When India Locked Down and Trucks Stopped Moving – The Chapter That Changed Everything
March 2020.
A day the entire logistics industry will never forget.
India went into a nationwide lockdown and suddenly the entire transport ecosystem collapsed. Factories shut, markets shut, borders shut, police barricades everywhere. And in the middle of all this chaos, one thing became clear:
Essential goods cannot move without trucks.
And trucks cannot move without people supporting them.
This is when TruckSuvidha stepped into one of the most critical chapters of its journey.
The DPIIT Control Room and the Panic Across the Country
On March 26, 2020, DPIIT announced a real-time control room to monitor the movement of essential commodities.
They asked manufacturers, transporters, distributors, and e-commerce companies to report any issues they were facing.
But the situation on the ground was far more complicated than a phone call or an email could solve.
- Two-thirds of Indian trucks were out of business
- Drivers were scared of infection
- State borders were sealed
- Local police did not know what was allowed and what was not
- Dhabas were shut, so drivers had no place to eat or rest
- Villages were panicking at the sight of trucks
- In some states, drivers were beaten or threatened
- In extreme cases, people even tried to burn trucks out of fear
It was literally a chakka jam situation all across India.
Loaded vehicles carrying everything from food grains to cement were stuck for days with zero idea of what to do next.
Truck drivers were calling us from highways, crying, confused, and scared.
This was not business.
This was humanity.
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When We Realised We Could Not Just Watch
We had two choices:
- Sit quietly and wait for the situation to improve
- Step in and give everything we had to keep the country moving
We chose the second.
We connected with ministries, district authorities, transport departments, and state control rooms.
We were speaking to officers from morning to midnight, explaining ground realities and pushing for permissions where they were stuck.
This was the moment when TruckSuvidha became not just a startup but a critical bridge between the government and the trucking community.
Freight Collapsing and Costs Skyrocketing
By early April, reports showed that freight movement had dropped to historic lows.
Only 30 percent of trucks were operational nationwide.
In some states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, barely 1 percent were moving.
Even with essential goods movement allowed on paper, real ground movement was broken because:
- police barricades were inconsistent
- drivers were put into forced quarantines
- factories were closed
- warehouses had no staff
- cross border fear was increasing
- no eating or resting points for drivers
This led to something unexpected.
When a driver took a load, he knew he would return empty because the return load market was dead.
So rates doubled or tripled just to survive.
Logistics was collapsing from every angle.
The TruckSuvidha Helpline
To handle the chaos, we launched a dedicated helpline for the entire trucking industry.
Drivers, transporters, fleet owners, and even companies started reaching out.
We helped with:
- movement passes
- interstate permits
- police coordination
- finding safe routes
- connecting stranded drivers
- emergency supplies
- fear related situations in villages
- communication with authorities
There were nights when we slept for only 1 or 2 hours.
But the calls kept coming and we kept answering.
Because stopping was not an option.
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The Biggest Learning
In those months, we realised something that changed our vision forever:
India runs on trucks.
And trucks run on trust.
If we do not support the people behind the wheels, the entire nation can come to a halt.
This chapter was not about technology or business.
It was about responsibility.
It was about humanity.
It was about being there when the country needed us the most.
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