US (CA): Port strikes hits logistic companies hard
Normally, he’s overseeing a busy fleet of trucks shuttling merchandise from the Sacramento region to the Port of Oakland for export overseas. But in recent weeks, the executive of Devine Intermodal has watched as his business has throttled back to a parking lot of idled trucks, the byproduct of gridlocked conditions at West Coast shipping ports hampered by a months-long labor dispute.
“We cannot run our fleet because of the gridlock at the Port of Oakland. Both exports and imports are severely backed up and stymied, and now we are having to lay off drivers and staffers. ... Our revenue has been cut in half,” Coyle said Thursday.
Coyle said he will deliver the bad news by Friday morning to staff in Sacramento, Fresno and Reno: six layoffs and a reduction in hours for 20 more employees. “I hate to do it, but we’ve been holding on for as long as we can, and now it’s come to this.”
A months-long stalemate in contract talks between the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, both based in San Francisco, has clogged major ports in California and is having a negative economic impact on Central Valley growers and other Northern California businesses such as Devine Intermodal.
The recent port troubles stand in contrast to Thursday’s announcement that Golden State businesses shipped record amounts of merchandise valued at $174.13 billion last year, surpassing 2013’s record of $168.13 billion by about 3.6 percent, according to an analysis of U.S. Commerce Department trade figures by Beacon Economics, a consulting firm with Bay Area and Los Angeles offices.
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