The Clean Truck Fund rate (CTF) went into effect this month at the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach.
The fund, poised to generate $90 million a year for the deployment of battery-electric trucks at the San Pedro Bay Port Complex, started charging $10 for each 20-foot equivalent unit (TEUs) of cargo transported on and off the docks by diesel drayage trucks. Cargo owners pay the fee via PortCheck, a Seal Beach-based company contracted by both ports to process the payments, a move that shifts the burden away from the truck drivers. If the cargo is transported by a low-NOx or battery-electric trucks, the fee does not apply, and cargo owner is off the hook.
“We set an ambitious goal — 100% zero emissions trucks at our ports by 2035 — and we got a lot of work to do to get there,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said during a press conference announcing the implementation on April 1. “It’s going to (take) billions of dollars when we look at our infrastructure and our vehicles, but this clean truck rate is a critical step to get there.”
A resolution setting the CTF rate amount at $10 was adopted by the ports’ Boards of Harbor Commissioners in March 2020. Rate implementation is a second part of a Clean Truck Program that in 2017 called for new registrations in the Port Drayage Truck Registry — a list of drayage trucks that can enter the ports to drop off or pick-up cargo containers — to include only model year 2014 or newer.
“Today, we have 20,000 trucks in the registry, and of those 20,000 only 5,300 are older than the year 2010,” said Executive Director of the Port of Long Beach Mario Cordero. “I say only because that number was much higher previously. We need to transition those 5,300 trucks in the short term to anything but diesel.”
Cordero added that implementation of CTF is “not about reducing emissions. Our quest today is about eliminating emissions.”
The price of an electric truck can range from $200,000 to $400,000, or two to three times its diesel counterpart before state-sponsored incentives are counted in.
Monies collected via CTF rate will be used to provide vouchers to buy new zero-emission trucks and also to develop charging infrastructure. The Los Angeles Harbor Commission last month approved Truck Voucher Incentive Program, which will provide $150,000 point-of-sale purchase vouchers to operators from the Port Drayage Truck Registry, on a first-come, first-serve basis. Each truck funded via incentive program will have to provide drayage service to the San Pedro Bay Port complex for a period of three years.
