10:00am | On January 1, the Port of Long Beach’s landmark Clean Trucks Program will hit its final milestone, barring all of the oldest, most polluting drayage trucks from Port terminals.
The program, which achieved its environmental goals two years ahead of schedule, helped replace 11,000 old, pollution-spewing trucks at the largest port complex in the country. The new trucks cut related air pollution by 90 percent.
The Clean Trucks Program was an unprecedented environmental initiative and has become a model for the rest of the country. Under the program, Port of Long Beach terminals began barring older rigs on October 1, 2008. The first ban included trucks with 1988 or older engines. On January 1, 2010, the Port banned nearly all trucks 2003 and older.
January 1, 2012 will mark the last phase of a progressive ban that has succeeded in replacing the entire drayage fleet in the largest port complex in North America. The final ban will take another 280 older container trucks off Port roads, and all 11,000 drayage trucks servicing the Port terminals will be 2007 or newer models. Another 800 older non-container trucks will be purged from the Port’s drayage registry and barred from doing business at the Port.
The Port of Long Beach and neighboring Port of Los Angeles combined account for nearly 40 percent of all containerized trade entering the country.
For more information, please visit www.polb.com/cleantrucks.