“I’d say about 98 percent of the companies we spoke with agreed to a rate increase—no one said less than 20 percent,” said Irvinder Dhanda, a driver who represents many of the owner-operators who have been protesting rising diesel fuel costs at the Oakland port.

Delph Jean, a driver who speaks on behalf of other truckers in Oakland, agreed that most truckers had returned to the road. He told Channel 4 news that truckers are still boycotting four trucking companies that are refusing to increase fuel surcharges to help truckers deal with the rapidly rising price of diesel fuel.

The rate hikes are being negotiated from company to company, with some of them going into effect immediately.

Beginning April 30, truck drivers in Oakland joined freight haulers along California’s coast in a series of strikes and protests aimed at winning a 30 percent increase in the rate they are paid for hauling containers and a fuel surcharge from the trucking companies to make up for skyrocketing fuel prices.

The impact of the strike was beginning to be felt throughout the Bay Area. The NUMMI automobile plant, a Fremont-based joint venture between General Motors and Toyota, said it has been monitoring the situation “hour by hour” during the strike saying that it could potentially halt its manufacturing line. The plant receives 92 containers a day from the port in Oakland. The deliveries are part of NUMMI’s “just-in-time inventory,” in which the car parts move straight from the containers to the assembly line.

John Bromley, a spokesman for the Union Pacific railroad, reported that by May 5 the company’s operations at the port had been closed for two days due to the back-up in cargo. “There’s no traffic in or out,” said Bromley.

Port spokeswoman Marilyn Sandifur estimated that only about 25 percent of the trucks that normally operate out of the Oakland port were running at the height of the protest. The Port of Oakland is the fourth-busiest port in the United States.

On May 4 port officials stepped in and convened a meeting of the truckers, shippers, and brokers to hammer out an accord that would end the shutdown. Dhanda told KRON Channel 4 News that the agreement reached at that meeting was a step in the right direction. He added that most truckers had decided not to return to work until another meeting could be held on May 6.

At the second meeting the truck drivers rejected the proposed settlement, saying it did not meet their demands. When they resumed their pickets the following day the trucking firms and port officials went to court to try to force them back.

On May 7 the Port of Oakland got a temporary restraining order against the truckers barring them from gathering in front of the trucking terminals in protest. The court order followed a meeting the previous evening between the trucking firms and the drivers where the truckers agreed to return to work in return for the establishment of a committee to address the truckers’ concerns. The committee will meet four times a year to field complaints about pay rates, fuel surcharges, and working conditions.

The panel will include independent truckers, trucking company representatives, port officials, brokers, shipping companies, terminal operators and railroad representatives.

As of May 10, most of the 300 truckers in Oakland had returned to work.

Diesel fuel prices have risen sharply in May and were the spark that caused the shutdown by the truckers. In Modesto, just outside of Oakland, diesel fuel prices have soared by 28 percent in the last year, according to a pricing survey by AAA, climbing to $2.36 a gallon.

Most truck drivers own their own rigs and pay for all of the maintenance, fuel costs, insurance, and other expenses related to trucking. They receive between $50 and $200 per container pulled, depending on where they are taking the load. Factoring in the above expenses, drivers’ wages work out to be about $8 to $9 an hour.

Although the Oakland drivers are not organized into a union, they have received the backing of the Teamsters union. Chuck Mack, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 70 in Oakland and director of the Teamsters Port Division, presented a resolution May 4 to the Port of Oakland backing the drivers. The resolution demanded a fair fuel surcharge and the establishment of a registry of trucking companies. “These workers are the most exploited group of truck drivers in the country,” said Mack. The registry would allow drivers to verify whether the steamship lines and motor carriers are truly passing along the fuel surcharge.  
 
 
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