What would Thanksgiving be like without truck drivers?
From FreightWaves:
Each November, families all across the United States gather around dining room tables to feast on comfort food and recite all the reasons they’re thankful. Typically, these annual gratitude lists include classics like family, friends and good food. Truck drivers rarely receive shoutouts, but what would the holiday be like without them?
Americans consume about 46 million turkeys — 1.4 billion pounds of poultry — on Thanksgiving alone, according to the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association. Unlike the first Thanksgiving, most folks are not out hunting wild turkeys; their tables are adorned with birds purchased from local supermarkets. All of those turkeys — along with everyone’s favorite canned cranberry sauce and boxed stuffing mix — were, of course, transported to those supermarkets via truck.
Without truck drivers working tirelessly in the days and weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, stores shelves would be barren and holiday meals would consist of dishes that rely only on what people can source without modern comforts like grocery stores.
“We have told people for years that everything we have got to you via truck at some point in its lifecycle. Our drivers deserve a lot of gratitude for what they do,” Choptank Transport President and CEO Geoff Turner said.
As silly as it sounds, a Thanksgiving without truck drivers could lead to the same chaotic hoarding and profiteering the country faced earlier this year in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, people could start selling green beans and cream of mushroom soup out of their garages at 1,000% markups.
“We got a little glimpse of the importance of truck drivers when COVID first started thanks to binge buying,” Turner said. “The shelves get emptied really quickly. If there were no trucks to resupply those shelves, it would only take about a day for stuff to get wiped out. There would be a large change in people’s attitudes then.”