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Updated Sunday, January 27, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times



	A “llantero,” or tire man, cuts new grooves into a bald truck tire. Regrooving is legal, provided the tires are designed for it and their steel belts aren’t damaged in the process. If the belt is cut, “that tire becomes a time bomb,” an expert says.(Los Angeles Times photo by Brian Vander Brug) Enlarge Photo

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U.S. port-area truck drivers taking detour around safety

Collaring illegal truckers remains something of “a cat-and-mouse game,” said CHP Officer Patrick O’Donnell, who specializes in inspecting commercial vehicles. “We do the best to inspect as many of these trucks as we can on a daily basis; unfortunately, we can’t get to all 16,000 of them.

“But they’re really rolling the dice,” he said. “They may get away from us on a given day, but eventually they’ll get stopped.”

In the meantime, low-income truckers in need of repairs gravitate toward a part of eastern Wilmington traversed by dirt roads and lined with repair shops — though “shops” implies that these businesses operate out of buildings. In some cases, the repairmen work in open lots behind corrugated metal sheets.

The shops are thrifty alternatives to dealerships. At JNJ Truck Repairs, for example, an engine overhaul goes for about US$1,800. “A dealer will charge about US$4,000 for an overhaul,” said JNJ’s owner, Juan Enriquez, 42.

In August, Enriquez’s hands were badly burned in an accident at his shop. “I was working on an engine when some gasoline spilled and caught fire,” he said. “I didn’t go to the hospital. I cured myself at home with aloe vera juice.”

A block away, Mexican ranchera music issued from a boom box in a cluttered yard where truck driver Augusto Arroche, 32, of Long Beach waited for workers to finish repairing a large crack in the hood of his 8-year-old rig. “A dealer would charge about US$3,000 for this job and take two weeks to do it,” Arroche said, as a husky brown guard dog named Mambo roamed nearby. “Here, they’re charging US$700 — and they agreed to let me pay US$400 today and the rest later. At 3 p.m., I’ll be back on the road.”

Peter Brown, a spokesman for the California Trucking Association, which represents trucking organizations and promotes safe driving, said he worried about “rogue truckers cutting costs at the expense of public safety. I compare it with someone diagnosed with hepatitis continuing to work at a fast-food restaurant and putting everyone else at risk.”

But torn between state traffic codes and intense competition, many independent truckers said they had no choice but to resort to such measures as lashing bumpers to chassis with bungee cords and smearing mud over cracked parts to hide the problems from CHP officers.

The cost-cutting serves the interests of shippers and merchants, argued Rafael Pizarro, an environmental activist and political consultant who has worked extensively on issues concerning port trucks. “The moment you try to regulate the system or raise wages for truckers, they scream it’s a tactic to unionize drivers and will ultimately increase prices for consumers.”

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