Thanks to OOIDA, long-haulers gain access to California twin ports

Some 6,000 of OOIDA’s 160,000 members are in the Golden State, so OOIDA went to the table with port representatives to carve out a way to accommodate long-haulers.

By DOROTHY COX
The Trucker Staff

4/28/2009

Long-haul truckers who need to deliver or pick up freight at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach starting today can pay $30 for a yearly 24-trip pass instead of the $2,600 fee that had been mandated.

Joe Rajkovacz, regulatory affairs specialist for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said originally anyone hauling in or out of the two ports would also have to have been licensed motor concessionaires to get access, would have to have parking plans for their trucks and would have had to have met other requirements that were impossible for long-haulers.

Some 6,000 of OOIDA’s 160,000 members are in the Golden State, so OOIDA went to the table with port representatives to carve out a way to accommodate long-haulers.

“We surveyed long-haulers and they don’t’ know when they have to deliver to the ports; it could be two or three times a year. They don’t know when they’ll have to deliver a load of meat to a container that’s dry-docked or pick up a load of produce,” Rajkovacz said. And the concession agreement as it stood “would have denied them opportunity to go into the ports,” he told The Trucker.

The price to gain port access was $2,500 plus $100 a year per truck, making a one-truck owner-operator pay $2,600 the first year.

“Their target audience was the old drayage trucks, those that are being replaced,” Rajkovacz said. “We [OOIDA] managed to get it negotiated to a $30 pass” which covers 24 trips a year, or 12 trips for each port.

“The ports were sued by environmentalists to keep them from expanding port operations,” he noted. “The irony was they were on the verge of a huge inefficiency. A trucker [long-hauler] would pick up a load only to find they can’t go into the port so they’d have to pay lumper fees to have someone else do that.” And, he added that’s not even touching the problem of heavy-haul permitted loads, which would have been unable to be transferred to non permitted drayage vehicles.

Rajkovacz said other ports across the country may well emulate what the twin California ports are doing, so it’s hoped they would also accommodate long-haulers.

He joked that some truckers already are grumbling about paying the $30 gate fee. “Fine,” he said. “If they’d rather, they can pay the $2,600.”

Dorothy Cox of The Trucker staff may be reached to comment at dlcox@thetrucker.com.