Who would have thought that when a group of independent container haulers at the Port of Vancouver slapped down the hasta la vista card during contract negotiations with their carrier companies, they would be putting in motion a game of chicken that would take nearly a month and a half to end?

As you can read in our September issue, it was the Vancouver Port Authority (VPA) that stepped in with a backdoor plan to get the 1,200 truckers back to work. Most of the carriers involved in the dispute have begrudgingly accepted the policy, which requires fleets that haul freight in and out of the port to acquire an interim licence. By signing on to the licence provision, a carrier would also be bound by the terms laid out by a mediator’s proposal, which was unanimously rejected by the trucking firms just days before.

Predictably, the VPA was applauded by businesses and the media for its bold move. But the port carries as much of the burden for this as
any party.

While the truckers were decrying low rates and inadequate compensation for rising fuel on the surface, how much of their discontent is rooted in old issues within the port’s gates like congestion and agonizingly slow loading/unloading times? How much stomach would these truckers have for stretching this strike out for over a month if they figured they could get in and out of the port fast enough for one more container a day?

Somehow the VPA managed to fly below the radar screen during this entire conflict, while fingers were being pointed at just about everybody else.

The truckers, of course, blamed the carriers, many of whom insisted in the early days they would love to give their owner-ops an increase. But it was their customers — the shipping lines — that wouldn’t back them up in covering at least some of the added cost.

We didn’t hear much from folks like Paul Martin’s sons at Canada Steamship Lines or others in their position, but I assume they too would say they have to pass the buck to importers and big retailers. You know the guys — the ones claiming they were so frustrated with the strike, they’d happily pay the price for diverting freight to other ports. (Instead of just passing it down the ladder back to the truckers to get them working again?)

While it’s tough to argue that most of these truckers don’t need some sort of increase to mitigate fuel costs, my sympathy for them started to wane as the dispute dragged on. The fact that some of them were busy targeting ‘scab’ truckers in drive-by shootings instead of thinking about solutions sure didn’t help melt this armchair scribe’s icy heart, either.

I just had a hard time figuring out why — if hauling containers in Vancouver is really that bad — they stuck around with their hands open (and empty) for over a month. Why not just put their trucks on with a linehaul fleet in this capacity-crunch era? In fact, in a free-market system, that’s the right way to get rates at the port to rise.
Don’t stick around waiting for the carriers and shippers to offer you something. Leave. And when the Martin Jrs. can’t get containers off their ships, leave it up to them to lure you back. Unless, of course, some of these drivers, for whatever reason, are un-hirable in other sectors. And if so, maybe some should rethink the idea that they’re good enough at their jobs to deserve a hefty raise in the first place.

In the end, these drivers may have cut their own legs by refusing to react to what the market was dictating. Big box shippers fed up with a myriad of labour disruptions at the port over the last few years claim they’re seriously considering permanently diverting freight to other ports, which would result in less freight for the truckers.

Also, a handful of carriers privately told Today’s Trucking they’re toying with the idea of bringing in Teamster drivers and phasing out the contractors. Hello irony? How ‘ya doin? Pause on that a sec.

The mass empowerment of owner-operators was in part a union-busting tactic once upon a time. Now we have carriers who would prefer unions and collective bargaining instead of what’s supposed to be the open market?

Only on the Left Coast.