In normal times, thousands of containers are unloaded from any particular ship at now-closed U.S. seaports in Houston, Baltimore and Virginia. Each day, thousands of trucks and truck drivers pick up loads from ports and move them to warehouses and distribution centers so they can make their way to customers.
But when ports shut down, as they did Tuesday morning because of a widespread dockworkers strike, those drivers may not know what their next job will be.
Tuesday wasn’t exactly a chill day for Kyle Kristynik, president of Houston-area trucking company Jetco Delivery. When Marketplace caught up with him at around noon, he said he was “trying to figure out if it’s 5 o’clock somewhere yet.”
He worries about his drivers, he said — many of whom operate their own trucks and pick up containers from terminals at Port Houston daily.
“They’re independent contractors, a lot of them,” and they don’t get paid time off, Kristynik said. “They’re sitting without a paycheck, basically.”
The industry counts on many of these independent contractors and small business owners across the country. American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear said the vast majority of his members own fewer than 10 trucks.
“These are very small businesses that aren’t able to shift in a strike,” Spear said. “They’re going to have to wait it out. And the longer it goes, those folks are going to be really hung out to dry.”
“The trucking industry, it operates off of very thin margins,” said John Esparza, head of the Texas Trucking Association. “So, it definitely tests the mettle of a trucking industry.”
Trucking companies are adjusting. Stori Conrad with Gulf States Trucking said the firm tried to bring in as many containers as it could ahead of the strike.
And now, “we have been trying our best to reposition our drivers to handle vans and flatbeds, just so that they are able to generate a paycheck,” Conrad said.
Kyle Kristynik of Jetco Delivery in Houston is making the most of the fact that a lot of trucks and trailers are parked. “We’re getting caught up or getting ahead, really, on maintenance,” he said.
Because once the ports reopen, he said, they’ll need every truck back on the road to catch up on orders.
