In spring 2007, the Southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach inaugurated a major change in the U.S. goods movement industry when they embraced a Clean Trucks Program as part of a greater effort to reduce pollution by 80 percent in the area of the ports. Since 36 percent of U.S. foreign commerce transits these two ports, the implications were far-reaching and profound.
Without a direct contractual relationship with the thousands of licensed motor carriers providing drayage, the ports claimed ability to regulate trucks by controlling access to port properties, under tariff and terminal lease authority. Specifically, the ports intended to control the quality of drayage trucks through creation of concessions for qualifying motor carriers, in a manner similar to the awarding of taxi medallions.
The core elements of the Clean Trucks Program to reduce and eventually eliminate the number of heavily polluting trucks serving the ports were never in question and have, in fact, been successful. Courts have struck down certain elements of the program but have left the pollution abatement elements substantially intact.
Many of the actions taken by the ports were direct results of National Resources Defense Council efforts. NRDC officials have repeatedly stated that, while the council's initial initiative to reduce port pollution was necessarily concentrated in the Los Angeles basin, its efforts are national in scope. Recent headlines in other port communities -- such as New York-New Jersey, Seattle and Tacoma -- support this contention.
The Southern California ports and their marine terminal operators, or MTOs, turned to technology to avoid cost increases from these regulations. Thus, technology was employed to implement core elements of the Clean Trucks Program.
Since the ports had no direct, contractual relationship with licensed motor carriers and independent owner-operators calling at terminals within the ports, the ports could only estimate the numbers and environmental attributes of individual trucks operating on port property via street-level surveys and consulting studies. Without detailed information about individual trucks and without any enforcement mechanism, the objective of pollution reduction was nearly impossible to realize.
To acquire this specific-truck information for enforcement, and operating with Federal Maritime Commission authority, the ports' tariffs were changed to require, among other things, that motor carriers enroll each truck (owned or otherwise) in a ports-approved Drayage Truck Registry, or DTR, and that MTO lessees be required to refuse gate entry to individual drayage trucks that failed to present proof of DTR registration.
To create this registry, the ports contracted with a technology firm to craft a Web-based mechanism for motor carriers to enter essential truck information such as vehicle identification number and port concession status.
With information such as truck model year on file in the DTR, the ports could enforce the banning of trucks failing to meet program criteria.
Coincidentally, the MTOs had embarked upon their own proprietary project to assign radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags to the estimated 17,000 port drayage trucks.
With this head start, and with FMC-approved agreements between the MTOs and ports, these tags became the cornerstone of Clean Trucks Program enforcement. The truck-mounted tags, tag readers at each terminal gate lane and interface with the DTR facilitated identification and, as necessary, banning of nonconforming trucks.
As the more controversial elements of the program are resolved in and out of courtrooms, there is no doubt that the technology employed at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has helped reduce pollution in the largest containerport complex in the United States. Data indicate that approximately 50 percent of the ports' cargo is currently being delivered by a "clean truck."
Mr. Palazzolo, whose firm is based in San Francisco, furnished a presentation on the implementation of technology in the Clean Trucks Program during a June 11 session of the American Association of Port Authorities' Port Operations, Safety and Information Technology Seminar in Seattle.
