Chuck Kuhn has been president and CEO of JK Moving Services for almost 40 years, but he’s never faced a test quite like this. Kuhn’s company, a medium-size independent moving service headquartered in Virginia, is inherently reliant on drivers to make the business run, but when COVID-19 hit, finding them became near-impossible.
“Prior to the pandemic, by no means was it easy to recruit and retain quality drivers,” Kuhn told Modern Shipper, “but it was nowhere near as difficult as it is today.”
Calling it a driver shortage might be a bit of a stretch, but hiring and retaining drivers is still the No. 1 concern among transportation companies, according to findings of the American Transportation Research Institute.
But that’s just one of the many pandemic-related challenges facing small and medium-size businesses. With consumers migrating to digital channels, Keewa Nurullah and her Chicago-based small business Kido initially struggled to keep up with rising demand for her products amid supply chain hiccups that disrupted the company’s sourcing.