Trucking, arguably more than any other private-sector industry, rises tall in the wake of disaster. The folks who command the heaviest vehicles and those who pilot them are routinely counted on to save lives by hauling food and emergency supplies into — or people out of — areas devastated by Mother Nature’s cruel irony.

But what happens when the crisis isn’t hurricanes or earthquakes knocking down buildings, but instead a silent, invisible threat that takes out working people — with truckers included among the casualties?
If this industry’s motto is, “everything moves by truck,” then how much of “everything” is paralyzed during such a crisis?

H5N1-more commonly known as avian influenza or “bird flu” — has been stuck on the front pages for over a year. It’s a deadly virus carried by birds and for the most part transferred within the species.

There are, however, hundreds of documented cases of bird-to-human transmission, and to date 130 people in nine countries are known to have been killed by the virus — mainly in China and other parts of Asia where the flu originated, but cases have also spread to Africa and Europe.

Health officials and scientists from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies say it’s inevitable the virus will eventually affect North America. (Last year, a low pathogenic strain was suspected in B.C. Thousands of birds were culled as a precaution).

Worse still, even though the disease is strictly an avian pattern confined to birds, many experts suggest the virus — like almost all flues — could mutate into a human-to-human (H2H) strain.

“Right now the influenza is still an avian pattern — even when it’s transferred from bird to human,” John Read, director general of Transport Canada’s Transport Dangerous Goods Department, said during a recent presentation to the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada. “All the conditions for a human pandemic are present except a human pattern.”
There are a few anti-viral products on the market in very limited supply, but their track records at preventing contraction of H5N1 is highly debatable. A vaccine for possible human-to-human (H2H) transmission cannot be developed until at least six months after medical officials pinpoint the exact strain of the pattern.

DISASTER DUD?

Not since Alfred Hitchcock had them trap Tippi Hedren in a phone booth on the Big Screen have birds raised this much anxiety among humans. And really, haven’t we already fallen for too many of these Y2K-type disaster dud scenarios?

Is Chicken Little behind bird flu?

Well, no. The truth is, as John Read admits, “when it comes to avian pandemic we just don’t know how bad it’ll be.”

Assuming the virus confines itself to an avian pattern in North America, industry on both sides of the 49th would be reasonably well-prepared for containment, says Fletcher R. Hall, executive director of the American Trucking Association’s Agricultural and Food Transporters Conference.
“I think in the U.S. — and this is true of Canada too — one advantage we have is that the poultry industry has been integrated for so long. From the time an egg is laid to when a chicken ends up on a dinner plate, it is a very controlled environment that the industry has created in order to prevent any major disasters.

“All people and supplies going to these areas are inspected and kept under strict controls. This is a major factor that doesn’t happen in other parts of the world — including Europe.”

Last year, a low pathogenic strain of bird flu was suspected
in B.C. Thousands of birds were culled as a precaution.

Predicting the full effect of possible H2H mutation on this side of the pond, however, has proven a much thornier task. What experts do agree on, though, is if the bug bites, it’ll bite hard.

Current planning requirements for H2H transmission (not an official prediction, stresses John Read) suggest that 70 percent of the nation’s entire population would be exposed. Half of those people would become ill with a mortality rate as high as 57 percent. Very young children, the elderly, and people with weak immune systems would be hit hardest.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), if the flu mutates into a H2H strain anywhere in the world, it would reach Canada within three months. It would spread like other colds and flues — through airborne particles and by attaching to surfaces — except much faster. Because H5N1 symptoms take longer to show up in people than the average flu, those who are carriers are likely to mingle longer with the general population while they’re infectious.

A pandemic would arrive in at least two waves over the course of a year, the first of which would overtake a community and last six to eight weeks. “During that time, roughly 35 percent will be exposed. And then it’ll come a second time and people will be exposed again,” says Read.

Translation: There could be between 34,000 and 138,000 hospitalizations in Canada and anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 deaths.

During either of these waves, between 30 and 50 percent of a given region’s workforce could be out of commission. That includes those who have contracted the virus and have fallen ill; those who abstain from work to care for sick family members; and those who are simply too afraid to show up.

