American Trucking Association (ATA) takes ports to court over Clean Truck Proposals

The ATA has long expressed their concerns over the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach’s separate clean air programs. At the heart of the matter is the Port of Los Angeles’ insistence on implementing a Teamsters Union driven initiative to require all drivers to be employee drivers, effectively banning all owner-operators. Currently the vast majority of the local drayage industry is handled by owner-operators, and the Teamsters would love to be able to change that. Via Logistics Management:

“The time is right for this action,” said Curtis Whalen,executive director, Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference – an ATA affiliate.

In an exclusive interview with LM, Whalen noted that the ATA is not taking issue with any other part of the port’s “Clean Air” programs.

“We only want the courts to examine the one aspect that requires all drivers to be licensed, and which excludes owner-operators,” he said.

As reported in LM, the ATA has been arguing that the ports planned actions represents an effort to enlist their marine terminal operators as the day-to-day enforcers of an unlawful “concession” mechanism which is otherwise unnecessary to the achievement of the important clean air goals included in the ports clean air action plan.

The conference particularly highlighted the Port of LA’s expressed intent to adopt, as part of its clean truck program, a Teamsters-supported scheme to ban owner operator drivers from port transport service and require motor carriers to only use employee drivers. ??In addition, we also argued that the port imposed “concessionaire” contracting requirement amount to a blockading provision at terminal gates preventing motor carriers from engaging in open access competition as intended under federal deregulation.

It was only a matter of time, and as the article from Logistics Management says, the ATA is making good on their threat.

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