SoCal ports truck plan criticized by recyclers, freight forwarders
Two trade groups, representing the recycling and freight intermediaries industry, have expressed their opposition to a short-haul truck overhaul plan proposed by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The Association of the California Recycling Industry and the Pacific Coast Council of Customs Brokers & Freight Forwarders Association each voiced opposition to the plan last week in separate letters addressed to the respective mayors of the two port cities and their port executives.
Each letter claimed that fees to be levied under the plan could threaten the 'efficiency and viability' of the two ports, together the busiest container port complex in the Western Hemisphere. While each group applauded the emission cutting goals of the plan to replace or retrofit the estimated 16,000 drayage trucks used in the ports, each group expressed alarm at the pace at which the plan is being implemented and for what they see as an attempt to fundamentally change the structure of the trucking industry.
The five-year $1.8 billion Clean Trucks Plan, which seeks to dramatically cut harmful emissions from the drayage fleet serving the two ports, has received support from labor and some environmental groups. Originally set to be voted on by the ports governing boards later this month, legal issues have now pushed back a vote until late July or early August.
The plan would set heavy restrictions on who can and cannot operate trucks within the ports. Only truck companies with fleets of a certain size and who also agree to meet port-defined criteria on labor, safety and environmental standards would be allowed to enter the ports after the plan takes effect on Jan. 1.
Qualifying truck companies would be issued licenses admitting their fleets to terminals within the ports. Fees would be assessed against the fleet vehicles not meeting port-defined emissions standards for each entry and exit into the port, with or without a load.
These fees, together with port contributions and state funds including general obligation bonds, would be used to fund a replacement of retrofitting grant program for truck owners.
The labor component of the plan — highly criticized by the transportation industry — calls for licenses to be given only to trucking companies that hire per-hour truckers, as opposed to the current per-load model. Industry officials have called this component an obvious attempt by the powerful Teamsters union to organize the port truckers as well as an attempt to re-regulate the federally deregulated trucking industry.
The ACRI, warning that the proposed plan 'will negatively impact our members and will place an insupportable burden on shippers across the state,' called for the mayors and ports to reconsider the plan and make structural changes to it before seeking a vote.
The plan 'will detrimentally impact the flow of trade, injure local businesses, create inefficiencies which will undermine environmental objectives, and particularly injure small business in the greater Los Angeles area,' predicted the PCC in its letter. The group, which represents more than 6,000 industry professionals engaged in international logistics along the West Coast, also raised the specter of possible legal violations of the plan.
'We believe that the proposed economic regulation would be a local restriction on U.S. international trade, very possibly in violation of the Export Clause of the United States Constitution,' the PCC letter said.
The California Trucking Association, another group highly critical of the plan and which recently sent its own opposition letter to port and city officials, has said it may litigate the plan if it is implemented.
The two new letters join those recently sent by the CTA, the Agriculture Transportation Coalition, and the National Industrial Transportation League.