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On the job with a port trucker: Port truckers like Marvin Palacios are the tiniest players in a prosperous global transport chain. But while big companies cash in, drivers barely make



 
 
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Old September 30th 07, 09:54 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Goteborgbank
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 12
Default On the job with a port trucker: Port truckers like Marvin Palacios are the tiniest players in a prosperous global transport chain. But while big companies cash in, drivers barely make

Giuen News


Sunday, September 30, 2007


PORT TRUCKERS LIKE MARVIN PALACIOS, Sep. 30, 2007 (McClatchy-Tribune
Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
there are at least 2,000 in South Florida, mostly Hispanic, young and
male, who haul cargo from the ports to regional distribution centers
and back the other way for export -- are the tiniest players in a
global transport chain comprised of giants like railroads, ocean
shippers, terminal operators and intermediaries who store and
consolidate cargo.

The giants have profited as maritime trade surged over the last 50
years. But port truckers never cashed in. Some, like Palacios, are
doing worse than when they started.

Not until 10:30 a.m. in a Doral industrial park did Palacios -- 52 and
breathing hard, red-faced in the heat -- back into the loading dock
for his first load of the day, a 20-foot container holding 9,113
pounds of resin solution with a flash point of 13 degrees Celsius.

The load had originated at a Kalamazoo, Mich., chemical company and
was bound for a Santiago, Chile, medical supplies company a hemisphere
away. First, though, Palacios had to haul it 37 miles to Port
Everglades.

'Four hours and I haven't earned a dime yet,' he said, through a
translator.

It was a $90 job but the resin was considered Hazmat, which brought a
$25 bonus. That was good because Palacios hadn't been earning. Maybe
it's just the annual summer slowdown; maybe, he suggested, it's
because the dispatcher is giving work to his favorite drivers and
shutting out the rest.

There'd been no jobs Monday, none Tuesday, one Wednesday, three
Thursday. That meant -- factoring in the cost of diesel -- he was
earning $6.31 an hour, less than Florida's minimum wage. The last week
had been worse.

Thirty years ago most port truckers were unionized, with wages and
benefits. It was a middle-class job.

That ended with industry deregulation in 1980.

Deregulation allowed for a sudden and massive proliferation of
nonunion competitors (in 1979, according to Time Magazine, there were
16,600 truck lines in the nation; by 2004, according to the Department
of Transportation, there were 677,249 truck and bus companies).

At the same time, logistical and technological advances -- the
adoption of the cargo container as a unit of global transport, the
development of a fleet of ships big enough to carry those containers
by the thousand -- permitted a similarly massive increase in ocean-
bound trade.

A THANKLESS JOB

But more trade didn't mean more money for the port truckers.

Today there are few union jobs left. Most truckers aren't even
considered employees, but independent contractors.

This means no benefits or guaranteed wages. Instead, port truckers are
paid per move (a portion of the fee negotiated between the truck firm
and the shipper or freight forwarder). Bad traffic, or slow loading or
unloading at either end of the trip, cuts into their earnings.
Deregulation also means -- in theory, at least -- that truckers
negotiate their own rates and hours and pick their own jobs.

But shipping rates are often determined by ocean shippers and retail
giants who make agreements in which truck drivers don't have a voice.
Besides, it's difficult to negotiate when you speak almost no English,
$1,400 rent is coming up and you've got a $28,000 truck burning diesel
at $2.80 a gallon.

'You really can't say anything,' Palacios said. 'At my age, there's no
sense in being cool . . . They just give you [a truck], and if you
want to take it, fine. If you don't, they'll get someone else who
will.'

The American Trucking Association, an industry group, puts port
truckers' incomes between the high $20,000s and the high $90,000s; the
Teamsters Union, which used to represent many port truckers, suggests
a considerably narrower range, between $20,000 and $22,000.

Palacios said he grossed around $50,000 last year but diesel,
maintenance, tolls and tags reduced his net income to under $20,000.

He is what an economist might call an irrational actor. He sells his
life cheap when better deals are available.

He knows how to weld; he knows basic mechanics; he's strong enough to
work construction. Any one of these fields might earn him more money
and take less of his time than port trucking.

But Palacios is, much to his detriment, a romantic. 'This is a
profession,' he said. 'A truck driver owns his truck. He's king of the
road. . . . I had that feeling because of my dad.'

He sometimes starts crying when he talks about his dad but now he
continued, dry-eyed: 'You see that sign, Only Professional Drivers
Wanted -- that sign, it's a badge of honor.'

