As COVID-19 spreads, truckers need to keep on trucking

Enlarge / Truck stops around the US remain busy. (credit: Getty Images)

As cities and states have raced to shut down businesses to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the roads have gone quieter. Normally gridlocked cities like Los Angeles and Chicago have seen much faster traffic speeds during so-called rush hour-53 percent and 70 percent, respectively-as residents hunker down and hope social distancing does its work.

But shelter-in-place orders are harder to carry out when your office is moving 65mph, traveling hundreds of miles a day, and helping to move the emergency supplies that are keeping the country running during an unprecedented public health crisis. "We're still moving America," says Steve Fields, a Kansas City-based truck driver with YRC Freight.

"COVID-19 is causing the mother of all supply chain disruptions," Peggy Dorf, an analyst with the freight marketplace DAT Solutions, wrote this week on the company's blog. Emergency medical supplies like masks, ventilators, and soap need to be transported from manufacturers to medical centers, and the raw materials that help manufacturers build those things-paper, plastic, alcohol-need to get to the factory. Grocery shelves must be restocked, and quickly, while customers like schools no longer need their regular shipments. Americans everywhere cry out for more toilet paper.

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