VANCOUVER, — Thousands of containers full of goods are piling up at the Port of Vancouver as an owner-operator strike enters its fourth full day.

About 1200 independent container haulers walked off the job late Friday evening, virtually shutting down container movement at Canada’s busiest port of entry. Over 40 percent of container freight at the Vancouver Port — worth about $30 million a day — is moved by truck.

As TodaysTrucking.com reported yesterday, 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 ballpark of 15 percent. A VCTA member told the website this morning that the truckers are no closer to reaching a deal with carriers and shippers than they were last week.

The Vancouver Port Authority is calling on the government to step in as soon as possible to resolve the labour conflict. But so far, the Ministry of Transport is steering clear; saying only that it may send a government facilitator in the next week or so.

The British Columbia Trucking Association, the lobby-group representing many of the province’s for-hire carriers, has also chosen not to get involved. “We consider this a business-to-business or contractor-to-contractor disagreement. BCTA is not mandated nor equipped to deal with labour relations or related negotiations,” it stated in a letter to members.

In the meantime, a coalition of company owners have secured their own facilitator. Richard Longpre, former Deputy Minister of Labour, has been called in to “fast-track” a settlement. It is also the hope of the carriers that Longpre can bring a government-appointed facilitator, when he’s summoned, up to speed much quicker than starting from scratch.

Some major retailers have started implementing contingency plans. Media reports state that a few ships are being diverted south of the border to the Seattle Port. Other big box retailers may be thinking of dropping containers straight from the dock to rail, where they’re taken to major distribution centres outside of the Lower Mainland. It’s questionable, however, how much more additional capacity rail lines can handle.

It seems that many carriers are sympathizing with their contractors, but are afraid to unilaterally give rate hikes without support from shipping lines and assurances that other carriers will follow.

“I’m with [the owner-ops] all the way,” says Julie Castle, owner of Quantum Transportation, a small Vancouver-based container hauler with two owner-operators participating in the strike. “I think that shipping lines, brokers, rail lines, and even carriers, have not taken seriously that there’s a group of people that have been working very hard to make them all rich.

“Far too many carriers and shipping lines hide behind what they’ve created, that these drivers are sub-contractors,” she said in an interview with TodaysTrucking.com. “They have no clout. If they have to fight, they’re basically on their own.”

But like other carriers standing in solidarity with the owner-ops, Castle admits she isn’t brave enough to go it alone. She agrees that the lower mainland container-hauling market is as cutthroat a sector as exists in trucking today. While there’s been maturing relationships between carrier and shipper in other sectors, many shippers on B.C.’s coast are still quite willing to switch carriers many times for even a modest discount.

“If I could be the only company that went out and charged the shipping line and the warehouses $750 a container so these guys can make a decent buck, I would do it,” she says. “But I’d be the only one on the block yelling at the auction. And then what happens?

“As a small carrier, I can’t afford to take the risk.”

One of Castle’s owner-operators, Shandra Nand, agrees. He says the largest culprits in the conflict are the shipping lines and the ports, where truckers are delayed for hours without compensation. “On average, they wait three hours at the ports in an eight-hour day,” says Nand, who in 1999 was involved in a stakeholder committee that tried to work with the Vancouver Port Authority in fixing problems like congestion.

“The guys [shunting] containers in lift trucks inside the port are getting $80 an hour. They got retirement funds, they got dental,” says Castle. “Why does the guy sitting underneath that lift truck for three hours have to drive away for next to nothing?”

As she spoke to Today’s Trucking, Castle was sitting at her computer going over a letter to customers. The message? “They’re part of the problem,” she says. “They need to be aware of this issue. They can’t just sit back and go hire long-haul people to come in and get [the freight]. We all need to be part of the solution.”