A number of wildcat actions in South Florida earlier in the decade --
spurred by low rates, long waiting times at ports and high gas prices
-- accomplished little for the truckers (and actually got some sued
under antitrust law). A Teamsters attempt to establish a hiring hall
failed.

UNION AMBITIONS

Now Teamsters organizers are back at work in South Florida, and more
organizing attempts may be coming. A long-awaited federal program that
would require port truckers and others who work in sensitive areas of
the nation's ports to carry Transit Worker Identification Cards may
give organized labor more heft by diminishing the labor pool.
(Anywhere from 10 to 50 percent of port truckers are thought to be
undocumented immigrants. The number is probably lower at South Florida
ports, where higher security standards have been in place for years.)

And in January, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach -- the largest
port complex in the nation -- will require trucking firms serving the
ports to hire their truckers on as employees.

The move comes after years of lobbying by labor and environmental
groups concerned about air pollution caused by the ports' fleet of
aging diesel trucks.

'It's going to have an important effect on every port in the country,'
said Chuck Mack, Teamsters port division director. 'It's going to have
everyone in the world looking at it, at the advantages come out of
this program -- not just on the driver side but . . . environmental,
security, efficiency.'

Curtis Whalen, director of ATA's Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference,
predicts this model will be difficult to replicate here -- not least
because the ATA plans a legal challenge if it's actually implemented.
'The presumption is the owner-operator is glad to give up
independence,' he said. 'We don't think that would happen. This is not
a group that wants to organize and pay dues. These people are not
joiners. They are independent by nature.'

Palacios, at least, believes unionization is on the way, and he's
looking forward to it. 'There's going to be a change,' he said. 'I
don't know when, but there will be change. Naturally, it will be good,
up to a point.'

(Ellen Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Port Everglades, says the issue has
yet to be addressed. 'It hasn't even come up in discussions here,' she
said.)

Palacios took the Palmetto Expressway north, straight into a traffic
jam. By the time he'd inched his way onto I-95, it was raining. On the
highway, rain always means trouble.

Earlier in the morning he'd pointed out the crushed remains of a truck
cab in an Opa-locka junkyard; the driver had flipped it, and died, on
I-595.

Nationwide, in 2005, one out of every eight traffic fatalities
resulted from a collision involving a large truck, according to the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and South Florida is
one of the most dangerous regions in a dangerous state to drive a
truck.

NOT A BAD RECORD

Palacios says he's been in only one accident, in 2000. An old man in a
car swerved in front of him; he jammed on his brakes, flipping his
trailer and herniating three discs in his back. He returned to work
two days later.

He had to. 'I still had rent, lights, bills to pay,' he said.

Now he kept a wide gap between the truck and the car in front of him
and leaned forward in his seat, squinting through the windshield. It
was raining hard and most drivers of four-wheelers have no idea what
it takes to stop 90,000 pounds traveling 55 miles per hour.

While running under dispatch, Palacios is covered by his company's
liability insurance. Many owner-operators are required by their
companies to buy 'bobtail' insurance to cover them off the clock, but
Palacios' company doesn't require it. At $1,800 a year, he can't
afford it anyway.

He joined a line of trucks waiting to get into Port Everglades.

Two thousand, nine hundred 20-foot equivalent containers units, or
TEUs, would move through the port this day; 864,030 moved in all of
last year, which, along with bulk cargo deliveries of cement and
lumber and the like, represented almost $18 billion worth of
merchandise.

NECESSARY GOODS

Inbound containers held bananas, ceramic tiles and clothing assembled
in South and Central America. The outbound held fabric, paper,
building materials, electronics and groceries.

If container trade were suddenly halted at Port Everglades, Florida
consumers might not feel much of an effect; but within weeks, there
would be shortages on shelves of supermarkets all across the
Caribbean.

Here, and at ports around the world, trade sometimes idles, as two
very different modes of transport grind against one another: It might
take a day or two for the towering gantry cranes to offload the
thousands of containers aboard most ships, but then each one must be
stacked, located and reloaded onto trucks.

So cargo backs up. So do the trucks, sometimes to the surface streets.
(The problem is so bad at the Port of Miami, an island with one bridge
attaching it to the mainland, that a $1 billion tunnel may be the only
solution, but dithering over the city's proposed $50 million
contribution is holding up the deal).

Palacios showed his card again to get into the Florida International
Terminal, where pneumatic-jawed forklift trucks were stacking and
unstacking container canyons. There are at least 1,100 container hauls
to and from the port each day; now about 40 truckers sat in their
trucks, waiting for a single longshoreman to lead into the container
canyons to drop or pick up.

