Trucker task force

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Threat of avian flu prompts trucking organization to create task force

Jerry W. Jackson | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted March 8, 2006

Truckers who haul food and farm products have formed an avian-flu task force to prepare for a possible pandemic that could cripple deliveries nationwide.

"We just felt it was time to get ready. These are serious threats," Fletcher Hall, executive director of the American Trucking Association's Agricultural Food Transporters Conference, said Tuesday in a telephone interview.

Hall said the conference's more than 500 trucking-company members, including big outfits in Florida, must be prepared for any eventuality if deadly bird flu becomes widely transmissible among humans. So far, it has not spread from Asia and Europe to North or South America, but health authorities and government agencies here are urging industries and families to follow the issue closely and prepare.

Trucks and truckers will be vital not only to the delivery of flu vaccines and other medicines, Hall said, but to food for families, restaurants and schools, as well as building materials for the construction industry. "We haul everything from hogs to logs," Hall said of the Alexandria, Va.-based association's members.

Trucks, which roam the nation's highways day and night, could be a vector of transmission for flu as well, he said, and that needs to be addressed. Drivers should be among the "priority" recipients of flu vaccines, including a bird-flu vaccine once one becomes available, Hall said.

The first doses will be reserved for medical personnel and emergency "first-responders" such as police and firefighters, but truckers should also get high ranking, Hall said.

"We already have a shortage of drivers," Hall said. "If we can't get food and vaccines to people, we really will have a problem. We've already learned from experience, after 9-11 and hurricanes, if a major disruption of transportation occurs, then most grocery stores would be empty in three to five days."

I drove truck many years and the guys well do what it takes.Wont find a better bunch of men and women out there!!!

Nothing well be moving when the time comes.Who the hell well want to be outside!!The country well come to a stop.For how long who knows ?But we well adapt after a few weeks and start slow to move things again.