COVID, Vaccines, Border Crossings, Oh My! What is Going At The US Border

Special PODCAST Presentation LIVE. Update. What is happening at the border in regard to the Vaccine double doses being made mandatory?
Also, John got COVID. What was his experience?

Here is what the Canadian Government is saying to truck drivers as of today: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/news/2022/01/requirements-for-truckers-entering-canada-in-effect-as-of-january-15-2022.html?fbclid=IwAR3kBGZlX4wQTyjGbEb2d4L7OSyTNvbp_96WSoUzW21you4Egp3n-x-rA9w

Here is the link to Jamie Irvin's Heavy Duty Parts Report:
https://heavydutypartsreport.com/?gclid=CjwKCAiA24SPBhB0EiwAjBgkhmtP0qCVfDJUrWjVw-2Vf__LN6OBbR9wV7XLK7FXnXiZfQBJ2l5HgRoCpPcQAvD_BwE


And your Hosts contact info:
John Farquhar
Summit Risk Solutions: summitrisksolutions.ca
1 226 802-2762
John@summitrisksolutions.ca
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-farquhar-9b88771a2/?originalSubdomain=ca

Chris Harris
Safety Dawg Inc: safetydawg.com
Chris@SafetyDawg.com
1 905 973 7056
Linkedin:

Transcript

0:01

And welcome to another episode of the Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast. Everyone. Good Friday. Hey Johnny, how are you? I'm I'm not bad, brother. I'm not bad. I could be a lot better, you know, but we'll talk about that. So what more could you ask For, look, who's saying hello. I just wanted to throw that up there. Hi, Gladys. Whoops. Where did John go? Oh, John decided the, I tell ya, he's got to learn to feed those squirrels. Yes, yes. I'm sorry. Yes. I don't know what happened. So the topic today, just so everybody knows is going to be just two things. Well kind of two things. A what the heck and I didn't swear is happening at the border and John, the co-host Johnny Farquhar is recovering from COVID. So he's a trip back to John's trucking days and play a little game. And we're going to talk about COVID and stuff like that at the end and how it would have affected John on the road. So, first of all, Johnny, what the heck is going on at the border right now? Oh man. I'll tell you what I don't, I don't think I want to be there. Come tomorrow. Well, tomorrow we could say, ah, at 1201 tomorrow morning, which will be just after midnight tonight. If you haven't got your ducks in a row and you haven't got your vaccinations slip and your proof of a full vaccination, you're going to be having a holiday that you don't want a 14 day holidays or matter of fact. Yeah. I mean, this whole thing is crazy. I think it's crazy. And it started with the miss sore. I'm trying to fix, fix your background there, buddy. Just realize that disappeared there. Squirrels. My squirrels left me and my background drops out of, out of place. So win everything. Here we go. Here we go. Alright. So Wednesday, wasn't it. Wednesday. I think it was the border agents came out with their statement saying, ah, yeah, truck drivers are going to be okay. Yep. Yep. CBS a hadn't made a formal announcement. There was nothing in writing apparently, but there was some meetings that were had some transportation association, some news outlets had got wind of this and it was like, Hey, there's a reprieve for Canadian truck drivers. And you know, if you're unvaccinated, you'll still be able to come into Canada. You were going to anyway, but now you won't have to quarantine. So, you know, Hey, life was going to be grand. It was like, whew. Okay. Drivers can come and go again. So kind of a bit of a reprieve for maybe a week because we know the U S is still coming in. But other than that, it was like, Hey, this is great. So, and then something else happened. Well, I mean, at the time when that was released, I went, oh my God, this is finally, I think maybe the government was listening because it's not just the trucking associations that are really concerned about this it's there's manufacturers, Auto production, Everybody that trucks or hires trucks to move freight. I'm I'm sure even families of drivers, you know, because this meant, well, you know, my, my, my husband or my wife, my spouse could be out of work right now because they can't cross the border. And you know, the there's no jobs working within the province. They're all taken up and there's nothing running across Canada right now. Cause they're all taken up. So I'm sure this was a bit of a relief for a lot of families as well. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, the other shoe dropped and the federal government said, oh, time out. We never said that. Exactly, Exactly. So apparently somebody opened their mouth that shouldn't have opened their mouth and said something. They shouldn't have said something because it really wasn't true. And as they say, somebody's spoken error. Yeah. And are you there? Yep. Oh, okay. I just pulled up that the Lacey and on the screen there. Yeah. And I think it actually mentions in there that it was made an error, these, the statement or something like that. Well, I just, you know, here's some of the highlights Canadian truck drivers who are not fully vaccinated, can't be denied entry into Canada. Well, hallelujah. However, you might have to vaccinate. So this And I, I, I want to jump in there, Chris, real quick. Great. In that same area where you were talking about, and we talked about this earlier in the week, or not literally in a week, last week in podcasts, right there in that same statement, it says Canadian citizens, persons registered as Indians under the Indian act and permanent residents. So we talked about this last week when we said, if you're not a permanent resident, yet you have a work visa, but you're not a permanent resident. This could cause you some grief getting back into Canada. Yes, sir. And it's such a confusing time. So right now, as it stands for Canadians, permanent residents, those that are covered under the Indian act should, will be allowed to come into Canada. However, you may have to quarantine. And this is very, I, I found this interesting to the final decision regarding entry in quarantine is made by the government representative at the port of vain entry based on information presented at the time. So they're not even saying that you have to quarantine, they're saying that the border official who's allowing you into the country is going to determine that that's a lot of power. Well, I mean the border officials have always had a great deal of power. Yeah. This is very subjective now. So not sure I'm a fan of what's happening, but the main thing I want our listeners to hear is