Palacios whistled with relief, seeing the much longer line at a nearby
terminal, and got in line.

His truck shuddered when a forklift laid it bare. It took only an hour
for him to make it out -- half as long as usual, he said.

The Eagle lumbered back south. Inside the cab there was a teddy bear
named Pancho, a Bible and blaring Colombian cumbia music.

It was getting on toward two in the afternoon and the dispatcher
wasn't calling.

Palacios wasn't sure what he'd do with the rest of the afternoon.
Emma, his girlfriend, would be waiting at the Hialeah home they share
with their grown children, done with her cafeteria job. But he
wouldn't go, not yet.

'I don't like to go home too early,' he said. 'I'm embarrassed. It's a
sign I didn't get any work.'

The air conditioning in his truck didn't really condition, and there
was a broken expander valve underneath his seat. Maybe he'd fix those
things. He'd feel better, just to do something. 'I like to get home
late, tell the lady everything's fine,' he said.

But the phone rang. It was dispatch, with another job, and he headed
west.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0123-19923168


Delivered by Newstex LLC
via theFinancials.com

Accociate Advert.

Scania R114 380 Tankbil 8x2, 2002
Cr 19, 28000 mil, abs, drag, euro 3, klima,
totalvikt 32000 kg, maxlast 18370,
24 M3 5 fack, Venstöm digital, dubbla slangrullar, wireless
överfyllnadsskydd, ADR godkänd.

Website: http://traderamotor.msn.se/showObject.aspx?id=520181

http://motorhall.tripod.com

  #2  
Old September 30th 07, 11:29 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 316
Default On the job with a port trucker: Port truckers like Marvin Palacios are the tiniest players in a prosperous global transport chain. But while big companies cash in, drivers barely make

On Sep 30, 2:54 pm, Goteborgbank wrote:
Giuen News

Sunday, September 30, 2007

PORT TRUCKERS LIKE MARVIN PALACIOS, Sep. 30, 2007 (McClatchy-Tribune
Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
there are at least 2,000 in South Florida, mostly Hispanic, young and
male, who haul cargo from the ports to regional distribution centers
and back the other way for export -- are the tiniest players in a
global transport chain comprised of giants like railroads, ocean
shippers, terminal operators and intermediaries who store and
consolidate cargo.

The giants have profited as maritime trade surged over the last 50
years. But port truckers never cashed in. Some, like Palacios, are
doing worse than when they started.

Not until 10:30 a.m. in a Doral industrial park did Palacios -- 52 and
breathing hard, red-faced in the heat -- back into the loading dock
for his first load of the day, a 20-foot container holding 9,113
pounds of resin solution with a flash point of 13 degrees Celsius.

The load had originated at a Kalamazoo, Mich., chemical company and
was bound for a Santiago, Chile, medical supplies company a hemisphere
away. First, though, Palacios had to haul it 37 miles to Port
Everglades.

'Four hours and I haven't earned a dime yet,' he said, through a
translator.

It was a $90 job but the resin was considered Hazmat, which brought a
$25 bonus. That was good because Palacios hadn't been earning. Maybe
it's just the annual summer slowdown; maybe, he suggested, it's
because the dispatcher is giving work to his favorite drivers and
shutting out the rest.

There'd been no jobs Monday, none Tuesday, one Wednesday, three
Thursday. That meant -- factoring in the cost of diesel -- he was
earning $6.31 an hour, less than Florida's minimum wage. The last week
had been worse.

Thirty years ago most port truckers were unionized, with wages and
benefits. It was a middle-class job.

That ended with industry deregulation in 1980.

Deregulation allowed for a sudden and massive proliferation of
nonunion competitors (in 1979, according to Time Magazine, there were
16,600 truck lines in the nation; by 2004, according to the Department
of Transportation, there were 677,249 truck and bus companies).

At the same time, logistical and technological advances -- the
adoption of the cargo container as a unit of global transport, the
development of a fleet of ships big enough to carry those containers
by the thousand -- permitted a similarly massive increase in ocean-
bound trade.

A THANKLESS JOB

But more trade didn't mean more money for the port truckers.

Today there are few union jobs left. Most truckers aren't even
considered employees, but independent contractors.

This means no benefits or guaranteed wages. Instead, port truckers are
paid per move (a portion of the fee negotiated between the truck firm
and the shipper or freight forwarder). Bad traffic, or slow loading or
unloading at either end of the trip, cuts into their earnings.
Deregulation also means -- in theory, at least -- that truckers
negotiate their own rates and hours and pick their own jobs.

