09 Desember 2009

[EN-LAN] LA Port Chief Blast Truckers Attacking "Clean Truck Scheme"

PORT of Los Angeles executive director Geraldine Knatz has hit back at the American Trucking Associations (ATA) for its failure to grasp the port's "Clean Truck Programme" (CTP) as well as warning the even higher standards are yet to come.

"Even today's cleanest trucks will not pass 2020 environmental standards, when mandatory caps will push greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels. Even the next generation of trucks will fall short of those 2020 clean air standards," she warned.

But the American Trucking Associations (ATA) has successfully sued the port, challenging its right to control trucks entering cargo terminals.

The ATA has won a court order stopping the port's direct enforcement of the truck replacement programme that would have banned trucking companies from operating if not replaced older vehicles.

The court also quashed a requirement that owner operators be removed from the docks over time and replaced by employee drivers, a measure promoted by the Teamsters union.

Under the Clean Truck initiative hundreds of trucking companies that enter cargo terminals are accountable through concession agreements with the Port of Los Angeles for operating and maintaining trucks that meet local and state emissions requirements and also for the safety and security performance of their drivers.

The concessionaires are said to represent 700 area trucking companies, 80 per cent of which are businesses with fewer than 50 trucks.

The ATA now seeks court orders to prevent the port authorities from holding trucking companies responsible for offences rather than drivers they dispatch.

Said Ms Knatz: "Instead, the ATA wants the port to chase down those individual truckers, an enforcement measure that is neither practical nor realistic."

Source : HKSG, 03.12.09.

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