SSA Terminals — Local services in Oakland

Below is an honest post. However, since that earlier time, the night clerks are no longer foul and belligerent. I complained several times, including to the corporate email and complaint line. It took nearly two years to get these clerks to be civil when responding to trucker communication. I can't understand why such a large corporation would take so long to bring people under control who offended and insulted hundreds of truckers everyday-it's beyond me. Nonetheless, there's an improvement

I've met some normal people and some wonderful people while driving on the SSA grounds. However I've also met some of the lowliest most hostile people I've ever met on any job in a 40 year career. Hateful, combative and disrespectful toward the truckers as a normal standard of behavior. Inexcusable contempt as a daily standard, not an exception. A week ago a yard hostler approached my truck and asked for "a smoke". With a dirty look when I explained I'm a non-smoker, he then attempted to panhandle me for $5 and explained that he just lost his job. That's just a happenstance event just highlighting that when you enter the SSA premises you're encountering an underclass of humanity of non-professional workers that don't have any education beyond high school, I'm sure many are dropouts entirely. But the worst is the hateful bile toward people driving trucks for a living. A culture of hatred and venom and ignorance directed at the truckers. Just the solid unembellished truth. I apologize to the other select SSA workers who are actually pretty good people and sometimes quite...

SSA is as close as it can get to an actual hell on earth. A clerk threatened to shoot me and have her man "come take care of me" because she thought i was approaching an intersection too quickly, when she had just yelled at me to hurry up over her PA system.. Her supervisor told me to my face, "i believe you, but i have to give you a 2 week suspension because i back my clerks.". Racism runs rampant in there as well. Being a white guy myself, i had to hear racist remarks from the white longshoremen about their "minority" coworkers, as though i was a part of their secret cross-burning club or something. And most of the black longshoremen acted like i wasn't even there until they would realize that ignoring me was blatantly obvious. They constantly change procedures and layouts, but never inform drivers, which results in them cussing drivers out for not having ESP. Their half hour breaks turn into 45-60 minute breaks and their 60 minute lunches usually last at least 90 minutes. As if waiting hours to get into the terminal wasn't bad enough, their grossly inefficient procedures rob drivers of opportunities to make decent money, which forces the great majority of drivers to falsify their log books just to make enough money to feed their families. For a place where people make ridiculous amounts of money doing what trained animals can do, it sure is full of mean, rude, obnoxious, belligerent wastes of DNA.. (There are a handful of good people working there, but not enough to save the entire operation from...

Very unpredictable. Average single transaction time is probably around one hour not including time spent in line to get on the podium. If you don’t know what you’re doing and are learning the port be prepared to have an unpleasant experience. Can be extremely frustrating if you are entering the first block of the 6000 or 2000 row on a busy day. If you’re waiting to go into a block and you have a pretty good idea that your location has opened up, GO TO YOUR LOCATION because the guy behind you will probably cut in front if the clerk isn’t paying attention. Be prepared to be aggressive if the lines to an empty location are screwed up. If the empty line is stretched back to the 2000 row GO TO THE BACK don’t cut in line. DONT BLOCK the rows if you are waiting in the line. You’re not going to get there any faster if you decide to hug the truck in front of you and block the traffic. Drivers will take every opportunity to cut you in line if you aren’t aggressive. If you are waiting in a long line adjacent to the K row on a load in DO NOT get impatient and leave the line you will likely get yelled at and sent to the back of the line. Good luck in the chasis pit if there are a lot of people waiting. Longshoreman drive way too fast and don’t stop at stop signs so be very aware if you are turning or coming up on a blind corner. Don’t cut off top picks and let them do their job. Don’t go into the reefer yard if you’re not picking up or dropping, they have no problem writing you a...