Clean Truck Program October 1st launch: How did it go?
October 2, 2008 by SwizStick
Filed under Seafreight
According to this article in American Shipper things went smoothly yesterday, the official launch of the LA/Long Beach ports’ Clean Truck Programs:
On Wednesday, the pre-1989 ban was in full force, with the ports reporting compliance by more than 95 percent of the trucks calling at the ports’ terminals. Trucking firms who had signed up for access licenses were issued compliance stickers for their trucks by the ports. The stickers, affixed to the either the truck door or windshield, allowed terminal personnel to quickly assess the status of the truck and turn any non-compliant trucks away.
“This is like the first day of school,” said Robert Kanter, managing director of environmental affairs and planning at the Port of Long Beach. “You’ve got kids trying to find out where there room is, what class they are in, or they want to change classes, so we are going to have some small hiccups. We have tried to anticipate these as much as we can but we are going to get through it.”
However, while not a hiccup, the sticker system was a last-minute addition to the truck plan by the two ports to temporarily take the place of an electronic compliance system, called PortCheck, that is not expected to be deployed for several weeks, according to the ports. The lack of the PortCheck system has also required the ports to postpone the collection of the $35-per TEU tax until the electronic system is up and running.
While truck traffic appeared light throughout the port area, a sampling of terminal operators found that most experienced about a 10 percent drop in truck volume over last Wednesday. The decline was so small, said terminal officials, it was impossible to attribute it to the start of the truck plan.
The Marine Exchange of Southern California, which monitors the two ports, said there were a normal number of vessels being worked at the ports and no incidents of truck congestion at the various terminals had been reported.
By Wednesday evening, it appeared that even the hiccups anticipated by Kanter failed to materialize. The terminals said they had each turned away less than two-dozen trucks throughout the day. Given that the two ports typically see 20,000 to 30,000 gate moves each day, even several hundred trucks being turned away throughout the ports represents less than 1 percent of all truck moves.
So neither myself nor my partner-in-crime are in Southern California, so we can’t speak for the truckers there but we’d love to hear from anyone in the area on their experience with the new program. We don’t care if you are a trucker, an NVOCC, a 3PL, a carrier, importer, whoever, if you have direct experience with the terminals in Long Beach or Los Angeles we’d love to hear your thoughts. Chime in on the comments.
Update: Here’s more from Logistics Management.
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