After the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach pressed on in October with their plan to cut down on truck pollution, Brian Griley decided to embrace the program despite opposition from many of his fellow truckers.

The owner of Southern Counties Express, a motor carrier that operates 200 trucks serving the ports, went out and spent $10 million of his own money to buy 50 liquefied natural gas and 55 clean diesel trucks, each priced around $100,000.

But more than two months after the kickoff of the port’s Clean Trucks Program, most of his 105 clean trucks are sitting on his Rancho Dominguez lot gathering dust. There’s no financial sense in starting up the expensive-to-drive trucks because the ports’ program, which would compensate the clean trucks, essentially has been delayed.

“It’s almost like a joke,” said Griley of the ports’ $2.2 billion program, which seeks to reduce diesel truck emissions by 80 percent within five years.

Griley’s grumbling mirrors the frustration of licensed motor carriers who decided to embrace the green program with their own green when they simply could have met only its minimum initial requirement: retiring all trucks built prior to 1989.

Instead, Griley and perhaps scores of other motor carriers purchased “clean trucks” meeting 2007 federal emissions standards some of the cleanest rigs on the market today.

In order to encourage motor carriers to make the switch, the ports planned to charge truckers not using the cleanest trucks a fee of $35 per 20 foot cargo container, or $70 per 40 foot cargo container they haul. The idea is that owners of clean trucks like Griley who don’t pay the fee will have a cost advantage when negotiating drayage rates with cargo owners.

That fee was supposed to be assessed on Oct. 1 when the Clean Trucks Program kicked off, but it was delayed to Nov. 17 when the Port Check organization the two ports developed to collect the fee wasn’t up and running in time. Now, it’s been suspended pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by the Federal Maritime Commission, which regulates port activity.

The commission’s lawsuit, filed Oct. 31, alleges the ports don’t have the authority to require motor carriers to get concessions essentially permission to operate at the ports. Complicating the situation, the lawsuit also seeks to overturn a requirement specific to the Los Angeles port that carriers hire their drivers, who have historically operated as independent owner-operators.

As a result, there is a financial disincentive for motor carriers to use clean-burning rigs, which Griley said are more expensive to run because of their higher insurance and maintenance costs, given the sophisticated technology they use.

Port officials say their inability to charge the fee also is cutting into the projected income they plan to tap to fund incentive programs that will subsidize the cost of new clean trucks. The ports have committed to subsidize as much as 80 percent of the cost of new clean trucks for every motor carrier that signed up for the program. (Griley is still waiting for those incentives to be put in place.)

“We share in the frustration,” said John Holmes, the Port of Los Angeles’ director of operations.

Sticker shock

On top of the delayed enforcement of the fees, motor carriers say not all truckers are playing by the rules. The first major goal of the Clean Trucks Program was to ban all trucks built before 1989. And in order to enforce that, both ports separately sent out stickers in September to motor carriers that registered their qualifying trucks. That way they could enter the ports and conduct business as usual.

Griley, for example, spent $32,000 to register his 200 truck fleet at both ports, which accounts for 60 percent of his business. But the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports, an alliance of community, environmental and labor groups that advocated for the Clean Trucks Program, is claiming that some carriers received more stickers than they needed, and even had a few stolen off of their trucks something that Griley and another carrier said they had witnessed.

That would mean that some motor carriers which have not followed port procedure nor paid their registration fees might be able to place stickers on their pre-1989 trucks and still enter the ports.

Port officials contend that they are enforcing the ban on older trucks and have personnel looking at the stickers placed on truck doors.

“I’d be surprised if there were licensed motor carriers trying to get around the system, because there are serious consequences,” said John Pope, a spokesman for the Port of Long Beach. “They are at risk of not being able to do business with the port once they’re found out.”

Port officials said that the stickers issued in September are temporary. They plan to issue stickers using radio frequency identification technology which will electronically store a truck’s registration information once the dispute with the maritime commission simmers down.

“The truckers certainly have a right to be concerned,” Holmes said. “But it’ll be harder to fool an electronic system using the RFID tags, though we don’t expect any system to be 100 percent foolproof as that’s silly in the security world. Still though, we can’t flip the switch on the RFID tags until the (maritime commission) says so.”

Ball in court

What happens next heavily relies on what happens in the courts. A federal judge said earlier this month that he would not rule before next year on the maritime commission’s lawsuit against the ports. The L.A. employee-driver requirement is on hold pending resolution of the maritime commission’s lawsuit.

However, it’s possible that the ports may be able to issue the RFID tags as early as this week, which would mark the end of a 45-day waiting period the commission established after filing its lawsuit. The waiting period held up several elements of the program that were not necessarily key points of contention in the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the American Trucking Association is still pursuing an appeal of a lawsuit it filed in September to block implementation of several elements of the program, including its concession structure and L.A. port employee driver requirement. Many truckers represented by the trade group fear the employee driver requirement will open up carriers to an organizing drive by the Teamsters, which joined with environmental and community groups in pushing the ports to adopt the clean truck program.

The trade group’s request for a preliminary injunction was denied, but the case is still lingering in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the meantime, port officials said traffic hasn’t been slowed down by the problems implementing the Clean Truck Program, including a fear there would not be enough trucks built after 1988 to service the ports. The ports say they each have 760 licensed motor carriers with at least 16,000 trucks in compliance, though that number could decrease for the Los Angeles port if it starts enforcing its employee-driver provision.

Slow trade

The fragmented implementation of the program may have been a much larger headache for port business had the economy and trade been booming. But today it’s a far cry from a few years ago when burgeoning trade with Asia sometimes backed up both ships and trucks at the twin ports.

By the close of 2008, the Port of Los Angeles is expected to handle about 5 percent fewer shipments than in 2007. At the Port of Long Beach, imports are down about 13 percent this year compared to 2007. Moreover, L.A. officials already have predicted a drop of as much as 20 to 30 percent in shipments during the first quarter of 2009.

The outlook stirs mixed emotions from motor carriers like Fred Johring, president of Golden State Express, a Rancho Dominguez-based motor carrier that operates 50 rigs. Johring this fall went out and bought two clean diesel trucks, yet despite all the problems and the gloomy forecast, he still thinks it will be worth the investment eventually.

“Assuming the port clean truck fees are implemented, I expect our clean exempt trucks will not be able to handle the amount of business that will be there for them, whereas the non-exempt (older) trucks will take the brunt of the economic slump,” Johring said.