On
April 9, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert issued an order requiring a travel declaration
for all vehicles entering the state. On Friday, Herbert clarified that order,
issuing a series of exemptions, including for truck drivers.
During a media briefing on Friday,
April 10, Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Jess Anderson said
commercial airline employees, truck drivers, public safety officials, active
military, healthcare providers and those who live across state lines but travel
into Utah for work are exempt from the order. Those exempt from the order will
still receive a notification on their phone, but they can ignore it unless they
show signs of COVID-19.
For all other drivers, the Utah
Department of Transportation will collect the information in an electronic form
that individuals will receive via text message upon entering the state. The
order requires every individual 18 years of age or older who enters Utah,
either as a final destination through the Salt Lake City International Airport,
or on Utah roads, to complete a travel declaration form before entering the
state.
A wireless emergency alert system
near the state’s borders will notify those entering by car and truck of the
need to complete a declaration online.
This order went into effect at 8
a.m. on April 10, 2020, and remains in effect until 11:59 p.m. on May 1, 2020.
Kentucky extends truck exemptions
Kentucky has extended its emergency order for truck drivers delivering essential goods and services. The
order was set to expire at midnight on Sunday, April 12. The new order extends
the exemptions through June 1, 2020.
“This is just one of the many steps
being taken to get much-needed supplies and services deployed as quickly as
possible to areas that need them most,” Gov. Andy Beshear said. “We are all
pulling together. We will get through this pandemic, and we will get through it
together.”
The order applies to vehicles
engaged in response to the pandemic and relieves drivers from maximum driving
times and weigh station stops. In addition, the order authorizes the state’s
Transportation Cabinet’s Department of Vehicle Regulation to waive permit fees
for overweight/over-dimensional vehicles. Carriers must comply with safety
requirements and have a copy of the order in the truck cab if operating under
the authority of the official order.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration’s COVID-19 emergency declaration runs through May 15.
Nebraska Trucking Association launches #ThankaTrucker
The Nebraska Trucking Association
(NTA) has begun handing out free lunches to truck drivers as part of its
#ThankaTrucker campaign.
Businesses and individuals can
sponsor a free lunch, which will be handed out at locations where truckers
frequent. Kids can also draw posters thanking a trucker and submit them to
thankyou@nebtrucking.com. The posters will be displayed throughout the state.
NTA has also partnered with the
Nebraska State Patrol to hand out sanitary packs to truckers.
UPS supporting face shield manufacturing
The UPS Foundation is providing
shipping services to a University of Louisville project to create face shields on 3D printers. The project by the university’s Additive Manufacturing Institute
of Science & Technology (AMIST) started with a goal of providing face
shields to local Louisville hospitals and other first responders.
Ed Tackett, who leads workforce
development for the AMIST facility for Speed School, said that project expanded
and there are now over 30,000 orders for face shields to be shipped around the
country.
The group has set up four
production lines and has a team of 70 volunteers producing 3,000 shields a day.
“We’re grateful for the opportunity
to support a project that will help doctors, nurses and others who are on the
front lines of the pandemic crisis,” UPS Airlines President Brendan Canavan said.
“It’s times like these when the spirit of our community comes through most
strongly.”
In addition to AMIST, additive
manufacturer Fast Radius, located on the UPS Louisville Supply Chain Solutions
campus, and Robojockeys, a high school robotics team, also are producing the
face shields and delivering them to the university for shipment. Injection
molding capacity by Samtec and Grote Industries have nearly doubled output.
Milk dumping is unfortunate, but necessary
Social media was abuzz this past
week with videos of farmers dumping milk. While consumers in some areas can’t
find milk in local stores, the images of milk being poured into the ground
created an uproar.
Katelyn Walley-Stoll, a farm
business management specialist, and Alycia Drwencke, a dairy management
specialist, both with the Southwest New York Dairy, Livestock and Field Crops
Program, explained the practice in an op-ed published on April 11, 2020, in the Evening Tribune.
According to the authors, milk
demand has decreased in the U.S. by about 10% due mostly to the closing of
restaurants and schools, which has seen a 60% drop in demand. Retail locations
are reporting a 40% increase, but it has not been enough to offset the drop.
“While we often think of milk as
our companion to cookies and our morning cereal, it is also made into things
like cheese, yogurt, evaporated milk and ice cream,” they write. “These
products require additional time and costly infrastructure investments to
produce. It’s not easy for milk plants and production facilities that were set
up to make 50-pound bags of shredded cheese for large-scale buyers to quickly
convert to packaging one-pound bags for retail. Similarly, fluid milk plants
that were producing cartons or large bags of milk for schools and other
institutions can’t easily switch to bottling one-gallon containers. The shift
from bulk packaging to meeting the needs of home consumers is also creating
delays in getting milk from farm to fridge.”
They note that there is not a lack
of milk, but rather delays in getting milk to the consumer due to supply chain
and production constraints, necessitating the dumping of the milk due to its
perishable nature.
“As one of the most regulated food
products in our country, there is a limited amount of time between milk leaving
the farm in large tanker trucks to when it’s made into a final product. Because
of this perishability, farmers can’t hold onto milk when buyers aren’t taking
orders or store it until prices are high – they have to sell their milk, or
dispose of it responsibly, within days of production,” they said.
Food trucks to set up at New Mexico rest stops
The New Mexico Department of
Transportation said that food trucks will be allowed to operate at rest stops,
in accordance with the Federal Department of Transportation’s order this week.
“The food trucks will provide an
additional option for commercial drivers and other travelers, especially in
rural areas in between cities and towns. Our goal is to provide as many options
as possible for necessary travelers to stay safe and reduce the risk of
COVID-19 spread,” DOT Secretary Mike Sandoval said in a statement.
While food trucks will be at rest
stops, the state’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, is looking at how the
state can screen truckers.
“Like all of these supplies, it has
been incredibly challenging to get thermometers. I call them the temperature
guns, so that you can do that at a safe distance with personnel who can gather
that information,” Grisham said, according to KRQE.
The governor is asking truckers
entering the state to declare symptoms of COVID-19 when they enter New Mexico
so officials can unload the trucks without jeopardizing anyone else’s health,
the report said.
Circle Logistics tracking FEMA, grocery loads
Circle Logistics is using MacroPoint, a real-time tracking system from Descartes (Nasdaq: DSGX) to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) track
critical medical and grocery loads. The need for higher levels of tracking is
due to demand and the importance of the loads, said Andrew Smith, vice
president of sales and operations at Circle Logistics.
“Our team is
truly rallying in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. We’ve shifted our entire
transportation network to manage a 700% increase in volume from customers
moving critical freight, including personal protective equipment (PPE),
respirators and cots for FEMA and grocery loads for major brands,” he said. “Descartes MacroPoint provides the visibility
platform that our whole organization can use to track the movement of these
goods. Without it, pivoting business and moving our 12 offices to a
work-from-home environment would have been much more challenging.”
MacroPoint
offers real-time location, status and estimated time of arrival for loads.
