Most striking New Orleans truckers are back to work after city port officials helped to broker a truce between the independent drivers and trucking firms, the Times-Picayune reports.

While port officials were declaring an end to the strike, more than 50 truckers who remained off the job were gathering at Big Easy Travel Plaza truckstop on Old Gentilly Road. They vowed to return to the picket lines April 29 at the entrances to the port's main container cargo terminals.

However, most of the truckers took down protest lines in front of the port's headquarters April 28. Later, port officials said they had agreed with the International Longshoreman's Union to schedule double shifts for a week to clear an estimated backlog of 300 to 400 truckloads of containerized cargo.

The strike cut local containerized cargo movement by 50 percent and forced some port customers to send their shipments through other cities.

Trucker Abraham Venson said he had agreed to return to work after the owner of his trucking firm, TCI Trucking and Warehousing Services, offered him a new compensation package.

Venson would not discuss the details of the package, but he said it represents a compromise that would put more take-home pay in his pocket. While his new pay rate isn't as high as he had hoped to win by walking off the job, he told the newspaper the amount is "something I can live with."

Glen Guillot, with Triple G Express Inc., said all but one of the 15 independent drivers working for his company had said they would return to work after they were offered restructured compensation packages.

“While it's obviously good news that the issues brought to bear by the New Orleans port truckers have been resolved, it's also a sad testimony to the economic realities facing truckdrivers,” said Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. “The fact that these drivers had to withhold their services simply to gain control of their cost of operation points to the ongoing economic hardships facing all truckdrivers.”