China’s truck drivers still have a long road to post-coronavirus recovery

Compared to the industrial sector and larger state firms, China’s small businesses were particularly hard hit by the pandemic last year

That has filtered through to the nation’s army of truck drivers, with many waiting for payment from indebted small firms

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The economic stress of the coronavirus has filtered down to the nation’s army of 30 million long-distance truck drivers. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 6:30pm, 14 Mar 2021Updated: 6:30pm, 14 Mar 2021

As rain beat down on his truck, Zhang Liang dozed in his cab at a rest stop in Shenzhen after a gruelling 36-hour drive from the central Chinese province of Hubei. After a quick nap, the Hubei native will turn around and pilot his 49-tonne truck 2,500km home again.

The journey is normally a job for two people, but Zhang says a co-driver is now unaffordable after a year of financial turmoil in which his income had fallen, unpaid bills had begun to stack up and his personal debts had grown.

“I think most people I know suffered from shrinking incomes and local small and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs] had very serious debt problems,” Zhang said by phone.

“SMEs were cash-strapped and unable to pay their suppliers’ logistics companies, and we drivers are being back paid by the logistics companies.”

China’s small businesses, which account for most employment in the country, were among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic last year. And compared to the industrial sector and larger state-backed firms, their recovery has been uneven.