as, as of tomorrow, 12: 6:42

01 AM tomorrow morning, you've got our views. The arrived can app is the easiest way and you should be double Vaxxed or else other stuff could happen. And I don't think we're gonna know what totally all that other stuff is until it starts to play out. And we start to hear stories of, of drivers stuck at the border. Drivers turned around at the border. You know, this, this is going to be interesting as to how this all plays out. So we can only speculate what's going to happen, but Hey, we're not there. Yeah. And I don't, we good at speculate. Okay. I guess that's half the fun. So I'd like to say if there's any listeners that are watching this podcast or watch any of our podcasts and you're a cross-border driver, let us know how the experience is for you. You know, we we'd love to hear it, put it in the comments down below and, and let us know what, what you're dealing with. Yeah. Because it's going to be a cluster, a fudge, you know, and the other part is, and I've had varying opinions. I've asked a few trucking company owners about this, you know, what's it going to do to border crossing times? And I've had everything from, it's going to be a disaster too. It's not going to affect anything. If you show up with the arrive can app it's piece of cake. So I'm interested to know what's going to happen at the border. Yeah. Well, and I know there's been a lot of drivers that are already using the arrived can app. So, so it'll be interesting. So I see there's a comment from Jonathan. Yeah. Good morning, Jonathan, first of all. More Than half of them. So I know Jonathan very well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we get along great. Cause the first two letters of our name are the same. So, And then we'll throw a shout out. I was talking to Jonathan earlier this week and he said, he goes to the kitchen or what do you call that? The fleet safety council. And he sees you there on a regular basis. So yeah. So Yeah, I was just going to reach Jonathan's comment and thanks for the comment, Jonathan, the border is going to be an absolute disaster until they get this process smooth out. Yeah. Well I know there's a lot of drivers that are already using the arrive can app, but there's also a lot of drivers that are still not using the ride cat app. So with, with the CVSA saying, you gotta use the arrive can app. There's where the delay is going to come in because it's now going to be a matter of, I got to pull up my piece of paper to show my proof of vaccination or on my phone or whatever it be, this is going to take time. And then the border guard is going to have to look at it. He's going to have to, you know, this, that and the other thing. And whereas the arrived cam app, it shows up on their screen, they pull up your license plate number, boom, all the information's there. And you know, it just, it just throws everything off for a week. So the rest of our names are spelled and pronounced differently. Yes. So true. So true. So yeah. So you're going to have guys that are doing it right, which you're going to streamline through, but in between that you're going to have drivers that aren't doing it and that's going to be the cumbersome. So all this is going to do is just cause delay, delay, delay. And if it's, if it's a two minute delay here, it compounds. Cause there'll be a two minute delay. There there'll be a two minute delay. They're a five minute delay. They're five minutes late. And next thing you know, instead of having, you know, a 15 minute wait getting to the border, we're going to have a whole bunch of trucks coming in at one time and now it's going to be a two hour delay. And the other thing I just like to mention that does say it in that article that I threw on the screen there, make sure drivers that you have your backup info in case something happens to the arrive can app in case, you know, anyways, just make sure you've got either printed documents or it's saved on your cell phone somehow. So that you've got a secondary proof that you've been double back if that's the case first. So, so, so now I want to, I want to throw in, it's not dropping the other shoe. It's it's just going to throw a totally different shoe into the mix here. What about next Saturday? Well, January the 22nd, I was going to bring that up nest. Yeah. You know, there's, there's no app for going into the U S they they've not come up with a, an app for Border Crossings for producing documentation. There's actually been nothing even stated of what the U S border guards are going to be looking for as proof of vaccination. Yep. So, and what John's referring to of course, is entering the states as we believe our best guess is January the 22nd. So one week from tomorrow, you will have to show proof of being double Vaxxed because we are foreigners as we enter the states and they've deemed it necessary to limit us entering their country, which is certainly their right. And by the way, Canada has done the same to our foreign truck drivers that are in it is very limited. You must be double backs to come into our country with proof of double vaccination. Of course. So if January, this is an interesting month. Yeah. Well, and this has actually been in