‘We’ll be able to meet everyone’s day to day needs’: BCTA

• Trucks making slow progress
• More traffic directed through Highway 3
• Be mindful of truckers in unfamiliar areas

Last week, following the devastating floods and landslides, the message from the B.C. Truckers Association (BCTA) was to ‘Take a breath, it’ll be okay.’

It was in response to panic buying that saw many grocery store shelves quickly emptied.

It appears that message from the BCTA has rung true with stores now replenishing fresh produce across the city.

President of the BCTA, Dave Earle told Kelowna10 Tuesday, there is still work to be done when it comes to getting goods to their destination.

However, he’s happy with the early results, now that highways have opened to essential traffic and trips from the east and through the United States are being better coordinated.

“We’ve been very successful in resupplying communities that were isolated,” Earle said. “Monday, we were pleased with some of those moves to facilitate across border in-transit moves in the United States.”

Highway 3 unfamiliar to many truckers

He added while Highways 3 and 7 are open to limited traffic, Highway 3 specifically poses the most challenges for drivers including tighter corners and tougher roads.

“It has the most limited capacity simply because it’s a smaller highway,” he said. “The ministry has repositioned a whole bunch of road maintenance equipment to make sure the route is well maintained as much as we can, but it’s taking a long time to move across it.”

Earle added Highway 3 is a new route for many truckers and they’re still trying to get used to it.

Many goods are now making their way to where they need to go with increases road traffic, but Earle noted the flow is still nowhere near the same as it was before the highways were badly damaged.

“This is why we’re seeing a redesign of the supply chain and different distribution hubs and nodes being utilized, not moving goods necessary through the Lower Mainland and changing those configurations,” he said. “Particularly in the Interior, we’re seeing lots of moves to serve it from Alberta, lots of moves to move goods differently.”

Earle asked local motorists and residents in the Interior to be mindful of commercial vehicles driving in areas where they normally don’t go.

“We ask everyone to respect the essential service and travel designations and be a little more patient and a little more kind with drivers,” he said. “They’re in very unfamiliar territory under immense pressure to get the goods they have on their loads to where they need to be.”