New L.A. drayage company to use employee drivers

Announced on the heels of a port driver labor strike, Eco Flow will use “free-flow” to move containers out of terminals to off-dock yards.    The formation of a new port trucking company was announced Monday afternoon at a press conference that featured Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti among its speakers.
   The new drayage company, Eco Flow Transportation, is backed by the private equity firm Saybrook Capital, which acquired Total Transportation Services Inc. in 2011, and said it will use employee drivers rather than independent owner operators.
   The announcement comes just days after port truck drivers ended a strike against four other drayage companies on Friday: Intermodal Bridge Transport, Pacer Cartage, Harbor Rail, Transportation and Pacific Nine Transportation. The strikers are seeking to become employee drivers as well.
   Eco Flow said it has been operating for a month and now “has 80 employee drivers and is on a path to have 500 employee drivers within the next year.” The company said it will have “a neutral position” regarding the choice of its employees on whether to unionize.
   The Teamsters and TTSI have “resolved outstanding legal issues between them and settled litigation at the National Labor Relations Board and California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement,” the company added.
   Eco Flow said it is innovating by using “free-flow,” a new process by which draymen move containers to a near dock yard and store them there for a short time until another driver can move the container to a distribution center or warehouse.
   Garcetti praised the company, saying, “We must make sure the ports work for the drivers who bring the goods from the docks to your doorstep. The misclassification of port truck drivers is not the gripe of a few drivers but a battle cry of a systemic problem that must be addressed. These professional men and women drivers are just the type of middle class Angelenos we need to support as we build an economy that works for everyone. Eco Flow is leading the way and becoming a model for the future of goods movement in Southern California – and soon, the rest of the nation as well.”