It’s building up into a crisis. The trucking industry has become virtually paralysed as drivers have abandoned their vehicles in large numbers, troubled by manifold reasons. It can lead to an acute shortage of both essential and non-essential goods and services in India over the next few weeks.
It may damage India’s war on the pandemic, extracting a heavy price. The impact will not only be restricted to the lockdown, but potentially may have longer-term repercussions, upsetting the country’s plans to move to a semblance of normalcy. It’s a complex problem, and there appears to be no easy solution.
The wheels of the economy simply can’t move without truck drivers. The trucking industry, after all, carries about 60% of India’s total goods and commodities or freight.
To grasp the gravity of the problem, consider this. Industry insiders say that after April 20, when lockdown restrictions were eased, only about 15% of the total 12.5 lakh national permit trucks are currently on the country’s roads. That roughly translates to about 15% drivers in the system currently.
While the exact number of drivers in this country is not known, it’s certainly above 5 million. In normal times, about 30% of about 8 million trucks in India are lying idle for want of truck drivers.
Amid the Covid-19 crisis, the shortage has further aggravated, with many drivers going back to their villages, leaving their trucks wherever they could — at dhabas, petrol pumps, or transport offices. Dwindling remuneration in a locked-down economy, police high-handedness on highways, concerns about catching the virus, are among the many reasons for their flight.
Now, supply chain is a complex ecosystem — it’s made up of factories, offices, warehouses, repair shops, labour for loading/unloading trucks, staff, etc. In the Covid-19 situation, it is a broken chain. And truck drivers are the most crucial link in that chain.
“The drivers who were hitherto categorised as second-rate citizens are now at a premium. Their shortage is sending everyone into a tizzy as their scarcity is leading towards disruption of supply chains, more so of essential commodities whose prices are increasing,” said All India Motor Transport Congress, one of India’s largest transport associations, in a recent statement.
The transport industry believes drivers need to come back into the system much before the lockdown is revoked. But it looks extremely difficult for many reasons. And that can mean, as we said, a much longer-term problem than what appears.
The sorry plight of drivers
Drivers are too scared to get back to work. Here is a story from a Delhi-based transporter.
A truck carrying animal feed came from Nagpur and was emptied at Bahadurgarh in Haryana. The vehicle was stopped on the way back since it was running empty. The driver was abused by the police. The transporter was forced to make constant calls to senior officers to release the truck.
“Until 1 am, I kept calling one officer after the other, but no one was aware of government orders allowing movement of empty trucks. Since the truck was empty, I WhatsApped receipts of the material accepted at the consignee’s godown. I also WhatsApped the government notification allowing movement of empty vehicles to the authorities. But nothing was easily accepted. Finally, the truck was released at 10 in the morning. My driver was stranded at the border without food for 13 hours. Drivers are in no position to argue with the police.”
BM Roadlines, a Gandhigram, Kutch, Gujarat-based transport company, owns 450 trucks with drivers coming from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. It deals in transporting tankers with liquid bulk cargo. These are chemicals and raw materials used by pharmaceuticals companies such as Glenmark, UPL Agro, and other big companies including FMCG giant HUL and Indian refiner IOC.
Sunil Jethwani, general manager, logistics at BM Roadlines, says, whether it is essential, non-essentials goods or empty trucks, drivers have been stopped and even been lathicharged at places like Dhanbad in Jharkhand and Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh. He faced the same problem while delivering goods to an HUL plant at Haridwar which makes shampoo and sanitisers among other essentials.
“We have told authorities, unless drivers are allowed to move, how will raw materials reach factories and then how will finished goods reach the people. Aane wale time me, shortage aani he hai (there is bound to be a shortage going ahead ),” he says.
Such instances have been frequent in the weeks following the lockdown imposed on March 23. Many drivers who have somehow brought stranded trucks to their destination after days of being stuck now want to go back home.
Truck drivers have historically never enjoyed social acceptance, largely because they stay away from their families and communities for days and their lifestyle habits are sometimes seen as a cause of concern. The above incidents may have simply broken their backs.
Dealing with the spreading virus
Some driver hubs have also been virus-hit, severely impacting the movement of drivers.
In the Delhi-NCR region, more than 50% of drivers are from Haryana’s Nuh district, formerly called Mewat, one of the most backward regions in the country and among the biggest suppliers of truck drivers in the country. The area has emerged as Haryana’s biggest Covid-19 hotspot with the number of cases exceeding 50 by April 15. The district administration has sealed 36 villages in Nuh to control the pandemic.
In many regions, drivers have been quarantined by the village panchayat and not allowed to move out. In some areas, the village sarpanch has drawn out a lakshmanrekha and there are people guarding the village. Whoever goes out won’t be allowed back in.
On April 14, for instance, AIMTC wrote to the district authorities in Ajmer, requesting the release of eight drivers of Okara Roadlines. According to AIMTC, the drivers had been put in quarantine for a period of 28 days, without checking them for symptoms. Many of these drivers were carrying essential products like rice and chemicals used in the pharmaceutical industry. The situation was resolved later after much efforts.
It’s a similar condition in Beaver and Balmer districts of Rajasthan which are driver hubs.
For transport companies, the biggest challenge is how to bring drivers back to the stranded vehicles or the transporters office. Many are scared of contracting the virus. And even if they are ready to report back to duty, there is no public transport available in the lockdown.
