I know from past experience that there has been some friction at the border between the U.S. and Canada because of pricing differentials, tariffs, etc., on the part of softwood producers. This was not a gray area, just an out and out hot spot! I know from having to ship product across the border into Canada that life can be a little difficult for the truck driver, the dispatcher and even the one who is issuing the paperwork. I can attest to that because at times I’ve been working feverishly to get documents perfected and transmitted to the border ahead of the deadline (5 p.m.) for trucks crossing during the night. If you don’t get the paperwork there by 5 p.m. they have to spend the night at the border, costing someone(?) money and they start the process all over again at 9 in the morning. Everyone is just a little less happy at that point!
Currently, it is an extraordinary challenge to get trucks to go to into Canada from the Midwest at a reasonable rate. Reasonable in this case is a comparative judgment based on what we pay for long haul trucking here in the United States compared to what those rates are going into Canada. There are numerous reasons why this might be occurring. There was an attempt to define what the critical reasons are but I didn’t want to get involved in a debate about anti- US or Canadian sentiment nor to get involved in an obscure argument over the logistics of border crossings. The only thing that really matters is that the cost structures for going from the US into Canada versus two points in the US are significantly different. The difference is about $.60 per mile on a 500 mile run and that is prohibitive. This might be a great place to employ some useful technology to streamline the process and reduce costs.
If you think about this in a way that compares the costs of cross border traffic here to that of the costs of shipping product by container to some other country the implications are pretty scary. For just another $500(?), loads can be shipped all the way around the world!
