Truckers operating out of the Port of Oakland will soon have several reasons to buy a new truck – 25,000 reasons, to be specific.
As part of a settlement agreement, the Port of Oakland – the fourth-largest container port in the country – is offering grants of $25,000 to truckers with 1986 or older rigs to purchase a new truck, news Web site insidebayarea.com reported.
The money stems from a 10-year-old agreement made by the port during a major expansion, which guaranteed $9 million for “environmental mitigation projects,” according to the Oakland Tribune.
“We are trying to get the oldest and dirtiest trucks out of here,” Tim Leong, an environmental scientist who studies the port’s pollution problem, told the Tribune. “We looked elsewhere to see what other successful programs are going on in California and found this one.”
For further information on the Port of Oakland’s Truck Replacement Project, call (510) 627-1380.
The program is similar to an initiative in the Los Angeles area that has helped in removing older, polluting trucks from the state’s roadways. The Gateway Cities Council of Governments, a consortium of 27 cities in southeast Los Angeles County, has a Clean Air Program that gives incentives to truckers driving older vehicles.
In the Southern California program, the trade-in vehicle has to be a 1986 model or older, and must be traded for a 1999 or newer truck. Allynn Howe, president of Government Relations Consultants, a lobbying group that represents Gateway, said the incentives average $20,000 to $25,000 per truck, but could go higher.
“The large fleet companies – over-the-road fleet carriers – will tend to modernize their fleet on a regular basis, and so they’re not really the problem,” Howe said. “The problem is the little guys. This program would significantly increase the incentive for them to come in and dump their old trucks and replace them with new ones.”
Howe stressed that the Los Angeles-area program is designed to take pollutant trucks off the road for good – not to redistribute them in other countries, where the emissions problem would just continue farther from home.
“They put a half-inch drill through the engine block so they can’t be reused, and I believe they melt them down then,” Howe said. “They can’t be sold to Mexico; they can’t be sold to Iraq – which is something that has strongly been advocated for. There are people who would love to do that.”
In addition to federal EPA funding, California’s program receives money from the California Air Resources Board, the Port of Long Beach, the Port of Los Angeles and the Mobile Source Emission Reduction Committee of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
John Young, legislative director for Millender-McDonald said the advantage of California’s program is that owner-operators and large companies have an equal opportunity to get the grant money, because fleet size is not a determining factor in doling out the money. He believes this level playing field will be important on the national level, too.
“We have a lot of need for addressing owner-operator trucks in our particular region, because there’s a lot of them,” Young said. “Other states – Ohio, Texas – they might be a little bit different. They might have more fleets and larger fleets. So, there’s some flexibility there at this point.”
OOIDA’s DC office has a continued dialog with Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald and her staff regarding potential benefits to small business truck drivers.
Grants for replacing and upgrading trucks will also soon be available nationally. An amendment to the federal Energy Bill that will provide grants and incentives for truck owners who want to upgrade and retrofit their older rigs has passed into law. However, additional details on how truck owners can apply for the money won’t be worked out for about two months.
Land Line originally reported on a version of the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-CA, in an article titled “Emission Granted?” in the July issue of the magazine.
Millender-McDonald’s version of the amendment did not make it into the final draft of the Energy Bill. However, a nearly identical amendment, drafted by Sen. George Voinovich, R-OH, was included, and was made law after President Bush signed the Energy Bill on Aug. 8.
Under the amendment, the Environmental Protection Agency will be responsible for dividing up approximately $100 million to different state and local interest groups. It is these state and local groups that will be responsible for setting up programs and getting the money into the hands of the truck owners who want to purchase newer, less pollutant trucks and engine upgrades.
The amendment requires the money to be given to the EPA within 90 days of the signing of the bill. However, it could be months before each state sets up its own individual program for the distribution of funds to truck owners.
Anyone with questions about how the federal program’s funds will be distributed can contact the Division of Compliance and Innovative Strategies within the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation department at (202) 343-9285.
For the most up-to-date information on the program’s progress, listen to “Land Line Now” on XM Satellite Radio, Channel 171, from 7 p.m.-8 p.m. EST, and watch for updates in Land Line’s magazine and Web site, landlinemag.com. We will be keeping a very close eye on this topic, and will keep you informed of the most current information available.
By Aaron Ladage, staff writer
aaron_Ladage@landlinemag.com