place for a little bit for non essential travel, you know, so tourism, whatnot, you've been able to go stateside, but you've had to provide proof of vaccination. So I haven't crossed the border since this went into play. So I don't know what they're even asking for. I know, I know you got to have proof of vaccination, but I haven't heard of what, like, is it on your phone? Is it okay? Are they looking for a paper? Copy what, you know, there's nothing and there's no website or app to load anything up to. So it's really interesting. I'd be curious to see what, what they're going to be doing, but whatever it is they do, it's going to take time. Yes. And again, drivers or companies, if you know, what's going to be happening at the border, going into the U S is what John's talking about. We would love to hear, leave us a comment or a truck driver and leave us a comment next week as to what your experience is, crossing the us border. Yeah. Going into the U S of course, we kind of know what's going to happen coming home. Although that's going to be an experience as well. John is that about it for border crossing? We've got going in into the states starts January the 22nd. We gotta show proof of being double backs, coming home, coming into Canada for Canadian residents, Canadian citizens. And it was covered under the Indian act. You've you can always come home, but you meet up to the border official because I want him to get to our second topic. Second time we have two topics today. Don't we? That's so interesting. You're a recovering alcoholic. No, no. I wish it was, You are a recovering COVID victim. I am, I am. And I, you know, I never thought I'd get to talk so proudly about, Hey, I got the vid. Yeah. I, I, I come down with a flu like symptoms a week ago. So last Friday I started with a scratchy throat Friday evening, and I started feeling quite fatigued. And, you know, I just thought it was busy day. My wife and I were out running errands and doing sets and, and whatnot and come home. And I was getting a scratchy throat and thought, okay, well, I picked up something and then Saturday went downhill very quickly, was very fatigued. Lightheadedness. The throat got worse by Sunday. It was like, I was trying to swallow broken glass. It hurts so bad. Some congestion, tiredness, achy bones, achy muscles, everything. And then Monday was a, I think the bottom I hit bottom on Monday and it was absolutely terrible. I couldn't get out of bed. Couldn't cope. Couldn't manage, tried to sleep most of the day. And, and interestingly enough, during all this time, so Friday night wasn't bad, but Saturday night, Sunday night, Monday night. And, and probably into Tuesday night, I did not sleep at all. Just like literally minutes at a time. And then you're awake. And then you're trying to sleep and awake and stupid dreams and stuff that was going on Tuesday was my, my, my coming out of the whole day was starting to feel better. Wednesday felt really good in the morning. And then it kind of dropped off in the afternoon. And ever since then, it's been pretty much about staying steady nowhere near back to a hundred percent, by any means. Even today, here we are eight days later and I'm, I'm not, but we did a rapid test on Wednesday and I tested positive. Now my wife and I been side by side since Wednesday evening, LA like a week ago, Wednesday evening, my, I was out in the field. I had a client visits and whatnot, and then come home Wednesday evening. And my wife had been side-by-side with me all that time. Even Friday when we were out, we were together. We didn't have a lot of interaction with other people. Wednesday. I would say I had some interaction with some client visit and meetings, but I was in one location. There was mask wearing and whatnot. But also at the same time, there were a lot of people in that office. And they were obviously quite comfortable with one another, because as employees, they were not wearing masks in their, in their close proximity, but, you know, wore masks in and out of the meeting and whatnot, and then spaced in the meeting and stuff like that. But I don't know, there was nobody with any symptoms of any sort that made me go, Ooh, I stay away from you. You know, there was none of that. And, and as my wife, and I've talked about it several times as I, I didn't even have to be in contact with somebody. I could have picked it up, touching a door knob, you know, opening the door to get out. It could have been there. There were the, the location that we were at. I could actually see the front foyer from where I was sitting in the boardroom. And there were several, several, several people that had come through the front door during our time period there and delivery people, you know, other people coming and going, one of them, I don't even have to be in contact with them, but they could have maybe touched the door, left something behind. And I happened to grab the door on the way out, because one of the interesting things is, is when I'm with people, I'm always the first one to grab the door. I opened the door and hold it for other people. You know, I'm just that gentlemen. Yeah. But you know, it's also like take one for the team, but yeah. So we're not sure