Port Trucking Almost Normal, Shippers Say
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Shippers hampered by the labor slowdown at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports said Monday that the flow of freight is returning to normal even as thousands of union truck drivers stay off the job for a second week.
“It’s high enough to where we’re not getting an accumulation of containers at the terminals,” said Robert Kleist, an advisor to the Evergreen America Corp. and a member of the Steamship Assn. of Southern California board.
Dozens of union truckers milled outside terminals at both ports, keeping up an effort to woo still-independent drivers.
An estimated 4,200 truckers in recent weeks have signed up with a new firm, Transport Maritime Assn., that plans to lease drivers and trucks to other trucking companies.
Until the new firm emerged, most of the truckers who serviced the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor complex, the busiest in the nation, were independent drivers who owned their rigs. But they contend they were underpaid and that the port terminals were run too inefficiently to allow them to make enough deliveries to earn a living.
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