TORONTO — Canadian trucking companies should be worried about the impact of US federal government spending on border efficiency, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) said today.

The cuts, slated to begin automatically March 1 unless Congress and the White House can come to a budget agreement, could massively disrupt Canadian business, CTA said.

Known as "sequestration," the automatic spending cuts were postponed for two months in January after a series of last minute talks stopped the country from going over the "fiscal cliff."

However, the CTA said, if those cuts kick-in, "border operations themselves could be severely impacted – something that is of great concern to the Canadian trucking industry, which moves about two-thirds of Canada’s trade with the United States. "

The CTA cited testimony from Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who told the Senate Committee on Appropriations that the cuts that imposed on the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency “would make four to five hour wait times (at the border) commonplace and cause the busiest ports to face gridlock situations at peak periods.” Front line CBP staff responsible for processing trucks would be furloughed, while overtime budgets to meet peak and unplanned demand would be slashed.

The only thing to do is prepare for the worst, CTA president and CEO David Bradley said. “Whether a last-ditch deal can be made or the full-brunt of the cuts would be felt immediately, we just don’t know. We are entering the unknown and uncertainty can be just as bad as actual delays.

“The North American economy cannot afford to revert to the way it was during the bad old days when truck drivers were delayed at the border for hours on end, wasting fuel, missing delivery windows and exhausting allowable driving hours. Manufacturers and retailers were forced to hold costly inventories to cope with uncertain border transit times and just-in-time turned into just-in-case.”