Keep on (clean) truckin’

If worries about the fair allocation of bond money aren’t enough to keep port officials awake at night, their plans to clean up the thousands of diesel trucks that shuttle goods to and from the harbors should do the trick. Though the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have approved the first part of their controversial Clean Trucks Program, the really tough decisions -- such as how to fund and implement it without wreaking economic havoc -- have been tabled. And it would appear that, regardless of how the plan is structured, a tough period of delayed deliveries and cargo backups is on the way.

On Monday, the Port of Long Beach followed its L.A. neighbor by adopting a phaseout of older-model trucks. Starting Oct. 1, 2008, trucks made before 1989 would be banned; by Jan. 1, 2012, only those built in 2007 and after would be allowed in the gates. Because newer trucks have cleaner engines, the plan is expected to reduce diesel emissions 80% within five years. There is, of course, a catch: Somebody has to pay for all those new trucks, and the independent drivers who make most of the ports’ deliveries can’t afford them.

The ports’ solution, first unveiled in June 2006, is to slap a fee on every container that passes through and put the proceeds in a fund that, along with state bond money and other sources, would help offset the costs of new trucks. To make this work, the ports planned to eliminate owner-operators -- instead, the truckers calling at the ports would be employees of port drayage companies, known as licensed motor carriers. Such operations currently exist, but they’re usually little more than dispatch services that assign cargo jobs to independent contractors. The trouble is, an economic analysis commissioned by the ports found that the transition would force about a third of these motor carriers out of business and create a serious shortage of drivers.

That isn’t the only headache for port officials. The shake-up in the trucking industry comes at the same time the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is implementing a background-check plan for port workers, who next year may be required to carry a biometric ID card. Illegal immigrants and some convicted felons will be disqualified. That’s expected to cause a 15% to 22% drop in the number of port truckers, many of whom are undocumented. Further, the ports were facing a shortage of drivers even without any of these regulatory measures because trade is expected to double by 2020 and the pay for port truckers -- averaging $12 an hour -- is too low to attract many new ones.

Eventually, the market will probably work all this out. When cargo starts backing up, desperate retailers will pay more for trucking services, attracting more drivers and stabilizing the licensed motor carriers. But port officials will have to be extraordinarily careful in structuring their clean-air plan to minimize the short-term damage.