‘If people aren’t consuming and things aren’t being made, we don’t move stuff’
B.C.’s trucking industry is bracing for the impact from U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods.
“It’s going to have a huge impact on everybody, and everything,” said Dave Earle, president and CEO of the B.C. Trucking Association.
“We’ve been in a very, very weak freight market anyway, the economy is soft. We move the things that people produce, that people consume. If people aren’t consuming and things aren’t being made, we don’t move stuff.
“So it’s absolutely going to have an impact on us.”
Just what that impact will be is unclear.
When Trump announced his tariffs, Earle said his members who make runs across the border immediately called their customers, vendors and partners to ask, “How can we work together to get through this?”
“There’s no animosity at all in the business community,” he said.
But there is a lot of uncertainty.
“The only thing business hates more than obtuse regulation and high taxes is uncertainty, and that’s what President Trump’s conduct has created, a huge level of uncertainty,” said Earle.
“What our members are looking for are steps from our provincial and federal governments to create economic development north of the border that we have a great level of influence over.”
Earle said the trucking industry contributes $2.8 billion to B.C.’s annual GDP. But it isn’t as big as in a province like Ontario.
“Seventy per cent of trade in Ontario moves across by truck,” he said. “B.C. is a very, very different mix, because we don’t have that auto and heavy manufacturing sector.
“So if you’re looking at it from a percentage of goods that move across the border, it’s really tough for us to tease out. I can tell you that about 25 to 30 per cent of my members operate across the border.”
Most of B.C.’s exports to the U.S. by truck are commodities.
“It’s wood, it’s forest product manufacturing — that type of stuff. The really big stuff moves on rail.”
The trucking association’s membership operates approximately 14,000 tractor-trailers, or about one-third of the 40,000 to 45,000 tractor-trailers operating in the province. Earle said about 26,000 people are employed by association members, of 50,000 to 60,000 in the overall B.C. trucking industry.
Earle said he doesn’t know of any layoffs from U.S. tariffs yet. But the local industry is still in recovery from the COVID pandemic.
“In British Columbia, we are just starting to kind of flirt with getting back to employment levels in the private sector that we had pre-COVID,” he said.
“Let that sink in. Six years later, we are so far behind every other province in Canada. It’s depressing.”
Nationally, Marco Beghetto of the Canadian Trucking Alliance said the trucking industry is “reeling”.
The Trump tariff “is going to be absolutely devastating to our industry. This is an industry that is already experiencing the worst freight economy in 40 years. The freight market has tanked.
“Now you add 25 per cent tariffs and the reduction of exports. The compound effect is going to be absolutely devastating.”
Beghetto said that 10 million trucks cross the U.S. border each year.
“Historically, the main exports shipped by truck have been machinery, manufactured goods, automotive products, agri‑food products and chemical products,” he said in an email.
Beghetto said there are about 300,000 long-haul trucks in Canada, 320,000 truck drivers, and over 100,000 support staff.
