that we have no say in anything. I have yet to talk to a single person anywhere that thinks any of this makes sense, yet they're doing it, aren't they? They've completely shut down the entire world at this point, taken away our lives, locked us in our homes, and they didn't even need a good reason, did they?

Democracy? Yeah, enjoy that feel-good story if you like. If they shut off the food supply, tens of millions of people will die within weeks and all we'll be able to do about it is turn on each other. They could make what Hitler did look like child's play.

...and the scariest sociopaths in the world always justify their means by saying it's for the greater good. Hitler thought everything he did was good for Germany and the future of the world.

The scariest thing is that it might not be a test run. It might be that the sociopaths have finally taken over the world and the virus was the excuse they used to get us in our homes and implement martial law. That is the exact doomsday scenario that futurists have predicted for centuries.

By the way, for all of the people with stockpiles of guns and ammunition for this sort of scenario? You'll be the first ones they'll be coming for.

Hopefully this will end very soon. They'll announce victory, they'll claim they saved humanity with their powerful and decisive actions, they'll encourage us to trust them implicitly in the future, and we can all go back to filling our lives with stuff we don't need for the hell of it.

That's a little bit of truth beyond trucking.

Hopefully this will end very soon. They'll announce victory, they'll claim they saved humanity with their powerful and decisive actions, they'll encourage us to trust them implicitly in the future, and we can all go back to filling our lives with stuff we don't need for the hell of it.

That's a little bit of truth beyond trucking.

Excellent post, Brett. Did you mean their 'decisive' or 'derisive' actions?

Do you agree with the HOS lax they are granting (or imposing on?) truckers? I'm wondering how this will affect my huband, and Don, who haul for International Paper. Corrugated side, but still. Groceries need boxes.

Ohio's COVID 19 'solutions' in Trucking

It appears that all 50 states are implementing this HOS lax but Ohio seems more liberal, and DeWine was the first Governor to push it through.

Thoughts?

Glad I don't live in the state of NY.

Good luck to Brett and Turtle.

I'm wondering how this will affect my huband, and Don, who haul for International Paper. Corrugated side, but still. Groceries need boxes.

we cant run out of boxes! Friday we broke our record by about 6,000 shipping out 230,000 cases in 1 day. For the routes going out monday the case count is 244,000 AFTER you count the 30,000 we're shorting stores because we dont have that product. I'm not sure what product it is but I visited my local store after work (10am) and they were completely out of all fresh chicken despite getting their delivery at 7am. They've been begging our drivers to take days off the past 2 months. Most of us are working and they had to get brokers involved to get 15 loads delivered. That's just our DC, I'm sure the other 2 are facing similar challenges. We're not even shipping the typical Easter foods yet. In Olathe KS they told me they got their grocery truck at 9pm and put 2 pallets of toilet paper on the floor. By 930pm the pallets were empty.