TEAMSTERS TRY A NEW ANGLE

As late as December 2009, the issuance of yet another blatantly biased, half-baked report by the Teamsters organization takes aim at trying to circumvent the livelihood of many men and women involved in the auto transportation industry as independents and non-union personnel. Purporting that auto manufacturers GM and Fiat/Chrysler have begun the practice of shipping vehicles “by cut-rate and inexperienced carhaul companies“. May I begin my rant?

This author is a 35-plus year veteran of the car haul industry. Auto transport is the ONLY kind of trucking I have ever been associated with. My father was one of the pioneers in the business and hauled cars back when they were transporting 3 and 4 at a time, most of the cargo had tail-fins on their rear quarters and “erector set” trailers were the norm. Interstates were non-existent for the most part and President Dwight D. Eisenhower was about to put his signature on the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 which would begin the Interstate Highway System. My life has been lived within the car haul industry and all the changes it has seen. World changing? No. Top-level importance on the world scene? No. But it has been MY world and I have survived within it.

I have been an owner/operator in the auto transport business from the beginning with a short stint briefly as a company driver for the now-defunct E & L Transport Co based out of the Detroit, MI area. (You will read the words “now-defunct” a lot in this Teamsters expose’…it seems the larger union companies have a tremendous history of being unable to continue successfully and they have failed 100% of the time since my early beginnings back in the 1970’s). My beginning years were as an owner/operator. This meant I owned my truck and leased it to a union car haul company pulling their company-owned trailers for a percentage…in those days 65% of gross revenue. I was a due-paying Teamsters union employee for the first 10 years of my car haul career, being forced to begin my own small auto transport company after yet another union carrier bit the dust and bounced half-million dollar payroll checks. At this time, I had worked for: (1) Automobile Transport Inc (Teamsters affiliated) headquartered in Wayne, MI, a large Ford carrier as an import terminal owner/op in Dundalk, MD. Company Closed – Cause: Bankruptcy. (2) Dixie Auto Transport Inc based in Jacksonville, FL (Teamsters affiliated), a Nissan (then Datsun) and other import carrier operating mainly out of the Port Of Jacksonville at Blount Island and also the Talleyrand terminals, eventually securing a position at the new Nissan Motor Manufacturing facility in Smyrna, TN as the main carrier and opening several other import terminals around the country. Company Closed – Cause: Bankruptcy (3) Kenosha Auto Transport Co (Teamsters affiliated) based out of Kenosha, WI and operating an import terminal in the Port of Wilmington, DE for the Volkswagen of America cars that entered the U.S. there. Company Closed – Cause: Bankruptcy. These are my own personal experiences but there were so many more. From Anchor Motor Freight, the large GM carrier and predecessor of Leaseway/Penske/etc to M&G Convoy and Baker Driveaway, the Chrysler carriers in the east to Complete Auto Transport Inc and the beginnings of the Ryder car haul network which is largely a group of bankrupt, absorbed union carriers that has enjoyed their own bankruptcy status for several years now. All of the aforementioned auto transport carriers were Teamsters union affiliated companies…100 % of them with many more “now-defunct” carriers only a memory for the multitude of relinquished employees fighting to create a living for their families today as TARP money and bailouts are doled out to Teamsters and other unions, auto manufacturers (again Teamsters realizing the political excesses), banks, etc. Let me share just a bit of my Teamsters experience to anyone that cares to read it. Facts…not spin…livelihood based…not political. What follows is an accurate depiction of the history of Teamster influence on the auto transport business and the companies they have helped to put asunder.

