A container lift hitches up to Ed Santos’ truck at the Port of Oakland. Tens of millions of containers are shipped by rail, water or truck every year, and chances are good the average trucker will eventually be hauling cans.

It’s Oct. 1, 2002, and Ed Santos is not having his best day in trucking.

Like thousands of other intermodal haulers based on the West Coast, he’s spending the day waiting and hoping that the ports will reopen. A labor dispute between dockworkers and shipping lines has the gates locked from Seattle to San Diego, and truckers like Santos are losing money.

“I’m on unpaid vacation,” he says while cooling his heels at a new Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway terminal. The terminal is backing up with containers shipped from back east and destined for Asian markets. “This is very unfortunate.”

Across the road from the BNSF terminal, dozens of long-haul intermodal truckers relax and chat in a makeshift parking lot, their refrigerated loads of fresh meat and recently harvested nuts and vegetables aging in the California sun. Idled owner-operators Jim Shannon and wife Athena say they would rather be hauling cans than sitting on them.

Still, a month after the messy port shutdown, the Shannons say they wouldn’t trade their weekly dedicated container haul, which runs from Greely, Colo., to Oakland, Calif., for an over-the-road run again, despite the challenges inherit in intermodal hauling.