Plan to ease port congestion gets mixed reviews

Many drivers blame delays on the port longshore workers who, drivers say, have little incentive to work faster because they get paid more if they work at night and get to take regular breaks.

"Since they get paid by the hour, they always take their time, so the ones who don't make money are the drivers," said Elizandro Menendez, a driver from Los Angeles. He typically gets to complete two pickup and delivery trips per day.

"I've been working the ports since 1985 and it's always been the same problem," he said.

Truck driver Mario Aguilar, 55, said he's refused to work evening shifts because his company does not pay extra for working nights. While he's seen fewer trucks on the highways since OffPeak began, Aguilar said the program has had little effect on delays inside the terminals during the day.

"The terminals are very slow; the people over there are lazy," Aguilar said. "Sometimes we have to wait in line for two hours just to drop an empty (container) and to pick it up and load it, another hour and a half."

Bruce Wargo, the president and chief executive of PierPASS, acknowledged drivers' turn times — or the time it takes for a driver to pick up a container, deliver it and return to the ports — could be better, but stressed the program has only been up and running a fee weeks.

"We expect that to improve over time," Wargo said.

He noted that the amount of cargo being moved during evening hours shows early concerns by some truck companies — that drivers would not being willing to work evenings — never materialized.

PierPASS officials have also had to contend with some glitches and customer confusion with the system set up to track and collect the $40 to $80 fees per container charged to cargo owners for moving their goods during peak hours.

Some 9,100 companies have registered for PierPASS to date, Wargo said.

The expanded port hours have resulted in noticeably fewer trucks traveling on the highways near the ports in the morning, said state Sen. Alan Lowenthal.

"It seems to be exceeding its expectation in terms of the amount of cargo they're diverting to off-peak hours," said Lowenthal.

OffPeak's true test may be yet to come, however.

So far, cargo levels at the ports are lagging what they were last year at this time, the traditional start of the peak cargo shipping season.

In the first seven months of the year, the ports saw 200 fewer container ships than in the same period last year, when an influx of Asian imports combined with a shortage of trained dockworkers to create a logjam at the ports, said Capt. Manny Aschemeyer of the Marine Exchange, which tracks ship movements at the ports.

As early as June last year, ships often were forced to wait at sea before they could enter the port because of delays working the ships.

Now, most cargo container ships are able to dock as soon as they arrive, Aschemeyer said.

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