NY-NJ Port Issues Clean-Trucks Plan

The Port of New York and New Jersey will ban the oldest drayage trucks from its terminals starting next Jan. 1 in the first phase of a multi-step program to reduce air pollution from trucks.

The Jan. 1 ban will apply to trucks built in 1994 or earlier. In a second phase of the port’s clean-trucks program, trucks with engines that don’t meet federal emissions standards for 2007 models will be banned starting Jan. 1, 2017.

The port authority said it has begun taking applications for a previously announced program to provide $28 million, including $7 million in federal grants, to finance replacement of up to 636 pre-1994 model trucks.

The program would provide grants to cover 25 percent of the cost of replacing pre-1994 trucks. It would subsidize the balance with five-year loans at 5.25 percent annual interest. Replacement trucks would have to be 2004-2008 models equipped with engines from the 2004 to 2007 model years.

The clean-trucks program is part of a broad effort by the port authority to reduce emissions from trucks, ships, locomotives, terminal equipment and other sources.

The program would not require owner-operators, who comprise about 70 percent of port drivers, to become trucking company employees who would be eligible to unionize.

An employee-driver requirement in the Port of Los Angeles’ clean-air plan has been challenged in court by the American Trucking Associations, which contends the plan illegally pre-empts federal economic regulation of trucking routes, rates and service.

New York-New Jersey’s clean-truck plans followed recommendations last October by a port working group including environmentalists, labor, truckers and maritime interests.

Contact Joseph Bonney at jbonney@joc.com.