(Vancouver Sun)
The
$30-million-a-day strike that is crippling two Greater Vancouver ports can't be solved unless all stakeholders in the container industry find a way to end the absurd delays that cut deeply into truckers'
incomes, the operator of one of the affected companies said Tuesday.
About 1,000 independent truckers who haul containers in and out of the Port of Vancouver and Fraser Port were off the job for a
second straight day, with businesses warning that a lengthy delay will have both local and national ramifications.
Spokesmen for the group managing the strike, the Vancouver Container Truckers
Association, did not respond to The Sun's requests for interviews -- although the Port of Vancouver reported that the companies which contract and dispatch the drivers have hired a facilitator in an attempt
to negotiate a resolution.
Dex Olund, co-owner of a container servicing company, normally sees about 325 containers move in and out of Container West's yard on Mitchell Island.That traffic fell to a
bare handful of vehicles on Tuesday, leaving the company to do maintenance and cleaning until there's a resolution to the strike, Olund said.
He said there is a fundamental lack of coordination in the
way that truckers are dispatched -- at times, the "swarm" of drivers attempting to pick up and drop off containers at the Container West yard is so great that Olund has to grab a flag and direct
traffic at an intersection near the yard.
If their arrivals were staggered, he added, they'd get more work done in a day. "There is no common sense as far as I can see in the whole dispatching
process, and I don't know who could coordinate that," Olund said. "There isn't a yard anywhere that can take an extra hundred drivers and process them in five minutes."
He said it's the
same situation at the ports, with a swarm of drivers arriving at the same terminal at the same time, then waiting three or four hours for a pickup or a dropoff before they can move onto their next jobs.
"There should be some efficiency found in the dispatch method. That is really the fundamental problem."
Often, he said, a trucker will arrive to drop off a container and leave empty, even as
another trucker working for the same company arrives empty and picks a container up. "If a trucker could actually work all day productively and haul stuff, then his existing rates probably aren't that
bad. But mostly he sits around. He works 12 hours and doesn't haul much."
Meanwhile, police in Delta are investigating an early Tuesday morning incident in which a semi tractor parked near a
loading area on Annacis Island was shot at, and had windows smashed, by a group of men who then fled in a dark-colored van. The lone occupant of the truck was not harmed.
Delta Constable Kim Petruka
said police are investigating the possibility that the incident is connected to the truckers' strike.
The port situation is worrying local merchants who cannot get their goods off the docks and into
warehouses and stores.
"We have containers that have been landed and cleared, but we cannot distribute the goods until the work stoppage ends," said Tim Southam, communications manager for
Mountain Equipment Co-op.
About 60 per cent of all containers landing at local ports are transferred directly onto rail cars and dispatched to other Canadian markets, so it's mainly local container
traffic, travelling by truck, that has been halted.
In the co-op's case, the strike has national implications."It affects all of our stores, because our national distribution centre is located
here in Richmond," Southam said.
"We are okay in the short term, say a week, but if it proceeds past a week then it may present some difficulties for us. If the work stoppage goes on into a
second week, then it may well be detrimental to our business. We are also entering the summer months when we do the greatest volume of our business."
Truckers spokesman Paul Uppal told The Sun on
Monday that truckers want to stay off the job for at least a week before entertaining any contract offers or going back to work, in order to emphasize their importance to the Canadian economy.
That's
a disturbing prospect for T&T Supermarkets, which stocks its shelves with perishable and non-perishable goods that arrive by container from Asia.
"The longer it's there, the worse it's going to
be," said Melina Hung, marketing manager for T&T.
"Most of the containers are dry goods so they are okay," Hung said. She added that frozen goods should be secure as well because
they are in refrigerated containers that maintain sub-freezing temperatures.
"But we have one sitting on the dock that is a perishable container. That will be temperature controlled. However, we
are concerned that these perishables have a certain shelf life, and any time it goes beyond the shelf life the quality will deteriorate.
"A few days are not going to have any significant impact, but
longer than that, the quality will definitely go."
In the short term, there are enough goods in T&T's warehouse to replenish shelves, but Hung said if the strike drags on, the company will be
forced to reroute its container shipments to Seattle and then truck goods north at a greater cost.
South of the border, one of Container West's customers expressed frustration at the way the situation
has hamstrung her company's business.
Sarah Ross, works in Everett, Wash., for a company that buys, loads and ships containers to overseas industrial operators, including the mining industry.
The company buys construction materials, equipment and supplies from manufacturers in Canada and the U.S. -- and annually purchases "hundreds" of refurbished containers from companies in B.C. and
Seattle to carry the goods abroad.
But since the strike began, Ross can't get containers from her supplier in B.C. because there are no trucks available to haul them to the Port of Everett, which is
located about 50 kilometres north of Seattle.
She has lived in B.C. for 25 years and said she likes to do business with companies in this province because it's good for the local economy.
She
also said she is sympathetic toward the truckers, but said the company has to consider whether it wants to continue to support businesses in B.C. "They've shut down the Port of Vancouver -- what's that,
a $30-million-a-day business? I'm peanuts compared to that, but it's just not making me want to do any business in British Columbia," Ross said. |
