Heavy truck corridor proposed to boost exports
Agriculture exporters would like to see a heavy truck corridor created in California that would run from the state’s Central Valley to San Pedro Bay to reduce their shipping costs and boost exports through Long Beach and Los Angeles.
Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Agriculture Transportation Coalition, floated the idea this week at the Pulse of the Ports international trade conference sponsored by the Port of Long Beach.
Friedmann said future economic growth in the U.S. would rely more on the growth of exports, including those supplied by the nation’s farmers. He added that Canada and Europe better served the needs of exporters in those nations by allowing the use of heavier trucks than those allowed in the U.S.
Agricultural exports in particular tend to have low profit margins but they are also tend to be very heavy goods that take up a lot more cargo space.
“If you could establish a heavyweight truck corridor from the Central Valley to here,” Friedmann said, “you would in fact be keeping cargo here that actually transits now from the Central Valley of California by train all the way to [the Port of] Houston. There is cargo that bleeds out. This would be something important to do.”
Friedmann said such a corridor is needed to help keep the nation’s agricultural exports competitive. That’s because, he said, “there is nothing produced in agriculture and forest products in this country that can’t be sourced somewhere else in the world.”
Friedmann acknowledged that the truck corridor might be hard to sell in California. Calls for heavier truck allowances in parts of the U.S. have sometimes drawn criticism from motorists who do not want bigger trucks on the road. Other opponents of such plans say heavier trucks are much harder on freeway surfaces and bridges.
There would be “a lot of work to do in Sacramento to get it done,” Friedmann said, “but it’s important. We need that heavyweight movement right into this port.”
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