Posts Tagged “Los Angeles”
While the Peterbilt may be considered the Cadillac of trucks with many drivers, Fernado Jemenez will take a Freightliner anyday. He’s driven both.
Fernado is both a company driver and a small fleet owner. HaulProduce.com caught up with the Los Angeles-based trucker a couple of months ago at a Pilot Truck Stop in Vienna, GA, while he was waiting word from dispatch for his next load.
He is driving for I&F Transportation and operating a 2005 Peterbilt, powered by a 470 h.p. Cat diesel, and pulling a 53-Utility trailer with a Carrier reefer unit.
The 40-year-0ld trucker says, “I’m just not happy with this Pete. It shakes too much; rides rough, and there just is not enough room in the sleeper. I want to drive a Classic. I own two Freightliners, and I like them a lot.”
He says the Peterbilt consumes too much fuel and only averages 4.5 mpg.
As the small fleet owner of FJ Transport, he prefers his Freightliners. His own company uses a combination of working directly with some shippers on loads, while using brokers on others.
Fernado has been trucking six years and wishes the rates on dry freight would pick up, noting that produce loads are paying a lot more.
He had a load of produce from Californa, requring six pick ups that took three days to get loaded. It was delivered to Pompano Beach, FL. He deadheaded to Georgia and had been waiting seven hours at the truck stop for his dispatcher to assign a load.
No one said trucking was easy, but Fernado was trying to show patience, waiting on a load to take him back to the West Coast.
Although the eight-day strike at ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach has ended, picking up and delivering loads to the terminals is still a mess and it could be for weeks.
It is not like the flexibility in trucking where a load can be diverted elsewhere due to a labor strike, weather factors or any number of other reasons.
Container terminals reopened Dec. 5 at both California ports as clerical workers in International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 reached a tentative contract with operators and shipping lines, as the union sought limits on outsourcing. In L.A. about 700 striking harbor clerks were backed by thousands of longshoremen who honored their picket line.
About $8 billion was lost in the strike to the local economy.
While the strike has ended, the congestion has not.
The cold chain was maintained, but there were concerns about arrival conditions and the possibility of an increase in orders that could challenge capacity.
It has been report the impacts of the strike will be far greater than just eight days. In 2002 there was a 10-day strike. It took months the boats could get back in the right rotation. This could adversely affect, for example, imported fruit from Chile arriving at Long Beach.