Submitted on Thu, 06/12/2008 - 2:48pm
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Before sunrise on a Monday morning, outside a sterile office park in
Compton, a convoy of small, beat-up cars, none of them newer than 1995, arrives
at the offices of the trucking firm Calko Speedline. One by one, the car's
drivers emerge, ranchera and mariachi and est?s escuchando a Piol?n por la
ma?ana! competing from their radios. They buy coffee from the taco truck that
follows them in, and assemble in small groups, huddled in circles among their
big rigs - hulking red, green, blue and white mammoths lined up along the curb,
their diesel-burning engines grumbling into action one by one.
The drivers' day of waiting begins.
"My name's Chicho. Everybody knows me. You can ask anyone, 'Do you know
Chicho?' and he'll say yes."
Chicho, born Hernan Robleto, is short, round, nearly bald and, when he
speaks, energetically animated. His English is nearly indistinguishable from his
Spanish; sometimes, while listening to him, it's possible to lose any conscious
sense of which language he's speaking. At the Calko office, he paces among the
various groups while office personnel inside quietly field calls from terminal
operators at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach about ship traffic and
schedules; later, they'll give each of the men directions to their first load of
the day, a container of goods destined for an intermediate shipping facility
somewhere inland or farther down the coast, where it will be transported still
farther, to distribution centers all over the country, by truck or
train.