By Roy L Hales

Twenty or more years ago, BC Ferries gave preference to trucks delivering food to Cortes Island. The volume of traffic has increased since then, especially during the summer months, but this service is no longer available. The truck servicing Gorge Harbour Marina Resort missed 17 out of 19 ferries this summer, while watching cars that arrived more than a half an hour later drive onto the ferry. At the October 25, 2019 Quadra/Cortes FAC Meeting, Bill Dougan, General Manager of Gorge Harbour asked BC Ferries to provide assured loading for commercial vehicles coming to Cortes Island.

“Cortes Island currently has four grocery stores, four seasonal take-outs, [and] three restaurants – with a population of around 1,000 people, ” says Dougan.

In addition, supplies for the general store and restaurant at Refuge Cove, on West Redonda Island, are transported across Cortes to Squirrel Cove and loaded onto a boat.

A Tourist Destination

” … At Gorge Harbour, we have become a destination stop as well as one of the last stops for boaters to stock up at before heading back into Desolation Sound. After years of growth in this area, [during] the last two seasons – most notably the one that just ended – we have seen a levelling off of food sales. I attribute this flattening of sales to the inability to stock our store with the product our guests need.”

“Hollyhock often wonders if the food they need to feed their 100 guests [per night] will show up in time for them to have their meals ready. The Floathouse Restaurant, at Gorge Harbour, has often gone through evenings with major items missing from their menus due to a lack of stock. All of the stores on the island experience outages of products as common as dairy, bread and meats. Dealing with food products is a challenging business to begin with. Food just simply does not last long, is highly perishable and people’s expectations are extremely high when it comes to quality of food products and pricing.”

An Experiment Gone Wrong

In an attempt to meet this challenge, Dougan spent $10,000 for additional storage space and a delivery truck three times larger than his current vehicle. He thought this would mean it was no longer necessary to drive to Campbell River five times a week. Instead, as his new truck was almost invariably loaded and unloaded last, Dougan still found it necessary to dispatch his old vehicle to ensure food arrived on time. He was actually making more trips to Campbell River.

There are additional transportation problems. When produce sits in a ferry line-up for hours, its shelf life may decrease. In some cases, a product’s shelf life has been cut by as much as a half. Truckers do not like transporting frozen products because “they have no idea how long they will wait and do not want to take responsibility for replacing items lost in trucking.”

Businesses On Hold

“Our businesses for any kind of expansion until we can organize a steady and reliable supply chain … With often long delays at the ferry terminals and even more labour expenses being incurred, our prices need to be increased.”

However higher prices translate into fewer sales and increasing numbers of Cortes residents shopping in Campbell River. This results in even longer ferry line-ups, which means more delays.

Assured Loading For Commercial Vehicles

“We are asking BC Ferries to provide assured loading to our food truck 2-3 times a week,” says Dougan.

The Squirrel Cove General Store, Cortes Market and Gorge Harbour all have their own trucks. They also use R&B Trucking, which services Hollyhock and the Cortes Natural Food Co-op.

(There is more in the podcast)

Top photo credit: Ferry to Cortes Island by Djun Kim via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)