Clean Truck Program at So Cal Ports Is Becoming Victim of Success

Clean Truck Program at So Cal Ports Is Becoming Victim of Success

By John O'Dell January 28, 2009

When the neighboring Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach in Southern California finally decided that it was time to stop poisoning the air with clouds of soot from the hundreds of aging diesel trucks that haul freight to and from the docks all day, there was a lot of screaming.

The ports' plan to require trucking firms to use new trucks fueled with natural gas or modern clean diesel was unfair, placed a tremendous financial burden on the trucking firms and would never work, opponents said.

But the ports - the busiest in the nation - held firm, put their policy into play and offered to help with a $20,000 per truck incentive for trucking operations that bought the clean rigs.

Well, not only did it work, it is working too well.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that the ports, which expected to have to subsidize about 1,000 trucks, have received bills from trucking firms for more than 2,200 trucks in the first three months of the program and expect to be hit for subsidies for as many as 7,500 this year.  More tan 100 trucking companies have ordered new rigs under the program.

That's tough, because the ports' incentive fund has run out of money, the state is too broke to ante up any more and under the previous administration the federal government had refused additional funding as well.

The ports have had to dig into their own diminishing operating budgets for $44 million to help cover the initial 2,200 subsidies.

One trucking company operator interviewed by the newspaper said that he's ordered more than $15 million worth of new clean-emissions trucks, at an average of $130,000 each, and is counting on the subsidies to help pay for them.

"It's like no good deed goes unpunished," Total Transportation Services owner Vic La Rosa told the Times.

To help raise cash for the incentives, the ports had instituted a fee of $70 for each 40-foot container hauled to or from the docks, but the Federal Maritime Commission last year filed suit and blocked the plan, claiming it interfered with interstate commerce.

Now, with a new administration in Washington, port operators are hoping the maritime commission will drop its objection.  And regardless, the Times reports, the fee will be levied starting next month as the only way to keep the clean truck program incentive pool filled.

We hope the maritime commission has a change of heart under the Obama Administration's guidance and lets the ports get on with the work of cleaning up some of the filthiest air in the country.

Not only is the plan good for the region around the Southern California ports, it is good for the whole country.  If the clean trucks program is successful it is likely to be a model for other ports, and railroads and regional warehousing facilities, to use in cleaning up their own diesel exhaust emissions.

Its early success also can serve as a lesson to those who scream foul every time a government agency institutes a new policy for improving air quality: the California trucking firms serving the two ports not only accepted the inevitable, they embraced it.

Let's not now punish them for finally being good citizens.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.