California Apparel News

Truckers are an independent breed, but the ones waiting in line for hours at the local ports for cargo wouldn’t mind becoming a little more organized.

They might get their wish under a controversial program allowing only clean-air trucks to retrieve freight at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest in the nation.

The Clean Air Action Plan, unveiled in April, could revolutionize trucking the way we know it by forcing companies to hire full-time truckers instead of relying on independent drivers to transport cargo in and out of the port complex.

In turn, rates to pick up cargo containers undoubtedly will rise to fund the plan that will spend $1.8 billion to retrofit or replace 16,000 old trucks with cleaner models that pollute less. The program could start as early as next year, taking five years to fully phase in before truck pollution is reduced by 80 percent.

Already, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is preparing to organize thousands of truckers who might go from freelance drivers who own their own rigs to full-time workers who drive company trucks no older than 2007 models. Their salaries could increase threefold under union representation.

“It’s a dramatic move,” observed Curtis Whalen, executive director of the American Trucking Associations’ Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference. The conglomerate of trucking associations is the largest national trade group for the trucking industry.

“It’s draconian,” said Robert Krieger, president of Norman Krieger Inc., a Los Angeles freight forwarder and customs broker with many apparel clients.

Already, the trucking industry is promising a lawsuit.

The Clean Air Action Plan is a landmark outline to cut pollution by trucks, railroads, ships and equipment operators around the port area within the next five years. The plan is being fleshed out, and its latest version could be presented to the ports’ harbor commissions this summer.

The ports, which receive 40 percent of all goods shipped into the United States, are the region’s largest single pollution source. Harbor trucks account for 23 percent of the port-related diesel particulate matter and 34 percent of the nitrogen oxides in the air.

The two ports want to clean up the air around the water to improve residents’ health, but they also want to launch new expansion projects to handle the growing number of goods arriving every day on the docks. No new projects can be undertaken until pollution is reduced.

“In the last few years, the two ports have not been able to build any projects. We haven’t been able to approve the environmentalimpact reports on these projects because of the air-quality risks,” said Art Wong, a spokesperson for the Port of Long Beach, which is slightly smaller than the nearby Port of Los Angeles. “We have to do this major initiative to deal with air quality so we can make the facility more productive and increase capacity.”

It has been more than five years since the ports tackled a major expansion project, the 174-acre terminal complex for the China Shipping Holding Co. at the Port of Los Angeles. The project’s environmental impact was challenged by a 2001 lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Clean Air Coalition on behalf of San Pedro residents, whose rates of respiratory illnesses and cancer are among the region’s highest. A ruling by the state Court of Appeals halted the terminal’s work in 2003 and resulted in the port having to establish a $50 million fund to address the environmental issues affecting the local community. As a result, the terminal became the world’s first green container terminal when it opened in 2004. Ships plug into electrical outlets when docked instead of running their diesel engines.

Freelance vs. full-time

While getting new trucks is one way to improve air quality, figuring out how the legions of struggling independent truckers can afford to buy new rigs is a challenge. “You have a system where you have to deal with 16,000 individual business operators and to get them to clean up their trucks when they can hardly afford to buy new tires,” said Wong at the Port of Long Beach. “We really had to look at the way the system operates.”

So the plan calls for old trucks to be scrapped and replaced with new trucks subsidized through port-sponsored grants, bond money and fees. The cost of a new truck is about $120,000.

But here’s the catch. Not just any independent trucker will be able to walk in and sign up for a new model.

Port officials are proposing that terminal access be limited to “concessionaires,” or licensed trucking companies under port contracts. The trucking companies would have to pay some kind of concession fee, be required to own their truck fleet and be accountable for employee drivers.

Grants would be given to trucking companies to fund up to 80 percent of the cost of a new vehicle or 100 percent of a truck’s retrofit. These new trucks must stay in port service for a certain number of years or number of miles.

Dirty trucks entering the port would have to pay a $34 to $54 per-trip fee, depending on state bond funding.

These new rules and regulations have rankled the approximately 1,400 small- and mediumsize trucking companies that serve the 14 container terminals at the two ports. While they all believe in cleaning up the air and improving the environment, they don’t want to hire full-time truckers.

“Somebody needs to take a course in free-market access,” said one trucking company official who didn’t want to be identified. “First of all, this isn’t a clean-air plan but a unionization plan.”

Indeed, Jim Santangelo, president of the Teamsters’ Joint Council 42, said the union does hope to organize port truckers. “I think within a year this will be a done deal,” Santangelo said. “Both Los Angeles’ and Long Beach’s mayors are supporting us. They want cleaner air and not exploitation of people.” Independent truckers, many of them immigrants and illegal immigrants, do not currently undergo security background checks to haul cargo to the ports. However, that is expected to change soon with a Department of Homeland Security–mandated program requiring trucker identification cards. Independent drivers who own their own rigs barely earn more than the $7.50- an-hour state minimum wage once they pay for fuel, insurance and other fees, Santangelo said. A union driver can make around $25 an hour, which does not include health benefits and pension contributions, the union official said.

The Teamsters used to represent almost all the truckers serving the two Southern California ports until 1980, when the trucking industry was deregulated and companies started hiring independent drivers. For the Teamsters, this is like a dream come true.

But trucking companies stress that fulltime employees just don’t pencil out in the shipping industry, with its ups and downs in cargo seasons. Container loads dwindle from December to March, pick up steam in the spring and run full blast from June or July through October. Trucking companies wonder what they would do with full-time drivers when business slumps.

Others worry that shippers will start sending their goods off to West Coast ports outside of California, such as Tacoma, Wash., or to new ports being developed in Canada and Mexico.

“There are other options by going to other ports,” said Krieger, the freight forwarder. “Nobody wants to see a massive loss of jobs if, in the process of cleaning up the air, the goose that laid the golden egg is killed.”