How weather events could hamper holiday shopping in Atlantic region

As people hop online or head to stores on Black Friday to kick off the Christmas shopping season, actually getting the gift might be difficult.

Extreme weather events in British Columbia and Newfoundland, combined with a supply chain bottleneck, have created major delays in filling store shelves or delivering online purchases. 

Jean-Marc Picard, executive director of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association, spoke to CBC's Maritime Noon on Friday about how their industry is adapting.

This discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

I want to start with the weather ... and the rainstorm that led to the flooding in the lower mainland of B.C. How much of an impact is that having on the delivery of goods on this end of the country? 

This will have an impact across the country since that impacts the largest port in Canada. The major railways and all the container traffic that comes out of Vancouver is obviously going to key markets across North America. 

So this is a major event and impacts the entire supply chain across Canada, so you can imagine that does come across to Atlantic Canada. 

So all kinds of products then, the whole gamut?

Anything that comes from Asia, obviously will land in Vancouver. So anything you buy today is likely coming from there, or for the most part. So all kinds of products, just general household goods, are probably in those containers. 

Key roads and highways have been washed out because of that flooding, and it's going to take days, if not weeks, to repair those roadways. But to what degree has rail been affected by all of this? 

Well, one of the rail lines has completely collapsed. They will be back and running in a few weeks, but there's unit trains that move every day out of there. Even if it was just for 24 hours there's some major impacts, so you can imagine a couple of weeks is really severe. 

For trucking, there's a lot of traffic diverted to the U.S. coming back up to Canada through Alberta or other provinces. That was something we negotiated with our U.S. partners that they allowed us to do, which is great. Some roads in B.C. will be out for months, some secondary roads. Obviously, they'll put the priority to the major highways connecting to key markets or cities. But some areas will be down for four or five or six months, which is what we were told last week. 

And so in the meantime then, trucking companies and others are trying to find workarounds, are they and they're having some success with that? 

It's obviously challenging. Yes, they are moving things around through the U.S., but when you have a plan in place and overnight it's thrown out the window, it's not easy. There's companies with hundreds of loads coming out of there, so they've got to really turn on a dime and come up with a backup plan. 

You've got to make sure that the people are available. The drivers still have to operate within their hours of service, so if the trip is extended through the U.S. you've got to stop somewhere. So maybe the load that you're carrying used to take you eight hours to get to this place, but now it's going to take you 14. You have to reorganize everything. 

There has been a chronic shortage of drivers and now all this bad weather on top of that [is] creating another pressure for the industry. Where does the supply of drivers stand at this point? 

I would say this is the worst I've seen it in 10 years. The situation is unmanageable right now. It used to be that we [would] get by, but right now it's critical. Trucks are parked because we don't have drivers, not because there's no business. So this is impacting everybody across Canada and in the U.S., and the problem is weekly getting worse. 

COVID didn't help, it's the busy season as well. We're trying to recruit as much as we can: younger people, immigrants, women, but it's not fast enough. 

What do you think people who are going online to shop today on Black Friday, and from here on in, should be expecting? 

We're all used to having on-time delivery. We live by it, and our industry is built around that. And this will certainly have an impact on it, for sure. 

If you buy something online right now, if you used to get it in two days, well, you might add a few weeks to that or a week depending on where it's coming from. It's just really challenging right now. The supply chain was tight as it was, and now with the weather events it's creating major problems. 

How are these pressures presenting themselves in physical stores? 

In Newfoundland they're going to start to see some empty shelves for certain products because there's only one way in and one way out, that's through the ferries. The ferries were impacted by this, so that trickles down to trucking. 

Obviously they'll put a priority on food and things like that. But definitely in the short term, there's going to be some shortage of things, I'm positive of it.

So while the goal is on-time delivery, it sounds like you might want to expect at least some delays. 

It's not our fault or anybody's fault, it was a weather event, but there's only so much capacity on the vessels. There's only so many trucks going there. So obviously if last week's deliveries are still not delivered, then next week's deliveries are going to be moved up a week. 

It gets really sensitive, it gets really crucial, and right now we're there. So we're going to need to scramble to fill up the shelves. It's all hands on deck and everybody's pushing toward the same direction, but it only moves as fast as they can take the containers across.

It sounds like it's going to be a busy month.

December is always busy, but this is going to make it twice as hard, for sure.