Big Rigs’ Role a Key Over Long Haul, Driver Says

It’s Joe Anaya’s next-to-last haul of the day. The limber 33-year-old trucker hops back into his purple big rig after signing a slip at the weigh station for his 25-ton load of washed concrete sand.

With a lukewarm cup of coffee beside him, Anaya pulls the five-axle truck out of the Transit Mixed Concrete Co. sand-and-quarry mine just north of Moorpark and rumbles down Happy Camp Road toward a Somis site where the sand will be used to make concrete.

“I remember when Peach Hills wasn’t there,” says Anaya, pointing south in the direction of the housing tract and maneuvering downhill on the winding Walnut Canyon Road toward the heart of Moorpark.

Anaya has been driving trucks in Moorpark and throughout the county since he was 18. He was hauling loads around Moorpark before it became a city in 1983 and long before most of the city’s upscale housing tracts, such as Peach Hills, sprouted up.

So Anaya, like many other local truckers, is frustrated to hear the steady drumbeat of complaints about trucks--the congestion, noise, fumes and potential safety hazards--from residents of this bedroom community, populated largely by recent transplants from Los Angeles County.

The way Anaya sees it, there should be more respect for the truckers and the quarry mines that were here first.

“All these people come from Los Angeles and then want to dictate how we live,” says Anaya, shaking his head. “These trucks put up those homes. . . . Once their homes are built, they don’t want the trucks anymore.”

Same goes for the quarry mines that supplied material for the homes, he said.

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The complaints have been around for decades but have increased in recent years for two reasons: There are more residents to complain and more trucks to complain about. An increase in construction and mining activity and improved access to California 118 are among the causes of a rise in truck traffic.

Repeated pleas from residents to the City Council provoked Moorpark officials to post signs limiting truck speed and the use of noisy engine-braking on Happy Camp Road.

One group of residents also filed a petition to stop expansion of Transit Mixed Concrete Co., worried about the increased truck traffic it would bring. A judge turned down the petition last week, but the residents plan to appeal.

The never-ending truck debate underscores how values have shifted as the community pulls further away from its roots as a community of farmers and day laborers, a town where trucks were needed to ship apricots, eggs, sand and gravel.

Since Moorpark incorporated 15 years ago, the population has soared from 11,000 to more than 28,000. Many of the newer Moorpark residents are from the San Fernando Valley and other parts of Los Angeles, moving to escape the woes of the big cities: noise, traffic, crime.

The result is a growing upscale bedroom community of commuters who have the highest median income in the county, according to the 1990 U.S. census.

The giant Egg City chicken ranch is now closed, and most of the apricot farms are gone, but the sand and gravel mines that generate much of the truck traffic on Walnut Canyon Road remain.

Opened in 1948, the Transit Mixed Concrete quarry operation--which ships the highest volume of material in the east county--once was owned by Blue Star Ready Mix. The company conducted a thriving trade supplying east-county builders in the 1980s, including those who built homes in the Peach Hills neighborhood and along Happy Camp Road.

Stung by the recession, Blue Star sold to Transit Mixed Concrete Co. in 1993.

Tom Powell now manages the plant.

Powell’s office overlooks a surreal landscape of carved hills and machines dumping gravel onto a conveyor belt. The material is funneled into three filters that sort it by size and then is hauled off by truckers including Anaya for use in everything from homes to roads.

Powell says quarries are typically built well away from residential areas and that homes--not truckers and mines--are the interlopers.

“Over the years they encroach on the quarry and they want the quarry to go away,” Powell said.

Residents should recognize that they would pay more for homes without a nearby quarry, he said, because much of the cost of building homes is for transportation.

Another benefit to having the mine, Powell said, is that it provides the county with a sand and gravel source during storms. During El Nino-related storms last month, his company donated 25 tons of sand to residents to fight flooding near the Sand Canyon Creek in Somis.

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Yet Anaya said truckers believe they are treated badly by Moorpark residents.

“It’s just like if you buy a home next to a set of railroad tracks, you don’t call the railroad and tell them to stop the trains,” Anaya said. “But the truckers, no one gives them respect.”

In Moorpark there are no hangouts for truckers as there are on other routes heavily used by trucks. Anaya avoids driving through the heart of Moorpark when he can, and chooses other routes even though they may take longer.

Though parking for trucks was once plentiful, the only place truckers can rest is a spot across from Taco Bell on new Los Angeles Avenue.

“Trucks come through town, ask where they can park,” said Anaya. “I tell them, ‘I wouldn’t even bother stopping in Moorpark. You know you’re not welcome in Moorpark.’ ”

Anaya passes High Street, but he knows he can’t park there or pass through the city’s old downtown. Truckers were long ago banned from the area.

Turning onto California 118, the core of the city, he addresses another sore subject: safety. Residents too often blame truckers for factors they cannot control, he said.

He has watched as commuters speed along the highway while applying makeup or reading a book. He has screeched to a halt as residents cut in front of him, expecting him to stop as easily as a car.

Many residents think trucks can stop “at the drop of a dime, but they don’t,” Anaya said. “It’s physics. It’s motion.”

But he knows that as the city continues to grow, his battle may be a losing one.

“I guess times change,” he said, “sometimes for the worse.”