Port of L.A. accelerates its green truck program; ATA says employee mandate illegal

The Trucker Staff

3/18/2008

SAN PETRO, Calif. — The Port of Los Angeles Monday posted its final recommendations for its Clean Truck Program to replace high-polluting trucks with cleaner ones. “The trucking system serving our ports is broken and cannot be permanently fixed without a major transformation,” commented the port’s executive director, Geraldine Knatz, Ph.D.

She said if the port doesn’t create “a responsible and financially viable port trucking system, a decade from now we’ll be throwing billions of dollars at this chronic problem once again.”

Under the program, carriers must enter into drayage concession agreements with the port and must use “employee drivers for port drayage by year 2012 through a phased-in schedule …,” a port news release stated.

An American Trucking Associations spokesman told the Press-Telegram of Long Beach, Calif., he wasn’t surprised. “It’s not anything we didn’t expect,” said Curtis Whalen, head of ATA’s Intermodal Motor Carrier Conference.

Until ATA members have to decide whether or not they can continue to do business at the port “there’s no rush to take it to court,” he told the paper.

He added, however, that ATA believes the employee mandate part of the plan is “illegal, plain and simple.”

The L.A. Harbor Commission will consider the Clean Truck Program recommendations at its March 20 special board meeting at the Banning’s Landing Community Center in Wilmington, according to a port news release.