Scene: Port of Wilmington in Delaware. An east coast exclusive import terminal for the German automaker giant, Volkswagen. Kenosha Auto Transport Co managers have contacted my brothers, my father and I in a preliminary proposal soliciting our experience, expertise and reliable history as KAT (Kenosha Auto Transport) is considering “bidding for the VW work” in Delaware. Bidding against another brother Teamster carrier is OK even if it involves rate-cutting…as long as the due-paying members of the local brotherhood are retained. Mr. Teamster brother…those are your words in your “news” awareness campaign against non-union carriers…”rate-cutting”. At this point, Porsche, Audi and Volkwagens entered the U.S. via this port, were unloaded off the ships, stored, prepped and readied for the trek to the dealership networks serviced from this location which included locales as far away as the Kentucky area and down into the Carolinas. Sometimes special moves sent an occasional driver to the west coast but mostly we operated within the span of the east to mid-west and mid-south dealers. Crossing the Atlantic took a few weeks back then and storage in Germany as well as in the U.S. after unloading the ships many times took their toll on the batteries installed in these cars. VW Rabbit diesels were especially notorious in those days for hard-starting but many units were “dead” come time to load on the trucks. Union employee…let’s call him Spanky…his job as a Teamsters union employee is to help the drivers as they load these dispatched units, checking documentation and signing off on any discrepancies noted on pre-load inspections, etc. Another part of his job was to “jump start” the dead cars the drivers encountered. As he drove around the yard in his crashed brown Volkswagen Rabbit (retained by VW as a yard vehicle after a Teamsters union driver destroyed it in a loading mishap…one of a multitude over the years I knew of), he never got in a hurry to aid. For the record, I was a friend to this guy and liked him as a person…his work ethics stunk. My opinion and I am entitled to it. With dead Volkswagens and Porsches all over the yard…the influx of transporters waiting on this guy at morning dispatch was an incredible waste of human resources as well as equipment delays. Tremendous delays…and these were Teamsters “brothers” that were being delayed. “Get on the clock” was the commonplace response as he took yet another union-required mid-morning coffee break, leaving the loading area littered with drivers standing with gloves on, tie-down bars in hand, wanting to get loaded and be on the way to the receivers dealerships. No delivery, no pay…unless you are of the mind that being on the “clock” is a pay day. Maybe in that respect, I was not a good union employee. I believed that I should give an honest days work for an honest days pay. That’s why I remain a blue-collar working stiff today I guess and I did not advance into the management or union side of the industry. I had opportunities to do so in my career and I chose to do what I was best at. Today I am proud of my history and nobody can ever take my experiences away from me. I am not ashamed of my job and am quite proud of the way I do my job, the way I take care of my equipment and my customers cars. In an effort to quicken the process one morning, I got out my jumper cables and was going to jump start one of my dead units so I could hurry along the process. After all, Spanky is not there when I have to jump start the car at the dealership in Kentucky. I am perfectly able and capable of attaching the cables in the proper sequence and making sure there is no damage to either vehicle nor injury to myself in the process. Jumping dead batteries is NOT rocket science…a feat that needs to be carefully observed but any dummy can do it once a 2 minute explanation has been performed. Spanky sees my jumper cables and my attempt to start the dead unit and immediately (he is moving at a human pace now in his brown Rabbit, not the usual speed of a slug on a cold sidewalk) he is speeding toward me, sliding up to my staged row of cars, yelling about how I am not allowed to do this! This is his job! I am putting him out of a job! Remember…I said I liked this guy. I still do. He is just showing me a part of the Teamsters union employee that I refused to accept then and still today I despise in any human capacity. I put away my cables, sat back into my truck, watched the clock as I waited for him to get time to get around to jumping this one car so I could load it on my truck and secure it. We are talking 8, 9 and 10 car loads here…times 30 to 40 trucks usually on any given weekday morning dispatch at one scene in Wilmington, DE. The number of man hours that this one Teamster employee cost everybody involved in the process over the span of his union career would have been a staggering report should anyone attempt to calculate it. From Volkswagen of America, the transporting company, the drivers, the dealers…unbelievable, needless, hurtful delays and costs involved with this obnoxious operational “norm” in this one union site. Again, I have to remind the reader…I WAS a Teamster too at this time! I was a Teamster “brother”. This is what the union is about today. Greed or power…or both. A total and complete disregard for the work ethic and they are the first to belittle hard-working people from which they have no way to collect dues or bestow upon them limiting regulations for their authority “fix” for the day. Are you surprised, Mr Teamster, at that statement? All this time, you were huddled down into your little base, stripped, rusted out Sterling day cab truck breathing exhaust fumes to the point of blowing your nose creates a blackness on your handkerchief that resembles coal dust…your ears ringing at the day-long screaming of the 2-stroke diesel that sounds like it’s rotating the earth on its axis but can barely get over the slight rise of an interstate ramp…behind you, toting a years-ago obsolete, rusted out, patched up piece of junk trailer that has been well-documented in many states (i.e. Maryland, etc) with a penchant for “neck” breaking off and losing the entire trailer with load out on the nation’s highways for the public to deal with. How about it, Mr. Allied car hauler…Mr Teamsters brother??? Were you in the rusted, white/pastel green Allied transporter clearly marked by the way, that was wedged under the overpass on New Circle Road in Lexington, KY recently? How was it that you forgot to lower your ramp after delivering a unit at the Paul Miller Ford dealership and proceeded to clip the nice Ford F150 making it a veritable rare convertible model? You did have training, didn’t you, Mr Teamster car hauler? It’s not much to worry about though. That $40,000.00 pickup truck will be scrapped and that will just be another truck for a union carrier to haul, right? Probably you will get to haul it’s replacement after you file the grievance and your brothers get your job back citing either Ford Motor Company for making the truck with tires too tall or the transport company did something that caused this accident to happen. Hey, Mr Teamster ex-brother…was that you that told me, laughingly but seriously meant it, that you would “run across 3 lanes of traffic to run over a piece of metal that might get me a flat tire”…so you could go “on the clock”. You are fortunate I did not vomit in your face at that statement because it sickens me even today. Multiple examples can be detailed over and over again of this kind of blatant, flawed union work ethic. And Mr. Teamster, I will not be one-sided and biased as you obviously are in your report. I see this laziness in the non-union employees too. Your Teamsters card in the hip pocket does nothing to affect the heart of a man or woman in the workplace today. You either care or you don’t. You’re either proud of your job or you’re not.

