Problem with Port Trucking

The Problem with Port Trucking
For too long, port drivers and local residents in New York and New Jersey have faced all of the environmental burdens, but received none of the economic benefits of having a trade hub in their backyard. While the ports generate huge corporate profits for international shippers, the broken, antiquated port trucking system literally has a choke hold on local communities and working families, and costs billions in taxpayer dollars, mostly for health care.

The current port trucking system has only yielded deadly, dirty air and dead-end jobs that have spiked both public health and poverty statistics to crisis proportions. Port truck drivers are struggling to provide for their families and residents of port-adjacent communities, like the Ironbound and South Ward neighborhoods in Newark are suffering from the impact of toxic diesel emissions in the air they breathe.

America's “Sweatshops on Wheels” Sector
The majority of the 7,000 port drivers who serve the ports of New York and New Jersey sit at the bottom of the global supply chain. Treated as “independent contractors” by the companies they haul for, they are forced to own the primary tool of the trade – the truck – yet they have no say in negotiated haul rates. The average driver:

• Owns a diesel-spewing rig that was built in 1994
• Takes home roughly $29,000 a year after expenses, fuel and insurance
• Struggles to afford even the most routine repairs and upgrades
• Works 11-14 hours a day in dangerous conditions
• Lacks workers’ comp, Social Security, health care and retirement benefits
• Is barred from hauling for more than one company at a time to earn more

Port trucking was once a regulated industry which produced middle-class jobs with benefits. However, the arrival of a free-market political ideology crowded the field with “fly by night” brokers that contract with so-called independent contractors, eroding standards year after year since 1980. It forced responsible employers who maintained their fleets to leave the industry altogether

As a result, today’s port trucking system is a highly-polluting underground economy rife with inefficiencies, exploitation, and unenforced safety violations linked to poor working conditions. Neither the trucking companies not their multinational shipper clients like Wal-Mart and Target are responsible for cleaner commerce, and profit by undercutting market standards in a race to the bottom.

For more facts about port truckers click here.

Lungs and Livelihoods Are at Risk
Despite the profits enjoyed by corporations across the world’s supply chain, American ports are said to be where the oldest, most polluting trucks “go to die.” The drivers, unable to afford clean vehicles, face elevated health risks, and their belching rigs cause high rates of asthma, cancer, heart disease and respiratory illness in local communities.

·        New Jerseyans face the nation’s second greatest cancer risk from diesel soot in the nation. Newark’s school children experience a 25 percent asthma rate, double the state and national rates, with treatment accounting for 12% of the state’s managed care costs.

·        Diesel soot health impacts the health of New Jersey residents. There were an estimated 880 premature deaths related to diesel soot. Other illnesses included 17,926 asthma attacks,1,400 non-fatal heart attacks, 1,300 cases of acute bronchitis, and 26,000 cases of upper and lower respiratory distress.

·        Health impacts from diesel soot are expected to total $4.8 billion in 2010 and the UMDNJ estimates that asthma related treatment is 12% of New Jersey’s managed care costs.

The public health impacts of diesel pollution are obvious in port adjacent communities. What exacerbates these health problems is the fact that residents of port adjacent communities and the drivers themselves lack adequate access to healthcare, increasing their dependence on the public healthcare system.