Coach drivers turn to truck driving as industry struggles after COVID
The coach industry has had a tough pandemic. Many coach drivers are out of work as the domestic tourism industry struggles. We spent a day with coach company owner Cheng Kuo-chih to find out how he’s adapted to the crisis. He’s taken up truck driving to avoid firing staff. Though his employees are grateful, he says that COVID’s impact on his colleagues is “tragic.”
In 2000, Cheng Kuo-chih took up coach driving. Now the 46-year-old has been doing it for 22 years. The business was booming when he began, and he could earn NT$200,000 or more every month. He started his own coach company in his twenties.
Cheng Kuo-chih
Coach company owner
In the first few years when I was really earning money, I was doing airlines, carrying flight attendants, and sometimes doing coach tours at weekends. I could earn NT$300,000 in one month.
Before setting off, Cheng checks his tires, fuel tank and engine. After finishing a trip, he cleans the seats, tidies the curtains and seatbelts, disinfects everything and calls it a day. He’s still as meticulous as when he began. But the pandemic wreaked havoc on domestic tourism as everyone stayed at home. Cheng’s coaches sat idle.
Cheng Kuo-chih
Coach company owner
Students were off school, too. All we had left was factory workers going to work. One factory commute is no more than NT$2,000. You just do two trips a day. You’ve got less than NT$3,000 a day to pay the driver – it’s nowhere near enough. The fuel costs money. You have to pay for your vehicle license, fuel tax, insurance – you pay all of them even if you don’t put the coach on the road.
Cheng says just his loan repayments are NT$300,000 a month, before any other costs of running the business. With vehicle maintenance, fuel, and eight salaries to pay, Cheng has lost a lot of sleep. He couldn’t pay it all off even if he liquidated his assets.
But not to be defeated, Cheng watched online videos to prepare and pass the test to become a big rig driver. Now he drives aggregate trucks and concrete mixers, heading to the construction site each day. This tough side job allows him to keep his employees on the payroll.
Cheng Kuo-chih
Coach company owner
I think it’s really tragic. When I go to the construction site, I see people and think “How come he’s here?” I meet friends and acquaintances there, people I studied with, who were also in the coach industry. Now they’re driving aggregate trucks because of the pandemic. Everyone needs to make a living.
Driving trucks is hard work, but the construction industry needs workers. Lots of out-of-work drivers are taking on temporary work in construction, making sites like this a veritable coach drivers’ reunion party. If they take on enough work, they can earn at least NT$50,000 a month. Many, like Cheng, are getting behind the wheel.
2022-08-01