Over the weekend, I wrote about the new vaccine regulations that the Biden administration enacted on Saturday for non-U.S. nationals, citizens, or temporary permanent residents and how they could exacerbate our supply chain crisis.
I shared some of the concerns of cross-border trucking companies that have worried about unvaccinated truckers being unable to cross into the U.S. with much-needed cargo.
Canadian truckers handle about 75% of the cross-border freight, and north of the border, the new mandate has been received with mixed results.
Ahead of the implementation of the regulations, the Canadian Trucking Alliance predicted that 10-15% of cross-border truckers would refuse to get vaccinated and settle for less lucrative domestic routes.
According to Freight Waves, a website that reports on the shipping and logistics industries:
Anecdotally, there appear to be significant regional differences. For Ontario-based carriers, who handle the vast majority of cross-border freight, vaccination rates above 90% above aren’t unusual. Multiple carrier executives have told FreightWaves that they’ve lost more driver capacity because of COVID-19 isolation requirements than the mandates.
“The vaccine mandate is kind of a hot topic right now, but honestly it’s not even in my top three biggest issues right now,” said an executive at a large Canadian carrier, who asked not to be named.
In Eastern Canada, drivers are more inclined to line up for the shot, and some of them even crossed the border to get the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which isn’t available in Canada. (Should it bother us that our taxpayer dollars are going toward vaccines for foreign nationals?)
Related: If You Thought the Supply Chain Crisis Was Bad Enough, DHS Could Make It Worse
Western provinces are another matter. One carrier who runs lumber across the border said that a significant number of his drivers are holding out.
At Evans Trucking, in Coaldale, Alberta, nearly a third of the 36 drivers are unvaccinated, said General Manager Reece Evans.
Evans said he had expected that closer to 20% of his drivers would elect to remain unvaccinated. But more have held out.
“Some guys are backing out of it,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll probably get vaccinated’ and closer to the date, they’re like, ‘You know what, I don’t want to do that.’”
For what it’s worth, Evans isn’t vaccinated and says that both countries’ governments are to blame for the issues that vaccine mandates cause.
A coalition of truckers is planning a protest convoy across Canada, but the Canadian government may require vaccinations for truckers who drive within the provinces as well. What will trucking company managers like Evans do if that mandate goes into effect?
“It’s one of those things where you can’t really answer it until you get there,” he admitted. “But, you know, will I close the doors of the company because I will not force anyone to get a vaccine? I don’t know. But it’s not me forcing it at that point, it’s the government.”
One of these days, maybe sanity will prevail. But given Canada’s track record and the antics of the Biden administration, we may not see any relief soon.
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