Before daybreak on Sunday, December 1, escorted by hundreds of Oakland policemen, strikebreakers drove twelve truckloads of merchandise through seventy picketers stationed at six entrances to the stores. The drivers worked for the Veterans Trucking company, a Los Angeles firm established by the Merchants and Manufacturers Association for the express purpose of breaking strikes. Its drivers had traveled four hundred miles to Oakland at the invitation of the RMA. To make way for them, the police swept the union picket lines off the street, injuring peaceful picketers.