But shipping rates are often determined by ocean shippers and retail
giants who make agreements in which truck drivers don't have a voice.
Besides, it's difficult to negotiate when you speak almost no English,
$1,400 rent is coming up and you've got a $28,000 truck burning diesel
at $2.80 a gallon.

'You really can't say anything,' Palacios said. 'At my age, there's no
sense in being cool . . . They just give you [a truck], and if you
want to take it, fine. If you don't, they'll get someone else who
will.'

The American Trucking Association, an industry group, puts port
truckers' incomes between the high $20,000s and the high $90,000s; the
Teamsters Union, which used to represent many port truckers, suggests
a considerably narrower range, between $20,000 and $22,000.

Palacios said he grossed around $50,000 last year but diesel,
maintenance, tolls and tags reduced his net income to under $20,000.

He is what an economist might call an irrational actor. He sells his
life cheap when better deals are available.

He knows how to weld; he knows basic mechanics; he's strong enough to
work construction. Any one of these fields might earn him more money
and take less of his time than port trucking.

But Palacios is, much to his detriment, a romantic. 'This is a
profession,' he said. 'A truck driver owns his truck. He's king of the
road. . . . I had that feeling because of my dad.'

He sometimes starts crying when he talks about his dad but now he
continued, dry-eyed: 'You see that sign, Only Professional Drivers
Wanted -- that sign, it's a badge of honor.'

A number of wildcat actions in South Florida earlier in the decade --
spurred by low rates, long waiting times at ports and high gas prices
-- accomplished little for the truckers (and actually got some sued
under antitrust law). A Teamsters attempt to establish a hiring hall
failed.

UNION AMBITIONS

Now Teamsters organizers are back at work in South Florida, and more
organizing attempts may be coming. A long-awaited federal program that
would require port truckers and others who work in sensitive areas of
the nation's ports to carry Transit Worker Identification Cards may
give organized labor more heft by diminishing the labor pool.
(Anywhere from 10 to 50 percent of port truckers are thought to be
undocumented immigrants. The number is probably lower at South Florida
ports, where higher security standards have been in place for years.)

And in January, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach -- the largest
port complex in the nation -- will require trucking firms serving the
ports to hire their truckers on as employees.

The move comes after years of lobbying by labor and environmental
groups concerned about air pollution caused by the ports' fleet of
aging diesel trucks.

'It's going to have an important effect on every port in the country,'
said Chuck Mack, Teamsters port division director. 'It's going to have
everyone in the world looking at it, at the advantages come out of
this program -- not just on the driver side but . . . environmental,
security, efficiency.'

Curtis Whalen, director of ATA's Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference,
predicts this model will be difficult to replicate here -- not least
because the ATA plans a legal challenge if it's actually implemented.
'The presumption is the owner-operator is glad to give up
independence,' he said. 'We don't think that would happen. This is not
a group that wants to organize and pay dues. These people are not
joiners. They are independent by nature.'

Palacios, at least, believes unionization is on the way, and he's
looking forward to it. 'There's going to be a change,' he said. 'I
don't know when, but there will be change. Naturally, it will be good,
up to a point.'

(Ellen Kennedy, a spokeswoman for Port Everglades, says the issue has
yet to be addressed. 'It hasn't even come up in discussions here,' she
said.)

Palacios took the Palmetto Expressway north, straight into a traffic
jam. By the time he'd inched his way onto I-95, it was raining. On the
highway, rain always means trouble.

Earlier in the morning he'd pointed out the crushed remains of a truck
cab in an Opa-locka junkyard; the driver had flipped it, and died, on
I-595.

Nationwide, in 2005, one out of every eight traffic fatalities
resulted from a collision involving a large truck, according to the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and South Florida is
one of the most dangerous regions in a dangerous state to drive a
truck.

NOT A BAD RECORD

Palacios says he's been in only one accident, in 2000. An old man in a
car swerved in front of him; he jammed on his brakes, flipping his
trailer and herniating three discs in his back. He returned to work
two days later.

He had to. 'I still had rent, lights, bills to pay,' he said.

Now he kept a wide gap between the truck and the car in front of him
and leaned forward in his seat, squinting through the windshield. It
was raining hard and most drivers of four-wheelers have no idea what
it takes to stop 90,000 pounds traveling 55 miles per hour.

