Last week, four major trucking contractors—Los Angeles Harbor Grain Terminal, Pacheco Trucking, Perez Express Trucking and Franco Trucking—were named in a complaint presented to the Long Beach City Prosecutor’s office.
With charges filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, the complaint alleges employees, officers and contractors within said trucking companies overloaded their trucks—some to the extent of exceeding the maximum weight by 14,000lbs—and drove them on highways.
The worry is highly serious given that, beyond the unfair economic advantage the overweight trucks have in transporting more cargo with less cost, overweight trucks can cause significant structural damage to roads and bridges to the extent of tragedy, as with the 2007 collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis and the 2000 collapse of Milwaukee’s Hoan Bridge.
According to a release from the Long Beach Police Department, Los Angeles Harbor Grain Terminal recently settled an enforcement action brought by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in which the trucking company admitted that they deceptively weighed 758 containers of grain.
Anyone with further information regarding this or any other commercial enforcement complaint should contact Detective Jeff Jonkey of the Commercial Enforcement Unit at 562-570-5130.