Ocean Cargo: Port of Los Angeles to face legal challenge over “clean trucks” program

Patrick Burnson, Executive Editor -- Logistics Management, 5/13/2008

LOS ANGELES—As the Port of Los Angeles commissioners prepare to consider adopting the controversial “Clean Truck Program (CTP) Drayage Services Concession Agreement” at their meeting this Thursday, industry spokesmen are articulating a challenge.

 “We are making a point of stopping the Teamsters here before they can make similar proposals at ports on the East Coast and in the Gulf,” said Curtis Whalen, executive director, American Trucking Association’s Intermodal Conference. “We are confident that a port has no legal jurisdiction to require drivers to be unionized.”

 Pending commissioners approval, the port will move to a licensed motor carrier-based truck concession program designed for the short-haul trucking (“drayage”) market that meets a range of long-term business, environmental, and safety and security- related goals identified by the port. Barring a legal hurdle, it will begin October 1, 2008.

 Unlike similar plans floated by the neighboring Port of Long Beach, this one’s key component is the requirement for one hundred percent employee drivers by calendar year 2013 in a phased-in schedule.

 The port believes that a system which affords more accountability through the use of employee drivers will reduce the number of trucks required to provide drayage by moving away from the present “one truck, one driver” system toward a system that will increase efficiency by allowing multiple drivers to drive trucks over multiple shifts.  

 The ATA is adamant, however, that the issue is not about “clean air” at all, but rather, is about curtailing the rights of free enterprise and initiative.

 “We as an association have made huge improvements toward environmental protection,” said Whalen. “Drivers are required to use cleaner trucks whether they are unionized or not. The concession agreements take hiring decisions away from motor carriers and give them to local port authorities, which in violation of federal law. There’s no way they (the port) can win.”

 But that does not mean the port won’t try, admitted Whalen.

 “They apparently have a five million dollar legal budget they are willing to use to ensure passage of this program,” he said. “At a time when the port is attracting less and less business, we find this a curious way to spend its money.”

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