Hector Padilla, 35, followed his father into the trucking business a decade ago –- partly because he grew up loving the “smell of diesel.” Around this time of year, he’d usually be exhausted. But “the what-they-call peak season has been a small whimper,” he says. “It hasn’t been the big roar of other years.”
Padilla finds a lot of his work using apps like NEXT Trucking, an online platform that connects small-fleet drivers with jobs. That market has another risk to worry about besides the trade war: A new California rule set to take effect on Jan. 1 that could force companies to replace contracted gig-economy workers with employees. Padilla says it may impact owner-operator drivers like himself.
To be sure, there’s still plenty of work at the twin ports, which process more than a third of America’s containerized imports and support 192,000 jobs in the immediate area. Padilla says he’s upbeat about the future because “California ports have the infrastructure, it’s a gateway for the country.”
But that status isn’t set in stone. Supply chains are shifting from China to other Asian manufacturing nations, and even some European ones, while East Coast port are making investments that are boosting their competitive edge, according to Weston LaBar, chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association. The group represents most of the 13,000 drivers that ferry cargo at least once a week in and out of the southern California ports.
Rogers says he’s hoping Trump’s new trade deal will smooth things out. But “what I’m hearing from the Chinese shippers is that it’s an irreversible change,” he says. “This might be the outcome for years to come. We shouldn’t expect things to resume to normal.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.