Delivery woes abound in Waikiki
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
It's 8:20 a.m. on a rainy Monday in Waikiki and Manny Benitez is looking for a parking space.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
He eases his 33-foot, 33,000-pound Volvo FE Intercooler truck loaded with hundreds of cases of beer through the congestion on lower Lewers Street, scanning the road for an open spot.
Anheuser-Busch's Manny Benitez races to deliver a load of beer in Waikiki, where freight deliveries are only allowed between 10 p.m. and 9 a.m.
"Moving. Moving. You've always got to keep moving," Benitez said. "That's the secret."
Like hundreds of other commercial drivers making thousands of stops in the side streets, back alleys and loading docks of Waikiki every day, Benitez has to contend for only a handful of legal loading zones to deliver his load of Anheuser-Busch products that help keep O'ahu's premier hotel area well lubricated.
"If you don't find a spot, you just keep moving. Go on to the next stop and come back later," Benitez said. "It's all about timing."
Waikiki simply does not have enough loading zones for everyone who wants to use one, says Gareth Sakakida, executive director of the Hawai'i Transportation Association, which represents more than 800 members involved in the delivery of people, products and services throughout the state.
"I don't think there's any other city in the country that has the volume of large truck and motor coach traffic in such a confined area as we do," Sakakida said. "The reality is that land values are just too high there for anybody to devote more space to deliveries."
That leaves Benitez and hundreds of others like him out on the street every day, Sakakida said.
Unable to find a space on Lewers Street, Benitez steers his truck past half a dozen fellow drivers and heads for his next stop, joining a growing number of tour buses, delivery trucks, taxis, panel vans, street cleaning machines, garbage trucks, police scooters, limousines, trollies, repair vehicles, airport shuttles and rental cars and private drivers on the streets.
It will be another 16 stops and four hours before Benitez returns to make his final delivery of the day, 36 cases of beer to a venerable Lewers Street nightclub called The Red Lion.
Early-morning deliveries
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Benitez, 47, starts his delivery day early, getting up in his Pearl City home at 3 a.m. to be able to pick up his truck and check his load by 5 a.m. at the Anheuser-Busch headquarters in Halawa. He's on the road by 5:30 or 6, already checking an on-board computer that tells him where he has to be, and how much beer to drop at each stop.
Delivery vehicles line up along Kalakaua Avenue in front of the International Market Place in Waikiki.
"Early morning is the best time, before traffic heats up," he said.
It's also the only time when his deliveries to the big hotels and shops along Kalakaua and Kuhio avenues are legal.
To keep traffic moving and keep the underbelly world of delivery men hidden from tourist eyes, city regulations limit curbside deliveries on the two main Waikiki streets to late-night and early-morning hours. Commercial trucks are supposed to be off Kuhio by 7:30 a.m. and cleared from Kalakaua by 9 a.m., Sakakida said.
After that, tour buses, taxis, limousines, rentals cars and others can all share the space. Meanwhile, Benitez and other delivery drivers take to the side streets, where parking is tighter than ever.
At 8:55 a.m. he heads down an alleyway, then backs his truck (license plate: Bud 43) up an off-street ramp to deliver six cases to a small convenience store in the 'Ilikai hotel. At 9:15, he's at the far end of Ala Wai Harbor, where a small grocery store/laundromat/ marine fuel shop gets about 10 cases. Twenty minutes later he parks in a no-parking area behind the Prince Hotel to make a double drop, first to an upscale gift shop, then to a bar called Harbor Pub & Pizza.
A few minutes later, he's moving on to the Hobron Lane area, starting a fresh circling pattern devised from years of knowing where traffic moves well and where it doesn't.
At every one of his 25 to 35 stops a day, Benitez has a smile and bright word for the workers where he makes a delivery. He gets to know everyone, but no one well; most times he's in and out of a shop in five or 10 minutes, always ready to move on.
Even when he's tempted to stop and visit, he has to keep moving. As often as not, his truck is parked illegally. "The trick is to make sure you're parked OK, even if it's illegal," he said.
All the commercial truck drivers go out of their way to make sure they don't double park, block any driveways or make traffic any worse than it already is, Benitez said. Usually they can find a spot — legal or otherwise — within a half block of his delivery destination, no matter how busy the day.
"You just learn a few secrets," said Benitez, who has been a truck driver for 20 years in Hawai'i, the past 10 of them with Anheuser-Busch.
Congestion worsens
"Having good access to deliveries is every bit as important to a business as being hooked up to sewers and electricity," said Ricky Cassidy, a commercial property consultant for Prudential Locations. "If you can't get what you need, you're not going to be in business for very long."
Cassidy said that there are at least 20,000 business in Waikiki. Each one of them needs to be serviced regularly by hundreds of trucks that bring an ever-recycling supply of soft drinks, T-shirts, beer, fresh produce, cigarettes, meat, towels, Pringles, baking goods, dry goods, sunscreen, you name it.
The problem is compounded by a historical pattern of development around numerous small side streets, Cassidy said.
"It's a story of almost constantly refurbishing the supplies," Cassidy said. "Having a good delivery location totally enhances the value of a commercial site. And one of the best ways to drive your competitor out of business is to deny him access to deliveries."
For most drivers, who earn between $10 and $20 an hour, that means an endless search for the most coveted loading and unloading sites.
"When a driver finds a legal spot, he tries to make as many deliveries as possible," Sakakida said. "They know they are not going to find another one anytime soon."
Congestion on Waikiki streets has consistently worsened in the past 20 years as the pressures of competing transportation interests have bumped heads, he said.
"The importance of loading zones is critical for vehicles of our size," Sakakida said. "Taxis, limousines and others can park elsewhere. Our drivers don't have any choice. They need their own space."
Sakakida says the ideal situation would be to reserve all of Waikiki's side streets for commercial servicing, limiting vehicles that serve individual tourists to main streets and parking structures.
"That way the streets would always be available for truly active loading and unloading," he said.
Having a good attitude
Either way, Benitez figures his job is to grin and bear it.
"The No. 1 thing to do when you're a truck driver is to have a good attitude," he said.
There's little blowing of his big air horn, even when the kids outside Farrington High School make those big honking signs with their pumping fists, or when a driver cuts him off, threatening to turn his whole load into broken bottles and free-flowing beer.
There's no cursing, even on one of those three or four occasions every year when a police officer catches up with him and hands out a ticket.
"I understand. They're just trying to do their job and I'm trying to do mine," Benitez said. Police rarely ticket drivers for illegal parking unless they receive a specific complaint or there's a crop of rookie officers learning the ropes, he said.
And there's no New York-style street shouting or Los Angeles-type road rage, even when trucks are lined up four deep at some hotel dock or when some tourist in a rented car stops in a commercial loading zone to take up two whole spaces on a side street to study a brightly colored map.
"There's no screaming or yelling," Benitez said. "You just give them that look that says: I need that space."
Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.
