Shippers Fight Truck Regulation Rewrite

More than 30 shipper organizations sent a letter to Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Committee on Transportation, urging him and his colleagues in Congress to reject efforts to re-write federal trucking rules in the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act.

The groups oppose new legislation proposed by the Port of Los Angeles and others that would exempt harbor drayage from preemption under the FAAAA. The port and its allies want to persuade Congress to grant to local governments the ability to regulate the harbor drayage industry to address environmental and port security matters, and thereby eliminate the federal pre-emption of state and local regulation of foreign and interstate
commerce.

The shippers groups say that they support efforts to improve air quality and port security but that the change in federal preemption of interstate commerce is really an attempt to overturn losses in the federal courts restricting local regulation of truck drayage services.

“If successful,” the shippers said in their letter, “these efforts will not improve air quality or port security in and around the nation’s ports, but will re-impose a fragmented, local, patchwork regulatory structure on foreign and interstate commerce, contrary to the U.S. Constitution and acts of Congress.”

In 2007, the Port of Los Angeles established its clean-trucks program as a policy tool to reduce emissions from the harbor trucks serving southern California marine terminals. That program included a ban on the oldest trucks and a fee for every truck move using equipment that fails to meet 2007 U.S. EPA emissions standards. The clean-trucks program also included a controversial truck concession program banning any harbor trucking company from using independent owner-operator drivers in favor of employee drivers.