Article – Brazilian president sends in army as truck protest paralyzes country

Brazil’s conservative president Michel Temer has ordered the army and federal police to clear highways blockaded by striking truck drivers after a protest over soaring fuel prices entered its fifth day.

The blockades have paralysed much of the country’s economy and prompted São Paulo, the biggest city in South America, to declare a state of emergency over fuel shortages.

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In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, supermarkets and restaurants are running low on supplies. Some factories have shut down, bus services been reduced and even the Refugees World Cup, scheduled to take place in São Paulo on Saturday, has been cancelled.

“Truckers strike” is one of those things that pops up in old school survivalist books (Tappan, for example) on a list of ‘things that will cause nationwide chaos.”

It’s awesome that we live in a world where Amazon can get us a 50# bag of Purina Coed Chow and case of duct tape to our doorstep the next day, but without the mechanisms in place to actually deliver those products….it kinda falls apart.

Take supermarkets for example…when I was a kid, supermarkets had huge cavernous basements where they stored, literally, tons of product to replensih their shelves. Nowadays they rely on the ‘Just In Time’ delivery method to reduce overhead and inventory costs….at the expense of being caught short if something disrupts that supply chain.

I suppose the best way to deal with an anticipated disruption of the delivery network is to get as much material (and materiel) from as close-to-home sources as possible. But I suppose if there’s a critical item that you have to order in from across the nation, that might be an item you want to ‘go heavy’ on or find an alternative to.

I can’t recall of a US truckers strike that paralyzed commerce, but I haven’t really looked too hard either. But it doesn’t have to be a truckers strike…some sort of major in the fuel supply could probably produce a similar result.

Preparedness is all about contingency planning. Disruptions to the supply chain are just one of those potential failure points that needs to be examined…its just that in this country we virtually never have nationwide labor disputes that bring things to a screeching halt. (Closest thing I can recall is the PATCO strike that was ended rather forcefully by Reagan.)

Smaller countries, of course, don’t need much to tip things into the danger zone. The US would seem an unlikely place to suffer a similar level of chaos…we’re so big, and you’d have to get a lot of people on the same page to make a big impact.

Anyway, an interesting story to point out a possible failure point that may not have been previously examined.

12 thoughts on “Article – Brazilian president sends in army as truck protest paralyzes country

  1. Worked with a guy several years ago back in Pennsylvania before i moved that attempted to be part of a truckers strike someplace on 95 outside DC. He said it had been planned for several days and on the day off they started parking their trucks on bridges. It lasted less than a 1/2 hour. According to him nation guard showed up and threatened to arrest them if they didn’t move, if they wouldn’t get out of their trucks they were threatened to be shot and someone would drive their truck out of the way for them all under the threat of economic terrorism.

    I questioned him as I never heard anything about it and according to him it never hit the news outlets because of nation security. Made for interesting lunch room talk though.

  2. I have said many times that “Just-in-Time” delivery has done a lot towards making us much more vulnerable to weather or other smaller disruptions. I too remember the large back rooms of pallets stacked 4 high on shelves.

  3. I think most truckers nowadays are indentured servants, like most of the debt slaves out there. Pay little enough and who can save for a strike? Our fuel supply on the other hand…And don’t worry, the grocery stores have plenty of pallets still stored in the back. You can live on nothing but soda, right? 🙂

    • Trucker pay is on the rise due to most experienced drivers(wonder why quality of drivers is soo bad)have either quit or been forced out(regulations,electronic onboard recorders,11 hours on 10 off(14hr window),DAC,etc) and the “steering wheel holders” can’t get the job done and the supply chain is in danger of failure.
      Watched this happen in Canada 10-15 years ago,they imported”drivers” from any third world sh*t hole and watched the accident rate skyrocket and American drivers were allowed in to save them until they weeded out the worst offenders(still cut pay 20%)
      Last successful trucker strikes were in 1973(Arab oil embargo/Nixon wage-price freeze) and 1979 Teamster strike. Patco should of held out and shut down the airports(everyone seems to have forgotten what a fascist stooge reagan was(senile too))

      • “Patco should of held out and shut down the airports(everyone seems to have forgotten what a fascist stooge reagan was(senile too))”
        They also seem to forget that government employees are prohibited from striking.

  4. Other things besides strikes could cripple JIT systems: software failures (or attacks), fuel shortages —again possibly caused by software or Internet attacks. I’m sure all of this has been studied and planned by our various enemies around the world. But most people are blissfully ignorant. I live about 300 yards from a grocery store here in deepest NYC suburbia. There are deliveries made there overnight almost every night. ANY disruption to those deliveries would mean shortages very quickly.

  5. America is slowly becoming not so special a place to avoid such an incident. The rest of the country may be all giddy and happy, but your area may find itself in a localized situation from many variable scenarios that can prevent delivery/resupply/gov’t aid. Your red state flyover neighborhood may be triaged off by larger entities that focus on another area-problem. Specialty and high priority items not on shelfs (in quantity locally) should be pre-stocked for use or in service replacements. (An example is a foreign made wick for a foreign made kerosene heater that is for emergency heat during power outages) check your little lists and prepper worksheets now while trucks are still rolling and your credit card still works.

  6. There were a couple truckers strikes back in the ’70’s. I’m too young to remember them, but from what I’ve read it sounds like the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) they caused were worse than the actual shortages.

  7. Every major urban center has a USDA “warehouse” that has 2-3 weeks of food stored for national emergency. These are enormous and larger cities have several due to size. These places exist(have delivered to several) probably would never be distributed to public but used to feed cops and government workers to supress the population(food is a excellent weapon)

    • What’s the definition of “major urban center”?
      I don’t suppose you wanna and are allowed to share the location info? (gets out pencil and paper)

      CZ: I bemoan the lack of a “notify me of updates” check box when replying to a comment. I presume it would increase your workload unacceptably.

  8. A terrorist-organized trucking strike is one of the plot elements of the Marcus Sakey novel “A Better World.” It throws most cities into turmoil pretty quickly.

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