James P. Hoffa more than $750,000 in union assets had been used in Carey's 1996 reelection campaign. During the 1998 election Tom Leedham, then-director of the Teamsters Warehouse Division, campaigned against James P. Hoffa. Campaigning to unite the union, Hoffa won the election. After having lost narrowly in 1996 to Ron Carey, Hoffa's new role as president was considered by Teamster members as a chance to rebuild the union. Hoffa was re-elected in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 to five-year terms. "The first big test of the Hoffa administration" was the ratification in June 1999, of a four-year contract covering 13,000 carhaul members
The Union Trade 2006, played before a small group of friends and family in the upstairs back room of Edinburgh Castle, a San Francisco pub and music venue. Prior to The Union Trade, Don Joslin and Nate Munger were in an instrumental band together called The Andrea Doria. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Joslin described the first six months of the Union Trade as "exciting for all of us ... The vision came first, then the band set out to develop the sound ... In the end, we have all reached a place musically that none of us would have