The Port of Los Angeles’ program to cut truck emissions by 80 percent by 2012 is not sustainable because independent truck drivers cannot afford to maintain newer, environmentally cleaner trucks, according to a report by advocacy groups and a transportation labor union.
There are now about 6,000 clean trucks operating in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. To achieve the ambitious emission cuts, old trucks were replaced with help from a new cargo tax at the ports. Originally, independent truck drivers were also required to join trucking companies to help shoulder maintenance costs — a controversial provision that drivers and the American Trucking Association opposed. A federal judge decided last year that the truckers could remain independent.
The report — by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, the BlueGreen Alliance, the Sierra Club and Teamsters union – found that the average port truck driver in Los Angeles and Long Beach makes $10 to $11 an hour, while maintaining a new truck costs about $8,500 a year. That’s 70 percent more than the drivers reported paying before adopting clean trucks.
Prior to getting the new trucks, drivers had maintenance done at informal shops, where the work was cheaper than at licensed mechanics. Truckers must now go to state-approved mechanics.
You can read the full report here.
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I live in Long Beach, in the Wrigley area, not far from the 710 and the polluting trucks. My husband and I bought our house when there was a Naval Station, before the port expanded without so much as a thought to our collective lungs. As far we and of many our neighbors are concerned, any truck driver who owns a non-clean truck does not care about us. Do not expect us to care about them. They have been polluting our area long enough. Either get a loan for a new truck, or find another way to make a living.
The people of this state are crazy. local people there must be looking for income. excuses and there way of life is not affected. maybe by 80 feet of trucks. And these newer trucks are not cuting down on anything. the dollar to what it cuts down on nothing, in favor for driver. the unit added on trucks are faulty. the people puting this out must work for a law maker. costing money and making drivers carry more burdon. The push on the pocket on a person is stupid. any company. big small. new drama outside this peoples window.