Protection on the Dock: Working to ensure safe person-to-person contact

The challenges posed by COVID-19 and the solutions that are required to simultaneously maintain the flow of goods while ensuring the protection of vital and important workers who have person-to-person contact during the process of picking up and delivering cargo is of incredible importance to contain the spread of the virus.

Our global partners have been receiving notices from some pickup locations in Europe where demands are being made that truckers who are coming to pick up or drop off cargo must be equipped with personal protective equipment including, but not limited to, protective masks, gloves and clothing while maintaining a minimum required safe distance of 1.5 meters.

It is important to realize that trucker drivers, depending upon whether or not they are picking up air freight, LCL sea freight or even multiple FCL pickups in a day, would be required to keep a small stockpile of single-use protective equipment. While we understand the importance of requests being made by certain suppliers, a driver making eight or ten stops in a day would have to carry a tremendous amount of protective gear.

The EU and the CDC have instituted a number of guidelines around person-to-person contact and ensuring hands are regularly and vigorously washed with soap and water and, when that isn’t available, utilizing hand sanitizer with minimum criteria.

As we work through the logistics of trying to meet the demands of pickup or delivery locations while securing adequate supplies of the necessary personal protective items such as masks, gloves, sanitizers and other materials, we ask patience and understanding and flexibility to find common ground where everyone is kept safe and cargo is kept in motion.