Toyota leases a 110-acre facility out along the Columbia River, north of St. Johns, at the Port of Portland's massive Terminal 4.
Longshoremen that work the shipping yards count the jobs available by the number of vehicles Toyota imports from Japan. Their formula equals one job for every 50 vehicles. And Monday night's massive Toyota recall has many counting the days until jobs begin to vanish.
The uncertainly of Toyota's supply-and-demand has them feeling anxious.
"This is my livelihood," said Jeff Smith, president of the local longshoremen's union.
Smith said the strength of Toyota's domestic sales correlates directly to the number of Portland shippers working the docks. He added that Terminal 4 is among the largest importing sites Toyota operates in the United States.
"Toyota is a big customer for us. It's a job-maker. It might create 90 jobs a day if we had the ships coming in," Smith said.
Ships arriving on Tuesday left Asia long before the company recalled nearly half a million 2010 Priuses.
The longshoremen unloading a shipment of the recalled cars wonder whether their numbers will diminish as safety issues continue for the world's most popular hybrid automobile.
"If the American people stop buying Toyota cars and Scions and Lexuses it could impact our labor force," he said, adding that 90 men working the docks on Tuesday could be without work in a week if the shipments stopped rolling in.
According to Smith, each unloaded Toyota delivers at least $300 to the local economy, including the labor required to truck, train or haul the Toyotas to dealerships across the country.
Nearly 80 percent of the Toyota-made cars arriving at Terminal 4 end up at dealerships outside of the Pacific Northwest.
Since the recession began in 2008, the Port of Portland has seen a 40 percent drop in auto imports, officials said. Shipments had just begun to stabilize when Toyota's woes began.
"We've got to be thankful that we've got cars coming," said Smith, who held out hope that Toyota's image could be salvaged from the safety concerns it has recently experienced.
Because if Toyota does not recover, port shipments would sink even further.