where it came from, but it it's definite symptoms started showing up on, on a Friday evening. And it very much flu. Like I wanted to ask you, put your driver's hat on. Okay. You are 500 miles away from home. Oh, he's going for a hat. All right. Here you are 500 miles away from home. It's I believe you said Friday, it started to hit you. Yep. How would you cope with this? If you were a truck driver on the road? Oh gosh. Okay. So I can, I can actually share this good information because my wife and I had sat down and we've talked about this left, right. And center many, many times. And, and also on top of that, I had two incidents back years ago when I was driving truck where I did get very sick, it was more stomach flu. So it didn't last very long. But interestingly enough, if Friday be a good time that maybe I would be on my way out, you know, heading out of the country and I'm headed state side or something like that. Yeah. Oh, there you go. The enforcement guy. Yes. But, you know, I said, if I, by Saturday I was just whacked and then Sunday got worse and Monday got worse. If I was on the road, I would have been, I definitely would have been zonked by, by Saturday. And the sad part is because I, if I hadn't been on the way out, or even on the way home, there's a good chance. I probably would've pushed it, you know, which would only make it worse. And I would say definitely Sunday and Monday, I wasn't going anywhere. I, I was, I was on the couch Sunday. I was in, I have a nice lazy boy chair. I was in that stretched out. I was imbed most of Monday on the couch. Like there was no going anywhere. I ate so bad. I hurt so bad. I couldn't have gotten in the truck if I wanted to. So I would have been bedbound in a truck. There's no doubt about it. And then, you know, even this morning feeling the way that I am here, we are eight days after the fact, you know, Weezie and I were talking about, well, where would I be? What would I do if it was today? And I said, well, if I was on the road trying to get home still, I'd probably push it to come home. And the problem is I could be way more than I should be for operating a commercial motor vehicle. But if I was at home, I'd be selling you. That'd be calling, I'd be calling Jonathan up and saying, there's no way I'm going out in that truck, Jonathan. There's just no way I'm in no shape. You know? And he'd be upset because he'd go. But I got the truck to go. I got nobody else. This truck's got to go. And I'd be trying to beg him to not make me go because I'm just in no shape. So not to say what I've gone through the last eight days is what everybody else is going to have. Yeah. Everybody's going to be different. There's no doubt, but you need to be cognizant of the fact I've been double Vaxxed today. Actually we were supposed to go for our booster shot. We canceled those on Wednesday, knowing that we were in no shape to get that. You know, prior to that, I had nothing. I was, everything was great, but this is kicked me in the butt so bad. I feel like an 80 year old man. And I don't think your symptoms are that different from many of course, some people do get it milder, but some people get it much more severe. And I just wanna say, you know, shout out to any hell, but you know, can you imagine John's experience on the road? And there are truck drivers that are experiencing this on the road. So to say, think a trucker is an understatement. I think, well, So let me, let me throw another twist in there. So I'm just not from a trucker perspective. I I'm getting better, but my wife now has contracted COVID okay because of me, right? She's gotten it from me. Now. Her symptoms are nowhere near as severe as what mine have been. And she's about two days. We figured two days behind where I've been, she's not gone through as severe of symptoms. She's got the scratchy voice, a lot of phlegm, congestion and whatnot, tired, achy, but just not to the severity the I am, but seriously, if I was a driver at home and now I brought that home to my wife or my kids, and all of a sudden, now I got Jonathan going, Hey, Johnny, I need you to jump in the truck and go, and I'm going, Jonathan, my wife and kids have got this now. And there's nobody here to take care of them. I've gotten better, but I can't leave them like this. This is not fair. You know? So it certainly doesn't take long to go from eight days to 14 days to 16 days, I'm not working, you know, because of this thing. And I, you know, I picked it up wherever, like I said, you know, off a door knob or something. So it just, just goes to show, you can be as careful as you want to be, you can be vaccinated and you're still going to get this and it's, and it's gonna kick you in the butt. Well, even, you know, you know, you mentioned the booster. I got my booster last. So now it's done the five days. So it should have active, but I'll tell ya, my wife and I, we were quite different. Just like, you're talking about the COVID on Sunday. I was fatigued all day. I never nap. I had two naps on Sunday and I went to bed at nine 30 at night. It felt fine, but I got my booster on Saturday was just checked out. And of course your arm feels like somebody gave you a big punch, but yep. And, but