The downtown Los Angeles market at 7 and Central Avenue was an important terminal where produce was unloaded and then distributed to retail stores, primarily big chains. That afternoon Gene Boutilier, the person in charge of the boycott office in Delano, told Doug Rippey and Emmon Clarke to follow a truck loaded with strikebreaker-picked grapes that was on his way to the market in Los Angeles. 

“Stick to this truck like it were a mad dog— Boutilier told Rippey—Don’t give him a chance. Make it known that he is carrying scab grapes.” Rippey, Clarke, Bill O’Connell, and María Fernández hopped on Doug Rippey’s pick-up and tried to catch up with the truck, which was ahead of them on Highway 99. They put a sign on the back of their pick-up with black letters saying: “Caution. Scab load ahead.”