Port ties truckers in red tape
FINANCIAL GRAB: Ever-changing regulations seem to exist only to line facility’s pockets
I pulled up close behind another rig the other day, just to read the two signs on his rear doors. One read: “Don’t like trucks? Stop buying Stuff. Problem solved.”
On the other door was an even better one: “This driver is overloaded with Federal Regulations.”
Regulations! A nicer word for the more commonly used phrase, “Bulls __ t!
It’s that very same two-word phrase that has made Metro Vancouver port drivers a very special breed. No other port in North America has required its container haulers to jump through so many hoops for no other reason than to enhance the port’s bank accounts. A financial grab, plain and simple. But, I must admit, one murky point of contention has been clarified, at least for this week.
It had been written in stone that as of 2017, (which is just four months away), the only rigs allowed on port property would be those driving nothing older than a 2007 model year rig. Seven-year-old rigs and nothing older. Age would be the deciding factor.
As it only applied to container trucks, lumber and steel haulers could come in with a mid-Sixties’, smoke-belching Mack truck and be allowed entrance to deliver and pick up a load.
Well, an unwritten word recently came down the “pike” that this rule has changed. Again.
Now, it seems as though all rigs that are currently registered to do business on the docks, regardless of age, are good through 2021.
Of course, this may all change tomorrow, Wednesday.
Why could it change a third or is it a fourth time, you ask?
Because the port authority suits can’t seem to agree on anything, one day from the next.
Here’s another snafu from those people.
They issue yearly window stickers to rigs working for companies who have ponied up the five- and six-figure cash to have their rigs grace the port docks. The ports will not budge on this yearly influx of mucho bucks flowing into their accounts. But questions remain. For instance, if one company has 100 tagged rigs and suddenly loses the need for 50 of those tags, can they sell them to another company? The answer is no. The port received the money. No refund. The owners/drivers of the rigs are SOL. The company can no longer use that rig, so rig and driver are let go, and the dismissed driver does not get to keep the tag. No tag. No job.
If the drivers can find another company with an unused tag, then good on them, but the chances are slim.
What drivers and owner/operators want is to have tags issued to the truck, not a company so the rig can continue to work if the company loses a contract.
Metro Vancouver ports don’t want to make that change, because they will lose out on the opportunity to get more blood from the stone.
So you can understand a little bit of the frustration all container haulers go through on a daily basis.
The port’s left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and if it does, turns a blind eye, and it is the container hauler who gets nailed, financially.
That, my friend, is the true essence of our real problem; Total confusion and misinformation, coming from Metro Vancouver Ports.
No other port in North American can make such a claim. Why would they even want to?
I could fill a newspaper with stories about road life on the road, but why not share yours? Send them to Driving editor Andrew McCredie at amccredie@postmedia.com.