10/10/2020
**GOOD NEWS FOR PORT MANAGEMENT!! CHEAP RATES ARE HERE TO STAY AS LONG AS NO SHORTAGE OF ZOMBIES TO STUFF BEHIND THE STEERING WHEEL 😳🤪!!!
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I hear many of the out spoken drivers fedup with the port facilities speak of - "If only there was unity at the piers".. I really feel for you stuck in this ridiculous quagmire however I'm afraid hope for anything better is fast fading!!
This doesn't effect me anylonger.. Both my trucks are retired and about to be restored for a few of the classic truck shows I enjoy.. I'm now disabled forced out to retire not by choice..
Believe it or not at one time in the seventies there was good money to be made pulling these cans during the days of ICC government enforced rate structuresv and restrictive cargo regulations however those days disappeared after the *Interstate Commence Commission* was abolished some forty years ago...
Following deregulation intermodal port trucking rates got progressively worse along with working conditions at the Port facilities in the east.. Shady new intermodal companies sprung up every day. Trucking authority became simple to obtain for anyone..
A new era of never before seen rate cutting was begining,, dog eat dog, with the larger older regulated carriers failing on a monthly basis. Within a few years the majority of those older carriers some who'd been around since the start of trucking were either in bankruptcy or sold out.. Wecome to the new world of "de-regulation" in trucking..
Things worsened every few months at the piers initially sparking independent truckers to begin a campaign of trying to organize themselves to fight back at several larger container ports along the east coast .. As the port facilities expanded and grew larger conditions deteriorated for truckers rapidly.
In the Savannah, GA local truckers organized and formed the first recognized container haulers association in the early eighties to address all the new issues with our port..
We slowly became a very aggressive organization which gained a substantial membership and strength over the years to come which spread to several other port locations , the strongest of the groups being in the southeast and Mid-Atlantic region however sadly we made a lot of errors without a clear cut plan, strategy nor direction other than spur of the moment sparked wildcat port actions..
Over time with planning job actions we did improve working together as a much stronger team and with our outreach organizing efforts.. This expanded to a few more ports joining or forming their own association along the way...
We also successfully accomplished the task of getting many useful issues fixed locally to our favor at these ports because drivers had the unity and strength they needed to make that happen.. The steamship lines wanted "no disruptive behavior nor trucker actions" harming their customers nor interrupting their expensive maritime shipping schedules..
In the end without any contract we lost the battle because we had no way as a group of independent truckers to obtain a legally binding contract to hold everyone's feet to the fire as does the ILA with their own vendors..
Our association later joined with the ILA International headquarters in NY who within a year of supporting our organizing efforts agreed to pass us on to the Teamsters union who they felt would be a better fit ..
What a collosal mistake that was although at the time we didn't realize just how bad it would turn out to be in the future.. We all joined the newly formed "port division" of the Teamsters expecting great things to happen and for the first couple of years things actually did however the port division leadership in Washington , DC changed and so slowly began the down fall of our relationship with the Teamster leadership..
Make a long story short the Teamsters international sold everyone of us out within the next six years deciding they'd rather have company drivers without ownership than be bothered with O/Op,s joining their union..
Teamsters leadership in DC saw the independent spirit of most O/Op's as a real threat to total control of drivers at their locals,, did not want port truckers to be able to form their own locals,,, "as the ILA was going to permit us to do" ,, and worried at some point in time the drivers would out vote their own Teamsters membership in a critical election so they sat out to get rid of the driver/ ownership independent status which they felt made the truckers much stronger and more outspoken than a normal company driver...
So Teamsters leadership back stabbed every independent port trucker across America by "creating _ funding" the very first "clean port truck campaign" in California then Seattle later moving that model to the Ports of NJ/NY ...
This campaign had nothing to do with cleaning up diesel soot at the ports across America as Teamsters claimed.. It was a national scam to rid the ports of the independent trucker...
The soul underhanded purpose of the Teamsters so-called "clean truck plan"was to make intermodal trucking at the ports outrageously expensive for the owner-operator to maintain or continue his/her business so you would be most likely forced out of the port industry as an independent trucker!!
The plan back fired and failed miserably at several key port locations such as in the Northeast where they intended to entirely control internodal transportation...
The Teamsters leadership totally under estimated how many truckers wanted to maintain their ownership status and only caused a lot of drivers to lose perfectly good trucks ,, bankruptcy , and the rest forced to purchase new equipment to comply with all the new unnecessary environmental regulations...
However the experience of dealing with waterfront unions and learning how to deal with federal laws that held us back from reaching that ultimate goal back then of an intermodal trucker contract with most of the same vendors the ILA deals with...
We also received a superb education on the NLRB along with US labor laws dealing in transportation and the ports from the many fine union attorneys we had the privilege and of holding monthly meetings with..
Thank God I'm old enough to have witnessed these amazing times of trucker unrest and unity at the ports between determined truckers who were not afraid to have their trucks towed while blocking the gates and sacrifice being arrested for what they believed .. However we didn't have the tools nor the expertise in knowledge of such things as how to get around "federal ant-trust laws" to legally collectively bargain as a group nor organize at that time to force the industry into a binding contract as the longshoreman enjoy today..
Sadly now many of us who fought hard back then, and have the battle scars to prove it, now have that experience and the knowledge to share with others... Today "unity" is only a distant memory.. Without massive unity amongst truckers to stand up against the evil you haven't the power to change anything..
I really feel for those of you still struggling at these facilities with the same if not worse BS conditions than what we refused to put up with some thirty years ago.. These cheap trucking rates and all the Free time you donate each day to corporate is a disgrace in this industry..
If the unity was out here today as it was back in the 80's, 90's you could bring this industry to it's knees within a matter of a few days.. We shutdown the port of Savannah for a month Christmas of 1997 however the container volume of today is now twenty times that..
Believe me this port industry will make no changes to benefit you the trucker until they're hit hard in their own pocketbook.. They'll only realize this if you can make them suffer again and again until they fix this ridiculously broken intermodal system that benefits only them!!
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