LA Weekly

Miguel Lopez of the Teamsters is reporting that the newly formed (I think) Los Angeles Troquero Collective has planned a rally at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for noon on April 27, and a general strike on May 1. The Teamsters are behind the rally, but not the strike. They're demanding a 25 percent increase in pay, although where that's going to come from isn't certain -- most of what the truckers make gets sucked up in state and local fees, insurance, repairs (far fewer than they need -- I have seen the bald tires) and rising fuel costs. They're also demanding better working conditions.

Why this matters to an environmental blog: As Grist's recent series on poverty and the environment proves, you cannot talk about pollution without talking about the economics that create it, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the working lives of truckers. That black smoke you see belching out of those aging trucks? A trucker supporting a family on $25,000 a year isn't going to spend the $5,000 or $10,000 to fix it; the truck would have to break down first. Those bald tires? The $300 for each one will get spent when the rubber blows off on the freeway, not before. It's a dangerous and dirty business, and it's kept that way by the trucking and shipping lines who on one hand use the drivers' plight as a buffer against regulation, and on the other hand load every possible expense onto the truckers' shoulders. On top of it all, PierPass's off-peak hours program has spread work out through the night; truckers say they can't make a living anymore on an eight-hour day.

And so far, we haven't heard much from them. Most are immigrants from Mexico or Central America (although I've seen a few Sikhs down at the ports behind the wheel); few speak functional English; all but a relic few works as "independent owner/operators," which means they own and maintain their own equipment, which they then lease to the trucking company. They're treated as independent contractors, which means they have neither benefits nor job security, but they're still utterly dependent upon big shipping lines and trucking companies for work.

So I'm interested to watch how this all turns out. There's no way of going back to a regulated trucking industry, and it's unlikely the state of California or the federal government is going to subsidize cleaner, safer trucks to the extent that's necessary. That leaves the responsibility with the trucking industry itself. Is there a way to make it pay?

Some relevant facts:

The California Air Resources Board estimates that 12,000 on-road heavy duty diesel-fueled trucks, each with a maximum capacity of 80,000 pounds for both truck and cargo, operate out of California's three largest ports (Long Beach, Los Angeles and Oakland). Each make two to three trips per day.

Port trucks generate just over 7,000 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx, which is believed to be the major contributor to surface ozone) and 564 tons of toxic particulate matter (PM) per year -- 23 percent of all port-related NOx and nine percent of port-related PM.

Seventy-two percent of those trucks, according to an ARB estimate in 2002, are older than 1993 and run on older, high-polluting engines. Only 28 percent can be retrofitted to cleaner technology. Upgrading the aging fleet to significantly reduce emissions would cost anywhere from $180 million to $200 million.

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