Teamsters Union Carrier Goes Up In Smoke

Try as they might, the Teamsters roll out this “news” that a non-union car carrier is incapable of performing not only a satisfactory job of auto transporting, much less an OUTSTANDING job of vehicle moving. I have personally trained several dozen “union” car haulers and independents galore along the way. I have introduced guys that needed and wanted jobs to feed their families to a hard job…some made it, some didn’t. Some good, some uncaring, compensation-seeking slugs. Live and learn but calling it as I see it. For the Teamsters to find a California representative and a Missouri senator to get on their bandwagon and then find a PR contact to publish this sleaze (Democrats all of you??? How is that??? and then I should add…Oh, what a surprise that all have Democrat affiliations??) is as wrong as Spanky with his all-powerful jumper cables. The examples of Teamster union drivers in the car haul industry that have destroyed automobiles, light trucks, vans, etc in their day-to-day jobs as car haulers could not be contained on all the internet paper here. Mr Teamster car hauler…were you the driver that ran a new Fiat 131 off the headrack onto the ground some 13 feet below in Wilmington years back? An acquaintance bought the engine and related drive-train prior to the Fiat being crushed it was so bad. Can you say total loss, Mr Teamster car hauler? Oh, maybe you were the driver over at the Newark, DE Chrysler plant that ran through a staged line of new Dodges as you played around with the new model in the yard. Never did make that one stick on you, did they? It might be something to mention at this point that this plant recently closed too. More union brothers out of work. I don’t mean to infer that you were responsible for the plant’s closings…it just comes to mind. And, by the way, non-union carriers have been operating out of that plant for many years before TARP was an acronym in a Democrat’s mind.

For the record, I am aware of the many car haulers purporting to be “professionals” operating in the non-union side of the industry today. Wedge trailers, rollbacks…unscrupulous fleets utilizing anybody they can find to steal a dime from and lay the burden of expense on wishful-thinking drivers and operators. They will not stay in the business but as they fall, new ones with new hopes and “tickle-my-ear” dreams of big $$$, enter the fray. I, too, have seen the supposed “professionals” tying to the wheels of the transported units. I have moved many used auction units and noticed the wrongly-applied tie-downs that have distorted the undercarriage. But I can also attest to the fact that I know Teamster union drivers that have been the culprits of such practices. The implication by politician and union heads that a Teamster driver is a more capable person because he pays dues and carries a union card is as absurd as the TARP program itself and the socialist direction of this country’s leaders today. I’m not making this political…they did. I am simply standing up for myself and the “non-union” car haulers I know to be outstanding and top-shelf drivers that are being slandered by an uncaring, greedy base of Teamster-union led, politically motivated, running-scared cretins that have no respect for the facts and the truth. This NON-UNION and PROUD OF IT auto transporter of 35 years will put my ability up against anyone in the world today and as for the foolish woman (I won’t even mention her name to prevent any credit being given to her) that makes the statement that “non-union carriers are not as proud of their job” as a union carrier…you pen-in-hand, mouthy imbecile…you wouldn’t know a t-hook from an s-hook if it smacked you between the pampered eyes…go back to writing what you know about if there is such a subject. I am proudly non-union today and have no desire to enter the ranks of the soon-to-be-taxed-by-Obama-insurance-plans companies that will no doubt go the way that ALL previous union affiliated auto transporters have gone. The union car haul graveyard is not full yet…there are a few left…but as they enjoin one another to survive…as they find yet one more hedge-fund investor/group to stave off bankruptcy legal proceedings, the cavernous hole in the automobile transport memorial park has already been dug.

One more note, Mr. Teamster Democrat supporter…the late and beloved Ted Kennedy was widely held as the responsible mover of the legislation leading to the deregulation of the transportation industry with Pres. Jimmy Carter signing on. Leaning toward smaller government in this very brief moment of his career, he saw it as a way for the consumer to realize lower prices. If you are looking for the changes that bring us all to this point today, you really should look at one of your own in Sen. Ted Kennedy. That enabled me, Mr. Non-Union_and_Proud_Of_It Car Hauler, to apply to the “now-defunct” (that word again!) Interstate Commerce Commission in 1991 where I received operating authority certificates to begin my present non-union-and-loving-it career today. In one of his opening statements for the deregulation hearings, your beloved Senator said, “Regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anti-competitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical.” If that doesn’t exactly call down the Teamsters union attitudes from Spanky and his jumper cables to the convening heads arguing and negotiating for a careless, employee’s job back after destroying the entire number of top-loaded cars on his union carrier truck…well, I’ll eat my non-union-textile-workers hat.

That feels better now…and it didn’t cost me one penny for the dues, and I keep my self-respect in the process. What a deal.