Port Adopts Clean-Truck Plan, Rejects Owner-Operator Ban

By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Feb. 25 print edition of Transport Topics.

Long Beach officials last week put finishing touches on a sweeping, unprecedented set of rules aimed at dramatically cutting emissions from the 17,000 drayage trucks working at the huge California container port, rejecting the plan’s most controversial feature that would have forced independent owner-operators to work for larger carriers.

The clean-trucks program, approved by the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners Feb. 19 after nearly six hours of public testimony, is designed to replace and modernize the entire port trucking fleet while cutting truck-related air pollution by 80% over the next four years.

The decision to drop the controversial section, which will allow company employees and independent owner-operators to continue to work in the port, drew criticism from environmental groups but praise from the trucking industry, which had objected to the plan’s “concessionaire model.”

The commissioners also gave the port’s staff approval to work out the details of a funding plan to help operators purchase retrofit kits for their older trucks and buy new, cleaner trucks.

Last year, Long Beach, with the adjacent Port of Los Angeles, adopted a joint overall emissions program that included the “concessionaire” business model. That plan would allow access to the ports — which together get 40% of the nation’s import container traffic — only for carriers certified by the ports to have cleaner-running equipment than most owner-operators can afford.

The Long Beach action was the final piece of the port’s clean-truck plan, slated to begin in October with a ban on all trucks built before 1989. Both ports’ rules would ban all trucks built before 1993 after Jan. 1, 2010, and require that all 1994-2003 trucks be retrofitted to reduce their emissions. In January 2012, all trucks that don’t meet or exceed 2007-model emission standards would be banned.

The Long Beach commission also set a goal of replacing at least half of the existing truck fleet with vehicles using alternative fuels, such as liquefied natural gas, and approved a 50% exemption from the port’s new $35 container fee for trucks purchased without port assistance that meet 2007 diesel standards — and a complete exemption for privately purchased alternative fuels trucks.

The commissioners said they would use state funding and money raised by the $35 per container fee to help carriers and independent drayage operators purchase retrofit equipment and new trucks (see story, p. 3).

After last week’s action, attorney David Pettit of the Natural Resources Defense Council said even if the port gave drivers new trucks, “the air would be clean. But the problem is how long would it stay clean if you have a system like you have right now, where the onus for maintaining and repairing the trucks will be still on the drivers, who can’t afford it?”

Praising the decision, Curtis Whalen, executive director of American Trucking Associations’ Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference, said requiring independent operators to work as company employees would be “not only inadvisable, but illegal.”

Whalen said ATA intended to file a lawsuit to block the concessionaire plan. 
In an October 2007 letter to the Federal Maritime Commission, ATA’s Whalen said the plan “amounts to a mandated restructuring of the port drayage business under the guise of environmental improvements” (11-5, p. 5). 

Port commissioners made no direct references to ATA’s lawsuit threat, but several said they had no legal authority to force independent contractors to go to work for companies.
Mario Cordero, president of the Long Beach Harbor Commission, said the vote should not be misinterpreted to mean that the commission approved of using mostly independent operators to move goods at the port: “The overwhelming majority of drivers are misclassified; they’re not true independent contractors.” 

Commissioner Doris Topsy-Elvord said, “I feel real sad about the plight of the drivers, but you can’t tell somebody who to work for or who not to work for.”

Officials at the Port of Los Angeles seemed caught off guard that Long Beach acted before Los Angeles officials decided whether to adopt the joint plan.

“I think everybody was surprised,” said Gordon Smith, a Los Angeles port spokesman. Smith said the two ports have been working closely together on their truck emission plans and that the Los Angeles commission was not yet ready to make its decision on whether to ban independent operators. The Los Angeles port also originally proposed the employer-only model.

The adjacent ports are the dominant gateway for U.S.-Asia trade, and enormous amounts of freight are transferred from ships to trucks and trains at the publicly owned facilities.

Art Wong, a Long Beach port spokesman, said officials were concerned that trying to implement the original employee requirement plan could disrupt the flow of goods. An economic study predicted that nearly one-third of licensed motor carriers at the ports might go out of business if the plan is adopted and that the program could “significantly reduce competition in the port drayage sector,” causing shipping costs to escalate. Chuck Mack, director of the Teamsters union port division, said he was “disappointed” to hear that Long Beach port officials had not adopted the concessionaire plan.