Skip to content

A photo of picketers with police in teh background.

For some port truckers, the new year brings new worries over work

on January 3, 2014

For Eusebio Caldera, New Year’s Day was less a cause for celebration than a source of anxiety. Caldera has hauled cargo to and from the Port of Oakland since emigrating from Nicaragua to the Bay Area 25 years ago, but on Wednesday he found himself out of work until he purchases a truck that meets new diesel pollution regulations set by the California Air Resources Control Board.

Caldera speaks limited English, but with the help of his son, Tarcilo, who also drives a tractor trailer at the port, he said that being out of work feels like a defeat.

“If we don’t work for a week that’s a $2,000 loss,” Tarcilo said. “My dad needs a truck so that he can work for at least the next eight years and retire.”

The Calderas are part of a loosely organized group of independent drivers, called the Port of Oakland Truckers Association, that has protested the emissions regulations. Members of the group acknowledge the regulations are needed – air quality in West Oakland is among the worst in the Bay Area, in part due to pollution from the port – but the truckers say they have been forced to foot an unfair share of the bill. The truckers’ protests have interrupted operations at the port several times since August, and throughout the fall and winter they have warned that some drivers would find themselves out of work on Jan. 1.

For most of that time, the Calderas were searching for a compliant truck for Eusebio. The regulations require him to purchase a rig with an engine built since 2007. Just before the deadline, the Calderas managed to sell Eusebio’s old truck, but they have yet to locate a replacement.

2 Comments

  1. harvey on January 5, 2014 at 10:40 pm

    Have you considered a career as a fitness trainer?



  2. harvey on January 8, 2014 at 8:17 am

    Got it! a limo service.



Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.

Photo by Basil D Soufi
logo
Oakland North

Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.

Latest Posts

Scroll To Top