That latter group might be legally entitled to stay in bed rather than show up to haul your freight or dispatch drivers.

According to the Canada Labour Code: “An employee may refuse to…work in a place or to perform an activity, if the employee while at work has reasonable cause to believe that … a condition exists in the place that constitutes a danger to the employee.” Some large unions in both Canada and the U.S. have already promised work stoppages in the event of a pandemic.

Says Read: “This is not a flood. It’s not an explosion; it’s not going to knock down buildings; it’s not going to destroy highways, it’s not going to wash out bridges; nor is it even going to wipe out data off of your computers. This is all about the loss of people. Period.”

ECONOMIC PROPORTIONS:

After all, it’s people, more than any diesel engines or in-cab software that keep trucks rolling down the highway.

A possible hatching of an H2H bird pandemic, says Dr. Mike Tretheway, would have a much more serious impact on manpower than other disasters like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where “the local trucking force is removed from the productive base in the economy, but you have truck drivers available elsewhere in the country that are brought in or see opportunities and respond to it.”

Tretheway, who’s the executive vice-president of the Vancouver-based transportation planning firm InterVistas Consulting Group and adjunct professor at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, explains that a pandemic disaster is different because there would be an across-the-board shortage of labor,

“This is why the WHO is so concerned, because the impacts are far more broad based as they tend to crack the foundations of the economy rather than a small corner of it that you can draw resources to fix,” he says.

Dr. Tretheway — an economist — isn’t convinced that markets would balance themselves out because a pandemic would reduce overall demand for goods and services while production and transportation capacity is down.

“What we observe throughout the world in terms of disasters is that while demand for some goods and services will generally decline — for example, there might not be a high demand to buy the latest Cheryl Tiegs (clothing) line at Sears in quite the same volumes — there will also be some types of goods that will go into extremely high demand immediately… such as groceries, as people tend to stockpile food in these events,” Tretheway tells Today’s Trucking.

“That would cause huge supply-chain pressures because the system which includes production lines, inventory, and transportation, is not in a position to respond immediately.”

Such supply-side gaps could pose problems for carriers already grappling with a shortage of qualified drivers, mechanics, and operations personnel.
The so-called churning effect could go into overdrive as all available drivers and owner-ops would simply migrate from lifeless lanes to sectors with newly emerging demand.

Because of the equipment-dependant nature of the industry, some carriers may find it difficult to react as quickly to changing consumer behavior and gear up in response to high-need markets — not to mention answering the call from governments and utilities to provide emergency services — while at the same time struggling to find profits in traditional lanes sunken in a post-pandemic recession.

GESUNDHEIT! NOW WHAT DO WE DO?

Fleets that are taking steps to become as diversified as possible are the most likely to survive such a crisis, says Prof. Yossi Sheffi, director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics at the acclaimed Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to the Canada Labour Code, employees would be entitled
to stay home even if they just fear getting sick from bird flu.

“You bounce back from a disruption in two ways,” says Dr. Sheffi, author of the recent book “The Resilient Enterprise: Overcoming Vulnerability for Competitive Advantage.” First by having as much redundancy as possible — capacity, safety stock, back-up sites.

“Second, you need to build flexibility into the operation. Interchangeability of parts, inventory, and people, creates flexibility.”

Smaller carriers affixed to one specific industry should be scouting a variety of sectors, even if they don’t necessarily specialize in them at the moment, Sheffi says. If, for instance, you haul poultry and the floor falls from under you during a pandemic, you’d be in better shape than your competitor if you had gambled months back and purchased a few reefers in anticipation of what’s likely to be a sharp, short-term spike in the foodstuff market.

“The other thing I’d be doing if I were a trucking company is to be in discussions with municipalities about arranging contingency contracts,” says Sheffi. “Assuming other parts of your business are not doing well, you want to be on call for anything [the city] may need you to do.”
For the most part, it seems trucking companies — at least most belonging to carrier associations that are in the government loop — are taking the threat seriously.

Patty Kiral of Erb Transport, a New Hamburg, Ont.-based truckload and LTL refrigerated carrier, says execs have been meeting biweekly for months to review a variety of business continuity strategies.

