This week roughly 12,000 auto workers have been laid off or are working reduced hours because supplies can't cross the border
Murray Mullen, the head of one of Canada’s biggest trucking firms, sees blockades at border crossings this week in terms of productivity and pinch points. He sees trucks unable to move, or forced to take roundabout routes to get where they’re going, adding extra time and distance, eating into an already short supply of drivers and equipment.
“We’ve got trucks sitting for hours on end,” said Mullen, the CEO of Alberta-based Mullen Group Ltd., said in an interview on Thursday. “It’s going to cost us a lot of money. Eventually, I’m going: ‘Well, I’m not paying that cost.'”
So the costs get passed on — a familiar story lately in the trucking business. Transport companies were facing high costs, high demand and a low supply of drivers and trucks even before the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ont., shut down a vital trade artery into the United States.
“I can’t get equipment. I can’t get new drivers. The people I’ve got all want to be paid more money,” Mullen said. “When these things happen, it backs everything up.”...
This was excerpted from the 11 February 2022 edition of the Financial Post.