Logistics companies are trying to woo drivers with no salary cuts, incentives as well as ration since highway dhabas are now allowed to operate, but many are still shut. Gurugram-based Rivigo is trying to keep up their morale by sending push notifications to drivers sharing stories of how drivers braved the odds on its (driver) app. ”We have heard tales of drivers who have gone beyond the call of duty and fought the battle themselves, saying we are moving essentials,” says Gazal Kalra, co-founder at Rivigo.
Managing essential supplies
The scariest outcome of driver shortage is that it might lead to a shortage of essential supplies.
Gujarat-based BM Roadlines, for instance, works with 400 drivers in the normal scenario but at present is left with about 60, only around 15%. The transport company is not able to service all orders of essentials. “If I am getting 10 orders for moving essential goods, I’m able to serve only three,” says general manager-logistics, Sunil Jethwani.
Lucknow accounts for about 60% of the supply of medicines across Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow’s Transport Nagar is the city’s biggest transportation hub and in a normal scenario about 700 to 800 trucks move daily, with a large number of them carrying medicines manufactured by companies like Cipla, Himalaya, Abbott, GlaxoSmithKline, besides seeds and pesticides. It is not business as usual.
Pankaj Shukla, owner of Lucknow-based Shukla Transport Company, is also the general secretary of Lucknow Goods Transport Association. He works with 15 self-owned trucks, largely supplying medicines, pesticides, and seeds. Most of his drivers have fled back to surrounding villages in a 40 km to 50 km range from Lucknow.
After days of pleading and coaxing, three drivers agreed to return. “We have called them on the promise of allowing them to return if they wish so. Labour for loading trucks is hard to arrange but we are able to manage it somehow. So, at least some medicine shipments can be sent,” he says. But optimal functioning is a challenge. “We are getting orders for about six to seven trucks per day. But we are hardly able to send one or two trucks, given the crunch. There is pressure from authorities not to deny shipment of medicines.”
Since most transporters are left with orders for moving essentials only, this can be covered if at least 20%-25% drivers are brought back into the system, as per AIMTC. The government has allowed one driver and one helper per truck. Since trucks are the only vehicles which are allowed to move in the current scenario, AIMTC has suggested allowing five drivers per truck while practising social distancing. This will let more drivers reach stranded vehicles and take them to their destination.
The association has also been demanding Covid-19 health insurance for drivers, asserting that it will enable many drivers to overcome their fears about what happens to them and their family if they get infected with the virus.
But many drivers will wait for an opportune time to return — they would only come back when their employers are in a position to pay them enough.
A deep-seated problem
Many on-demand or temporary drivers won’t risk coming back, unless they see an adequate number of trips being guaranteed to them.
According to a Delhi-based transport company proprietor who runs 500 trucks, “Our drivers used to make three to four trips from Delhi to Bengaluru. Now that the economy will pick up only gradually, in the next one year or more, drivers would make one or two trips, maybe. Our team keeps calling them, but many have no hopes of making as much money as in the hey days. If they think they can make an equivalent amount of money farming or other jobs in their villages, why would they come back?”
Many in the transport community think it will be difficult to pay usual salaries to drivers because their business is badly hit. “How can we give them normal salaries if our business is not normal,” says a Gurugram-based transporter. He gets one or two orders for essential goods off and on, but that is not enough to sustain operations and pay fixed expenses. “We used to load 50 vehicles on a daily basis,” he says.
The transport industry works on a 45 to 60-day credit period and many customers have extended that indefinitely. The government has resumed collection of toll tax on national highways from April 20 which alone makes up for about 18% of the cost for a trip, besides 45% costs owing to diesel.
Then, there are other fixed costs such as insurance, payments to office staff, state taxes, etc. “We have about INR35 lakh to INR40 lakh as the current outstanding amount. There is no chance of that coming back,” says Atul Kumar Madan, proprietor at Mumbai-based Venus Transport Corporation, which largely transports pulses, pharmaceuticals, and animal feed across the country.
It all depends on how soon the complete supply chain is restored and becomes business as usual for the logistics industry. Currently, business volumes have been hit. Non-essential goods movement is bare minimum because production has stopped across industries. On the other hand, essential goods movement lacks volumes to sustain small transporters.
Most of them combine orders from multiple industries — FMCG, e-commerce, electronics, garments, pharma, etc. — to fully load a 14 to 18 tonne capacity truck. Many are not getting round-trips and operations become unviable for lack of return loads. “ Transporter manufacturer nahihotahai. Transport tabhichalega, jab industry chalegi, material milega. Market me load hi nahihai,” says a Gurugram-based transporter.
The solution probably lies in instructing the police that whenever drivers approach them for help to return to work, they should undergo the required fitness tests and then given the required documents and vehicles to operate. “The government has asked us to identify certain hotspots where a majority of the drivers are located. These hotspots can be catered to with buses to get drivers in. We have issued circulars to our members to figure out these hotspots,” says Mahendra Arya, president at All India Transporters Welfare Association(AITWA)
Drivers can easily become carriers of the virus. So there needs to be massive sanitisation of trucks on national and state highways, and transport centres within cities. Drivers should be tested before they start off their journeys or at the highways and should be equipped with masks and sanitisation kits. But clearly, they remain vulnerable and a high-risk category.
As one transporter sums it up, “Hum jaan hatheli par rakh kar kaam karrahehain.”
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