Long Beach Harbor

Three weeks after a labor dispute involving independent truckers rocked the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, tensions have eased--at least for now. Thousands of truck drivers, who had unionized and then picketed the ports to dissuade nonunion truckers from working, are themselves out of work for the moment. But shipping volume at the nation's busiest port complex is back to near normal, steamship lines said, in no small part because there are fewer drivers to snarl port roads and terminals.

Shippers hampered by the labor slowdown at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports said Monday that the flow of freight is returning to normal even as thousands of union truck drivers stay off the job for a second week. "It's high enough to where we're not getting an accumulation of containers at the terminals," said Robert Kleist, an advisor to the Evergreen America Corp. and a member of the Steamship Assn. of Southern California board.

A labor standoff at the nation's busiest harbor complex lurched into its fourth day Thursday as thousands of truckers stood idle and shippers watched stacks of stranded freight containers slowly rise. The access roads and loading lots at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach barely rustled under the morning fog, but shippers said operations appeared to pick up modestly over Wednesday, estimating that truck traffic was between 30% and 50% of normal.

The road under Franklin Rodriguez's rig has never been paved with gold, but lately it's littered with obstacles. Buckling under the combined strain of higher costs, cutthroat competition and longer delays at ever-busier docks in Long Beach and Los Angeles, independent trucker Rodriguez has realized he can't afford to be his own boss. Not anymore. "The owner-operator has lost his right to bargain with the companies we work for. You can't tell them what you need.

For more than a year, the independent truckers who carry cargo to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have protested what they considered long delays at the docks and paltry wages by forming big-rig convoys on freeways and gridlocking downtown streets. And for weeks, hundreds more unionized drivers employed by the big trucking firms have been talking about a strike. Today, is what shippers are calling "Crunch Day"--when the whole feud is expected to shift into high gear.

For more than a year, the independent truckers who carry cargo to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have protested what they considered long delays at the docks and paltry wages by forming big-rig convoys on freeways and gridlocking downtown streets. And for weeks, hundreds more unionized drivers employed by the big trucking firms have been talking about a strike. Today is what shippers are calling "Crunch Day"--when the whole feud could hit high gear.

More than 2,000 dust-caked trucks sit idled on a gravel lot here, keys in their ignitions but their batteries dying, testimony to one man's gambit to revolutionize business at the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors 50 miles away. The owners of these trucks hope to find work at the Transport Maritime Assn., a Cerritos start-up company founded by a former insurance agent, Donald L. Allen.

The California attorney general's office Thursday opened a preliminary inquiry into allegations of price-fixing and other antitrust violations at a start-up trucking company and harbor-area union that are at the center of the labor struggle that has choked the flow of freight at Los Angeles' twin ports for nearly two weeks. "It's hard to say whether there's fire behind the smoke," said Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Tom Greene, chief of the state's antitrust section.

Lawyers for terminal operators at the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor complex won a court order late Tuesday to bar off-the-job truck drivers from picketing en masse in front of terminal gates. About 500 unionized truck drivers protested outside the gates of Evergreen America Corp. terminal at the Port of Los Angeles all day Tuesday, crippling the flow of traffic of the few trucks there were still operating.

Officials from the Port of Long Beach and Hanjin Shipping have broken ground on what should eventually be the largest container terminal in the largest container port in the country. The 170-acre terminal will have an expansive wharf, two-thirds of a mile long, capable of handling the new mega-container ships, which can carry 2,500 40-foot cargo boxes. It will have six huge gantry cranes, as well as space for two 8,000-foot-long freight trains on dockside rails.