Tina, my wife not, she felt fine. Her arm was sore, but other than that, she had, you know, yeah. She was fully functional. So it is different for everybody differently. Yeah, exactly. A heck of a thing. So, so John, we gotta wrap it up. I know. Well, first of all, it's Friday. Whew, ha Yea GIF. Thanks. Thanks to any L where am I going? There, there, look At that. Yep. There we go. Take a tracker. Thanks to NHL for that new hat. I appreciate that. And yes, thank a trucker because as you just heard, if John was on the road, I think it would have been an absolute nightmare. I've written about this in the past. I've done articles about what happens to truck drivers when they are on the road and they catch the flight long before COVID ever came around and they catch the flu. And what a thankless thing, I can't imagine having a bucket beside your bunk or in the course and having the flu and nobody there to bring you a glass of water. Yeah. Well, we did Tucky in give you your Teddy bear. Yeah. So yeah, I don't care man. Interesting enough. It does. It does. And interesting enough, you know, being as I've been laid on my back here for the last week now had a lot of chance to just do some research and read a lot more news articles about the, the pandemic and that's Omnicom viruses is, is they're saying everybody's going to get it sooner or later because it's just so contagious. They can't contain it. So it's the best you can do to protect yourself. So the sad part is if everybody is eventually going to get it, it's only going to be a matter of time before everybody goes through what I went through, whether you're vaccinated or not, you know? So it all depends on the severity, but at the same time, that means somebody is going to be out of work for several days all the time, you know, and it's just going to compound compound compound. So you think the border's going to get busy? You know, I think you're going to have trucks that are gonna sit idle. There's people at stores. They're not going to be able to go to work the, the grocery store, the, you know, the beer store, the gas pumping station, whatever, because somebody is going to be second. They just can't get to work for those next few days. So, and we already say, there's not enough people to fill those, those seats that are RMS. Yeah. It to say that we're in interesting times, I think is an understatement. We've never had to manage anything like this in the past between potential border crossing issues, starting tomorrow with the now the lack of drivers. I mean, I've been asking clients, how is this affecting them? And a 36 truck client of mine said, they're losing three drivers because three drivers and they've offered bonuses and all kinds of other incentives, three people within their rights have said, no, I'm not getting vaccinated. So the, you know, they are probably leaving Trucking, which is terrible because I love trucking and truck driving and the whole industry, you know, and that's one client, one trucking company. So that's roughly 10% of their driving force. And I think that's probably an accurate number from what I've read in the paper, that 1% of the people, 10% of our drivers moving our freight cross border or not double backs and which is within their rights. Oh yeah, I'm a back. I mean, I I've already said I got my booster and everything, so I believe in it, but I also believe that thank God we're in a free country and people do have rights. You know, I'm really torn as to how about this whole thing. But Johnny, I just wanted to say it is a pleasure again. And by the way, just for our listeners, John and I are not in the same room, of course, John's out near London, Ontario, somewhere, and I'm here in Hamilton through the power of the internet. It may look like we're close, but we're really not. Sorry. I can't. Yeah. We're really Far away like that. So I just want to thank everybody, John. We've had four people boiler nonsense for the last five or so minutes. Love it. I love it. And then the th the, the smart people are the ones that are waiting till the recording comes out rather than seeing it live Well. And this has been another episode of the Trucking Risk and Insurance podcast next week, by the way, unless we have this week, we're supposed to have Jamie Irvine of the heavy duty parts report. It's a podcast. If you are interested in that, he was supposed to be on the show this week, we've already recorded the show, but we pushed Jamie off for at least a week because of kind of the breaking news, the nonsense that's happening at the border. So I just wanted to say thanks to Jamie of the heavy duty parts report. We'll get you on very, very soon. All right. And I'll put a link to the heavy duty parts report podcast in the show notes, just to give Jamie a shadow there, but just wanted to say to everybody, thank you all Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast. I'm outta here. Johnny have a good weekend. I will do time for a nap. And Jonathan says, you got that right? Smart people are not watching them. I'll put that one over here. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jonathan. Appreciate that. And with that, I'll say we're out of here. All right. Take care, buddy.