VANCOUVER — The fight isn’t over yet. So says one of the drayage firm owners contesting the Vancouver Port’s authority to impose on carriers a controversial licensing system that sets rates and surcharges paid to independent truck operators.

Bob Simpson of Port Transport (formerly Team Transport) tells Today’s Trucking he plans to appeal a Federal Court of Canada ruling that reinforces the Vancouver Port Authority’s jurisdiction to continue enforcing the so-called Vince Ready licensing provisions.

The licensing system — first established by government mediator Vince Ready to bring an end to the crippling, six-week trucker strike at the port last summer — includes a set haulage rate paid to owner-ops, among other provisions.

The plan was legislatively backed by the federal government through repeated Orders-in-Council until this past April, when David Emerson, federal Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Pacific Gateway, transferred the power to maintain the program to the VPA.

Simpson says some drayage companies bound by union contracts
are ‘trapped on the top floor of a burning building.’

Two carriers — Pro West Transport and Team Transport — quickly challenged the VPA’s authority to enforce Ready’s regulated rate system. They lost, though, as Justice Teitelbaum sided with the feds and the VPA.

“We’re not happy with the court’s decision,” Simpson says in an interview. “Our main contention is that the VPA has absolutely no right telling me what I must pay my employees when I’m not on their property.”

Simpson’s port battle is now two-pronged. While he mounts an appeal against the VPA, on another front he’s watching the Canadian Auto Workers certify his owner-ops.

As reported here earlier this summer, rising up behind the Ready licensing system is a movement to unionize most port truckers. The collective bargaining agreements struck with carriers so far basically mirror the Ready rate system.

The CAW’s campaign to certify the entire port under one local wouldn’t be too bad of an idea, if it was moving at a uniform face and not, says Simpson “stuck in neutral.”

In the meantime, new truckers “are coming out of the woodwork and hacking away” at the newly unionized carriers. “A small handful of union companies that are subjected to the union contracts are being trapped on the top floor of a burning building,” Simpson says.

Other companies insist, however, union certification in tandem with the VPA licence system has brought some stability back to the port.

Chandra Nand, operations manager at five-truck fleet Quantum Transport, says he doesn’t care who’s enforcing the rate system as long as it keeps containers from piling up on docks at the Lower Mainland. “We needed somebody who could oversee this mechanism so we don’t have further disruptions,” he says. “This was a long time coming. It’s a good thing that somebody’s in control of how we should be compensating owner-ops.

“We are absolutely in favor of the court decision.”

— for the complete story please see the current September print issue of Today’s Trucking magazine.