While running under dispatch, Palacios is covered by his company's
liability insurance. Many owner-operators are required by their
companies to buy 'bobtail' insurance to cover them off the clock, but
Palacios' company doesn't require it. At $1,800 a year, he can't
afford it anyway.

He joined a line of trucks waiting to get into Port Everglades.

Two thousand, nine hundred 20-foot equivalent containers units, or
TEUs, would move through the port this day; 864,030 moved in all of
last year, which, along with bulk cargo deliveries of cement and
lumber and the like, represented almost $18 billion worth of
merchandise.

NECESSARY GOODS

Inbound containers held bananas, ceramic tiles and clothing assembled
in South and Central America. The outbound held fabric, paper,
building materials, electronics and groceries.

If container trade were suddenly halted at Port Everglades, Florida
consumers might not feel much of an effect; but within weeks, there
would be shortages on shelves of supermarkets all across the
Caribbean.

Here, and at ports around the world, trade sometimes idles, as two
very different modes of transport grind against one another: It might
take a day or two for the towering gantry cranes to offload the
thousands of containers aboard most ships, but then each one must be
stacked, located and reloaded onto trucks.

So cargo backs up. So do the trucks, sometimes to the surface streets.
(The problem is so bad at the Port of Miami, an island with one bridge
attaching it to the mainland, that a $1 billion tunnel may be the only
solution, but dithering over the city's proposed $50 million
contribution is holding up the deal).

Palacios showed his card again to get into the Florida International
Terminal, where pneumatic-jawed forklift trucks were stacking and
unstacking container canyons. There are at least 1,100 container hauls
to and from the port each day; now about 40 truckers sat in their
trucks, waiting for a single longshoreman to lead into the container
canyons to drop or pick up.

Palacios whistled with relief, seeing the much longer line at a nearby
terminal, and got in line.

His truck shuddered when a forklift laid it bare. It took only an hour
for him to make it out -- half as long as usual, he said.

The Eagle lumbered back south. Inside the cab there was a teddy bear
named Pancho, a Bible and blaring Colombian cumbia music.

It was getting on toward two in the afternoon and the dispatcher
wasn't calling.

Palacios wasn't sure what he'd do with the rest of the afternoon.
Emma, his girlfriend, would be waiting at the Hialeah home they share
with their grown children, done with her cafeteria job. But he
wouldn't go, not yet.

'I don't like to go home too early,' he said. 'I'm embarrassed. It's a
sign I didn't get any work.'

The air conditioning in his truck didn't really condition, and there
was a broken expander valve underneath his seat. Maybe he'd fix those
things. He'd feel better, just to do something. 'I like to get home
late, tell the lady everything's fine,' he said.

But the phone rang. It was dispatch, with another job, and he headed
west.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0123-19923168

Delivered by Newstex LLC
via theFinancials.com

Accociate Advert.

Scania R114 380 Tankbil 8x2, 2002
Cr 19, 28000 mil, abs, drag, euro 3, klima,
totalvikt 32000 kg, maxlast 18370,
24 M3 5 fack, Venstöm digital, dubbla slangrullar, wireless
överfyllnadsskydd, ADR godkänd.

Website:http://traderamotor.msn.se/showObject.aspx?id=520181

http://motorhall.tripod.com


I was born and raised in Miami and the cubans have never had it so
good. Don't let them fool ya. The key word in your rank was " though
a translator". The SOB has probably lived in the United States of
America for decades and still can't speak our language. If he doesn't
like it get him to blow up an innertube and paddle his ass back to
Havana. As for your union rant just look at the situation Michigan is
in. Auto workers and their unions were so greedy they shot themselves
a BIG hole in their feet, and their livelyhood. Well, the workers did,
the unions live on from the workers dues. Dumb
suckers........................ Just my opinion..

  #3  
Old October 2nd 07, 10:12 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Tater
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 35
Default On the job with a port trucker: Port truckers like Marvin Palacios are the tiniest players in a prosperous global transport chain. But while big companies cash in, drivers barely make

On Sep 30, 3:54 pm, Goteborgbank wrote:
Giuen News

Sunday, September 30, 2007

PORT TRUCKERS LIKE MARVIN PALACIOS, Sep. 30, 2007 (McClatchy-Tribune
Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
there are at least 2,000 in South Florida, mostly Hispanic, young and
male, who haul cargo from the ports to regional distribution centers


A) this has nothing to do with piloting
B) most legitimate truckers make more money than I do (28k/yr)
C)why are you posting random news articles in here? I mean, does
everyone want me to quote my local newspaper?

 




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