VANCOUVER, (June 27, 2005) — About 1,000 container-hauling owner-ops shut their engines off Friday night, leaving shippers dependent on Canada’s busiest port scrambling for freight transporters.

The strike is upsetting the movement of cargo at various ports on the B.C. Lower Mainland. Over 40 percent of container freight at the Vancouver Port — worth about $30 million a day — is moved by truck.

The owner-ops, being represented by the Vancouver Container Truck Association, want a fuel surcharge to mitigate the impact of skyrocketing diesel prices as well as a general rate increase in the neighbourhood of 15 percent. An independent arbitrator is expected to step in if the dispute extends beyond a week.

A coalition of 46 coastal for-hire container carriers had been negotiating with the VCTA, as well as Steamship Lines and major exporters and importers. In a letter to the independent truckers, the carriers unanimously expressed their understanding for the truckers’ frustration.

“One thing remains clear … driver drayage pay must improve,” the carriers state in the letter, obtained by TodaysTrucking.com. “Our drivers need more take home pay. We are united with you (our drivers) in wanting more dollars for our too long beleaguered, too long ignored, and yet, very vital industry. Unfortunately, the trucking company owners are not yet united on a formula as to where and how to find the money.”

The letter, delivered to the independent operators at noon on Friday, suggests carriers offer a three-tiered increase beginning in August and rising in increments throughout the rest of the year. The drivers stopped working that same evening.

“They said they didn’t want to go for that,” said Paul Campbell, president of North Burnaby, B.C.-based TorVan Container Express Line, which hauls around empty containers with 18 owner-ops. “Time is money and they wanted it now.

“I actually understand where they’re coming from,” he told Todaystrucking.com. “I do firmly believe they should get a solid 15 to 20 percent raise plus a fuel surcharge.

Part of the difficulty in reaching a consensus among carriers and shippers is that the pay scale in the Lower Mainland tends to be all over the map. “Some companies pay as much as 40 percent more than others for exactly the same leg,” the carrier-authored letter says. Furthermore, “raising rates for Canadian exports moving in containers by too much will cause a shift to break bulk vessels and decline in container work.”

While one fleet owner has decided to unilaterally raise rates to $110 per leg temporarily, there doesn’t seem to be many others in the carrier group — especially smaller players like Campbell, dubbed the “me too” crowd — to dive in without a carrier consensus that’s supported by at least a few big shippers. “No one wants to lose money,” says Campbell, who isn’t turning one wheel today. “I don’t want to be the first to give a pay increase and not get backed up for it. Then there’s 46 other companies that don’t do it, and I could be out of business.”

The carriers also seem to suggest that while they sympathize with the independent truckers, the owner ops’ impatience may end up costing them in the end. “Higher rates may tempt major importers to bypass the Port of Vancouver,” carriers predict. In fact, says the letter, at least one big box retailer did just that last week.

Meanwhile, ongoing turmoil at the port — which has been hit by rail strikes as well as a tug and barge work stoppage over the last couple years — may lead some shippers to divert containers away from Vancouver to Seattle or Tacoma, Wash.

There’s been suggestions that if problems continue, big retailers will simply drop containers from the dock onto rail, send it on tracks to large distribution centres outside the Lower Mainland — even as far as Calgary — and then truck it back to Vancouver if need be.

Campbell, for one, has no sympathy for the Vancouver Port, where port congestion, load-unload delays, and piling containers are a regular occurrence. He wouldn’t be surprised if it loses capacity to other ports in the future. “They have nobody to blame but themselves,” he says. “They don’t do a very good job of servicing truckers at all.

“I don’t know whether it’s the American attitude of getting things done, but things are more efficient at the (Seattle and Tacoma) ports. We do things backwards over here.”

According to many carriers, wait time at the ports, not pay, is the real problem. “Even if VCTA trucks were paid $200 a leg, if port congestion and (sic) inefficiencies limited truckers to only one or two moves a day, drivers would still be underpaid,” states the letter. “Clearly the port facility operators, Steamship Lines, and the VPA have to be part of the solution.”

Steamship Lines even suggested customers using under-performing dock facilities be billed a waiting surcharge that can be passed on to drivers.

Calls from TodaysTrucking.com to the Vancouver Port Authority were not returned at the time of posting of this story.

Campbell is one of a few carriers now rethinking his owner-op strategy. “I may just have to scale back,” he says. “I’ll go out and buy some single-axle tractors and put some (Teamsters) guys on them for $20 bucks an hour.”