The country relies on its 17.3 million truckers to keep store shelves full while also connecting the nation’s ports with its manufacturing hubs. The logjam is preventing crucial deliveries from reaching companies, stalling production in key industrial regions, with the impact likely to continue rippling across the economy even as cities move to loosen lockdowns.
“The central government is now trying to clear up these transportation snarls, so the problem may have stopped getting worse,” according to Cui. “But a full recovery is impossible until more cities relax their border controls and other public-health restrictions, which is unlikely before the end of April.”
In some instances, truck drivers have been sealed inside their cabins, their doors and windows taped over with plastic, leaving them locked inside their vehicles. Truckers were facing onerous conditions even before the lockdowns were implemented, with more than 37% of drivers working more than 12 hours on average a day, according to a June 2021 report from the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing.
The harsh containment measures have paralysed transportation across the Yangtze Delta region. That includes the world’s largest port of Shanghai, where inefficient Covid testing reduced the number of truck drivers with valid certificates while other drivers stayed away to avoid mandatory quarantines, according to a Caixin report late last month.
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