A truck driver navigates COVID-19
In Michigan, the highway traffic was as quiet as Christmas Day. In Tennessee, it seemed as busy as a normal week.
Shane Stenger, a truck driver from Erie, has seen the coronavirus rewrite the road atlas for his territory east of the Mississippi — shifting his expectations for where to rest, what to eat, who he’ll see on the road and how long it will take to get from here to there.
“I don’t have to worry about rush hours too much anymore,” he said.
Like thousands of drivers hauling freight across America, the 49-year-old kept rolling during the past two months as the nation shut down and now is tentatively beginning to reopen.
Shelter-at-home orders meant two nights a week, like normal, with his family in Erie. The rest are spent in the bunk of his black and orange 2016 International LoneStar wherever his last load dictated.
“Yesterday, I hauled auto parts — steel bars that are going to be cut into camshafts for engines,” he said on May 1, a Friday when he was back at the house he shares with his wife and teenage son. “The load before that was some Welch’s grape jelly.”
Before that: machine parts for making plastic bottles, then salad dressing, then two loads in a row of jelly and juice.
With the U.S. economy crawling, there are fewer goods worth moving. Postings of loads needing shipment in April were down 54% year over year, according to trucking freight and analytics firm DAT.
Mr. Stenger is lucky a share of his regular cargo — food for people and pets — is in demand. But another share, auto
parts, is way down, he said.
“It hasn’t hurt me economically yet,” he said. “It still could.
“There’s just not going to be, total, as much freight being moved. Like anything else, it’s supply and demand. We’ve got plenty of trucks to haul the lower amount of freight, so the rates of the freight pays less.”
Mr. Stenger has been driving a truck for 27 years. For the last 17, he has been an owner-operator. It has given him a good living. He estimates he brings home about $65,000 in a normal year after taxes and expenses.
He and his truck are leased to a company that finds his loads for him and takes a cut of the hauling fees.
These days he is usually hauling a dry van trailer — the 53-foot-long rectangular box most common on the roads. It can carry up to 45,000 pounds of freight.
Last Friday, he knew where he was going Monday, but the rest of the week was an open map. That’s typical. His itinerary would be assembled into a series of roughly 500mile legs until it took him back to Erie for the next Friday.
The pandemic has cut the human interactions from each pickup, delivery and pit stop.
Most shippers and receivers have adjusted to limiting their contact with drivers. Paperwork that used to be dropped off in offices has to be left in mailboxes outside the door. Other offices have stayed open but put up plexiglass barriers.
“A lot of places don’t want us coming in and using their bathrooms, so they have port-a-potties outside for us,” he said, chuckling.
Fast food remains easy to get, but the occasional comfort of a sit-down restaurant is missing. About half of the time, he makes meals out of leftovers and frozen dinners with the microwave, toaster oven and little fridge he keeps in the truck.
If it’s lonelier than usual, Mr. Stenger hasn’t felt it.
“If you’re someone that needs a lot of socialization all the time, you wouldn’t want to be a truck driver to begin with,” he said.
Still, it was nice when an older couple slowed down recently as they were passing him on the interstate so the woman on the passenger side could hold up a sign.
“It said, ‘Thank you, truckers, for what you do.’
“I’m just doing my job, same as always,” he said. “But it’s obviously nice that some people might think about it more.”
Mr. Stenger thought it was “totally ridiculous” Pennsylvania closed its interstate rest areas in mid-March, including where tractor-trailers park overnight. After an outcry, most areas have been reopened.
On a normal night, in a normal time, those truck parking areas would be nearly filled to capacity after 8 p.m., he estimated. Scarce parking closer to the East Coast makes them even more essential.
Other states closed parking areas along his routes, but he has noticed most have reopened. A few times the closures affected his plans for where to stop and sleep.
“After that first couple of weeks, depending on where I was, I knew enough not to count on it,” he said.
In the last two weeks, he’s noticed a worrying decline in the number of trucks on the road. The economic contraction is hard on independent drivers and owner-operators trying to piece together a living.
“Unless they’re locked into something good that’s moving, they’re gonna find less and less freight to haul,” he said.
He’s still got things to move.
Last Sunday afternoon, after a weekend at home, he picked up a load of dunnage — pallets that had been used to secure cargo during many previous trips. He drove the empty racks back to York, Pa., where they will be strapped to future loads and shipped out again.