“It’s difficult to guess what the overall impact will be, but we’re trying to guess things like how we’ll have enough dispatchers to get trucks on the road, how we’ll protect drivers as much as possible,” says Kiral, adding the company is stocking up on hundreds of surgical masks and latex gloves for employees.

Some companies are making lists of employees’ special skills. Grant Horner, safety and environment manager for Praxair Canada’s fleet, says the company has assigned him to the role of pandemic manager to track employees and equipment.

“We’re thinking about what to do with people that are not drivers, but can perhaps load and unload,” he says. Those workers, adds Horner, might accompany drivers to shippers and consignee facilities where there is no available personnel to accept and load freight. “We could supply that person so that the product still gets delivered.”

Proactive companies are currently cross-training people for a variety of positions to cover as many bases as possible during an abrupt worker shortage, says Dr. Sheffi.

Trucking execs, he says, should invest in training for drivers to come off the road to learn dispatching; or perhaps retraining former drivers to haul loads once again.

“Interchangeability of people is absolutely an element of flexibility. Being able to move people in and out of functions will be essential,” he says. “But it takes some investment. People need to do different jobs for a while beforehand so they’re not doing them for the first time when a disaster strikes.”

While some vigilant carriers are taking steps to keep wheels rolling at home, the federal government and industry groups are working feverishly on joint contingency plans via several task forces.

Rather than wait and see how market forces collide on their own, Transport Canada is solidifying partnerships to ensure the logistics of high-need products like food, pharmaceuticals, and hospital equipment is secured.
“This way when the event occurs you don’t have to rely on spontaneous civic duty but have a history of planning that takes on a momentum of its own,” says Caleb Lauer, economic officer at Transport Canada.

Ottawa right now is looking to prioritize freight in two categories. “We’ve defined it as 90 percent of freight in category A should be delivered before
70 percent of freight in group B,” says Lauer, who notes government and industry are still discussing what commodities and products should belong on each list.

Assuming a H2H pandemic disaster strikes, and in a worse case scenario half of an already-tight driver pool is bedridden or worse, the government is fully aware it would be called upon to open up additional transport capacity.

“During these events, you have to look at the whole regulatory structure, which effectively removes capacity that is actually present in the system,” says InterVistas’ Dr. Tretheway.

“In trucking, a percentage of the capacity is wasted. If Canada is affected by a pandemic that’s taking a toll on trucking, you want to remove any impediments for capacity because of silly 1930s protectionist regulations.”
Suspending cabotage regulations; liberalizing hours-of-service constraints; and considering “weight rules by conditions not calendar” are all options currently being discussed.

Although it’s not on the table, Lauer admits that permitting longer road trains might also be worthy of discussion.

Thinking even further outside the box, some officials are quietly considering calling on the tour bus industry — expected to crash in the event of wide-spread infection — to help deliver emergency supplies.

The trick, admits Lauer, is loosening the regulatory reigns while still maintaining a safe road environment.

“We’re not going haywire. We’re not saying ‘move the stuff at all costs,'” says Lauer, “but we’re interested in those kinds of regulatory interventions for the short-term and with short notice.”

IN ALL SERIOUSNESS:

A company owner’s most critical mistake doesn’t occur in the middle of a pandemic crisis, says Dr. Sheffi, but months before, when planning against the threat. Or worse, not planning.

After all, pandemics have a long history of wiping out entire populations. The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed more people than WWI — between 20 and 40 million. Scientific innovations have since helped quell such global disasters, but human ingenuity hasn’t advanced far enough to eliminate what we still don’t fully understand. Remember, there’s still no cure for the common cold.

While it’s important to take the threat seriously, business leaders and the media must also be careful to balance the seriousness of the danger with the reality on the ground. Widespread fear mongering, as well as downplaying the crisis, could be the biggest impediment against a quick recovery, warns Lauer.

“Any attempt to spin the reality of the threat is going to make things worse for companies. Those that communicate properly are going to alleviate the fear that exists in the workplace and put their team in a better position to pull through the crisis.”