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West Coast truckers’ strike renews reliability concerns

A strike by truck drivers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is renewing concerns about the United States’ reputation as a reliable supplier of agricultural goods to foreign customers.

Mike Steenhoek of the Soy Transportation Coalition says that while the strike is not expected to cause major disruptions, the timing is bad following the labor dispute that severely impacted west coast shipping earlier this year.  Steenhoek says another disruption of service adds insult to injury.

“If we want to be a 21st century economy—if we want to be the leading exporter on the planet—we not only need to provide and produce what the world demands, but we have to get it to them.  Having a port system is integral to that process,” Steenhoek says, “and so we just really need to demand something new and kind of change the way we do business in this country.”

Steenhoek says it’s not right that 14-thousand dock workers were able to shut down the West Coast ports earlier this year.

“Fourteen-thousand soybean farmers don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘well, I’m not going to sell my soybeans unless I get paid 20 dollars a bushel for them’,” he says, “and the reason is 14,000 thousand soybean farmers don’t have that dominance or command of that economy.  But yet we’ve got port workers that do.”

The larger question, Steenhoek says, is whether such an important part of the entire U.S. logistics system should to be susceptible to such routine disruptions.

“The laws and provisions that we have in place that are structured to prevent market dominance in particular industries—we’ve got those on the books,” Steenhoek says.  “Why can’t we treat our West Coast and East Coast ports in the same manner?”

Steenhoek says the U.S. needs a port system that facilitates commerce and is not an obstacle to it.

AUDIO: Mike Steenhoek