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TRUCKER'S STORY * USA - On the job with a port trucker
Port truckers like Marvin Palacios are the tiniest players in a prosperous global transport chain. But while big companies cash in, drivers barely make a living. Palacios, at least, believes change is on the way, but he has a long road aheadMiami,FL, USA -The Miami Herald, by NICHOLAS SPANGLER -Sep. 30, 2007: -- Port truckers like Marvin Palacios -- there are at least 2,000 in South Florida, mostly Hispanic, young and male, who haul cargo from the ports to regional distribution centers and back the other way for export -- are the tiniest players in a global transport chain comprised of giants like railroads, ocean shippers, terminal operators and intermediaries who store and consolidate cargo... The giants have profited as maritime trade surged over the last 50 years. But port truckers never cashed in. Some, like Palacios, are doing worse than when they started... Not until 10:30 a.m. in a Doral industrial park did Palacios -- 52 and breathing hard, red-faced in the heat -- back into the loading dock for his first load of the day, a 20-foot container holding 9,113 pounds of resin solution with a flash point of 13 degrees Celsius... ''Four hours and I haven't earned a dime yet,'' he said, through a translator... It was a $90 job but the resin was considered Hazmat, which brought a $25 bonus. That was good because Palacios hadn't been earning. Maybe it's just the annual summer slowdown; maybe, he suggested, it's because the dispatcher is giving work to his favorite drivers and shutting out the rest... Palacios showed his card again to get into the Florida International Terminal, where pneumatic-jawed forklift trucks were stacking and unstacking container canyons. There are at least 1,100 container hauls to and from the port each day; now about 40 truckers sat in their trucks, waiting for a single longshoreman to lead into the container canyons to drop or pick up... Palacios whistled with relief, seeing the much longer line at a nearby terminal, and got in line... His truck shuddered when a forklift laid it bare. It took only an hour for him to make it out -- half as long as usual, he said... It was getting on toward two in the afternoon and the dispatcher wasn't calling... Palacios wasn't sure what he'd do with the rest of the afternoon... But the phone rang. It was dispatch, with another job, and he headed west...
Labels: truckers' stories
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