American Trucking Association (ATA) takes ports to court over Clean Truck Proposals

Updated July 29th: Logistics Management has a follow up featuring commentary from a legal expert:

“It’s a blatant attempt to regulate the industry,” said Susan Ross, chair of the international trade practice for Los Angeles law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP.

She added that said such a lawsuit will likely result in an injunction blocking the program.

“If that happens, it puts everything on hold until the case is decided or the injunction is lifted,” she said, adding that the truck replacement program will likely be “delayed at least a year or maybe longer.”

Ross, who is not affiliated with the lawsuit but who has followed the port plan, said the group is saying that the ports cannot impose restrictions on motor carriers that govern the routes, rates or services offered by the private companies.

The ATA has long expressed their concerns over the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach’s separate clean air programs. At the heart of the matter is the Port of Los Angeles’ insistence on implementing a Teamsters Union driven initiative to require all drivers to be employee drivers, effectively banning all owner-operators. Currently the vast majority of the local drayage industry is handled by owner-operators, and the Teamsters would love to be able to change that. Via Logistics Management:

“The time is right for this action,” said Curtis Whalen,executive director, Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference – an ATA affiliate.

In an exclusive interview with LM, Whalen noted that the ATA is not taking issue with any other part of the port’s “Clean Air” programs.

“We only want the courts to examine the one aspect that requires all drivers to be licensed, and which excludes owner-operators,” he said.

As reported in LM, the ATA has been arguing that the ports planned actions represents an effort to enlist their marine terminal operators as the day-to-day enforcers of an unlawful “concession” mechanism which is otherwise unnecessary to the achievement of the important clean air goals included in the ports clean air action plan.

The conference particularly highlighted the Port of LA’s expressed intent to adopt, as part of its clean truck program, a Teamsters-supported scheme to ban owner operator drivers from port transport service and require motor carriers to only use employee drivers. ??In addition, we also argued that the port imposed “concessionaire” contracting requirement amount to a blockading provision at terminal gates preventing motor carriers from engaging in open access competition as intended under federal deregulation.

It was only a matter of time, and as the article from Logistics Management says, the ATA is making good on their threat.