Shelves wiped clean of food and freezers devoid of meat are eerie and unsettling sights for Nevadans accustomed to finding anything they want when they go to the store.
But in an interview for the IndyMatters podcast, Nevada Trucking Association CEO Paul Enos insisted that shoppers don’t need to fear a food shortage. He said the scarcity on display is the product of people buying things up in massive quantities with none of the advance warning to stores and suppliers that usually comes ahead of heavy shopping periods.
“We shouldn’t be concerned because we have plenty of food in the supply chain. We have plenty of supplies in the supply chain. We have plenty of toilet paper out there in the supply chain,” Enos said. “The issue is how do we get it from the manufacturers, the warehouses, the distribution centers, into our grocery stores.”
For example, Enos said stores need to rebound after Las Vegas shoppers snapped up six weeks’ worth of inventory of goods such as flour, sugar, salt, rice and beans in a matter of four days.
“We’re at Christmas level shopping habits, which we usually start preparing for in August with our retail partners and the trucking companies,” Enos said. “It takes us a while to get ready for that big uptick. This was greater than Christmas, and there was no planning.”
To address the demand, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for the first time in its history issued a nationwide suspension of “hours of service” rules for truck drivers who are meeting immediate needs related to the pandemic. The hours of service rules are restrictions that limit drivers to 11 hours of drive time within a 14-hour work day.
“What we have seen with this huge demand is lines of trucks, miles, miles long,” he said, pointing to a recent big rig backlog outside of a Smith’s distribution center in Henderson. “That day is getting burned up waiting to be loaded or unloaded at these distribution centers.”
The suspension applies to truckers delivering food, medical supplies, sanitation products and other goods. Enos said a former colleague who now works at the Nevada State Medical Association had noted problems getting coronavirus test kits between remote areas of the state and the state health lab because of hours of service rules.
Enos relayed the matter to the feds. Diagnostic materials are in the list of priority items.
But are the truckers themselves going to be OK in the middle of the pandemic as they work longer hours to sate the demands of shoppers? Enos said there are still protections in place.
“We’re required as a trucking industry to provide an equivalent level of safety for our drivers that we would have when these hours of service rules are in effect,” he said. “If a driver is tired, they say they’re tired, that trucking company is required to give them 10 hours off for them to get rest. So I want to assure the public that safety is paramount for our industry.”
He also acknowledged that the workforce in the trucking industry trends older, and older people are more likely to face severe repercussions if they catch the virus. He’s trying to ensure they have protections during the interactions they have with people when transferring cargo, both for their own health and to ensure they’re not out of commission for weeks.
“The truck driver average age in this country is over 50 years old. So we do have a lot of folks in that vulnerable population,” Enos said. “That’s why I was working so hard earlier this week to find [personal protective equipment] for our drivers, to find gloves, to find sanitizing wipes.”
Asked about the solution to bare shelves, Enos echoed some of the advice put out by groups such as the Retail Association of Nevada — don’t over-purchase and keep others in mind.
He said his family put it into practice the other day by sharing a pack of toilet paper with a next door neighbor who was down to his last two rolls.
“My hope is that when we come out of this crisis, we have a better understanding of how reliant we are on each other — that what we did to get us through this crisis, that we can look at other problems and try to solve them that way,” Enos said, “and hopefully, be the people that we all strive to be where we are helping our neighbors.”
