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One June 10, the most skilled truck drivers in Oregon came together in North Portland to compete for a ticket to the National Truck Driving Championships in Columbus, Ohio.
Jana Jarvis, president of the Oregon Trucking Associations, has organized the event for years and she knows the 70 or so drivers who take part really want to win. So when Jarvis heard what she thought might be a celebration after the driving test ended midafternoon, she wasn’t terribly surprised.
“I said to one of my staff people, ‘Oh great, Fourth of July, fireworks already,” Jarvis recalls. “But several people told me what happened.”
What Jarvis mistook for firecrackers, witnesses told Jarvis, were gunshots. A purple Dodge Challenger sped south on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and fired half a dozen shots in the direction of a crowd at the Old Dominion Freight Line terminal on North Gertz Road that Jarvis estimates at more than 300 people.
Jarvis is used to the rough-and-tumble politics around road taxes, climate regulation and the ultra-competitive economics of an industry that supplies most of the goods made and consumed in Oregon. There isn’t much that surprises her. But after determining nobody had been injured, she was flummoxed. Should she cancel the event or try to move it elsewhere on the sprawling property? After consulting with the terminal manager, she chose the latter.
She also called 911, hoping a police presence might help keep the drivers and their families safe until the event, which kicked off at 7:30 am, ended at 5 pm.
“They said, ‘We don’t have anybody to send you,’” Jarvis recalls.
A Portland Police Bureau spokesman confirms that.
“People called in to say someone fired shots in the area and nobody was hit,” says Lt. Nathan Sheppard. “There were no free cars at the time, and with nobody being injured, no officers were pulled from the call they were currently handling. When the district officer was done with their call, they responded to the scene and collected evidence.”
The event concluded without further incident. But to Jarvis, whose industry employs more than 100,000 people in Oregon and is at the table for every big conversation about transportation at City Hall and in the state Capitol, the incident was about more than half a dozen bullets.
Truckers and their families came from all over the state to enjoy a barbecue, raffles and the competition—a written test, pre-trip preparation challenges and precision driving—only to have a family-friendly event turn scary. Jarvis says the takeaway for her members those who attended the event is that conditions in the state’s largest city have slipped to an unacceptable level.
“I just felt a pit in my stomach,” Jarvis says. “I realized everything I had been reading there not being enough police in Portland to cover calls is true—and we saw the lawlessness that can result from that.”
Jarvis and her members were thrilled to bring the Oregon Truck Driving Championships back to Portland after a three-year absence (two for COVID; last year, Eugene) because the industry has a strong presence around the city.
The thrill is gone: “Next year,” Jarvis says, “we’ll definitely be looking to hold the event outside of Portland.”