Seattle port truckers are threatening to take legal action against the state, should new environmental regulations be enforced.
The program, called the ‘The Northwest Seaport Alliance Clean Truck Program,’ requires all port drivers to upgrade to 2007 or newer model trucks/engines, or they will be disallowed from entering port terminals from April 1st, 2018.
Should the Clean Truck program be enforced, it will inevitably lead to a shortage in port truck drivers, as only 53% of port drivers are currently in compliance with the program.
In addition, many owner-operators who have upgraded to newer trucks say the financial impact has put a strain on their businesses.
A group of Seattle port drivers recently penned this letter to the port agency:
Open letter to NWSA. Seattle WA. January of 2018.
The following is to address the concerns and welfare of the trucking industry in the NW, mainly truck driver owner operators.
As we all have seen, since you tried to implement a fully unlawful mandate on the truckers about replacing their trucks for a newer models, nothing but discontent, frustration and plain anger against you is growing, we, the truckers, know first hand how useless and expensive is to try to run these newer models, you have heard from a lot of us how upsetting is to work even harder just to pay for repairs, it clearly shows that you don’t own a business, you don’t create jobs and certainly you don’t have the slightest idea what it takes to make even a small profit on your own , your idea of having a purpose on life is battling imaginary monsters, play saviors and put the burden on someone else to carry, in this case, truckers.
Per federal and state law, as long as a truck passes the emissions test, and the DOT inspection, that vehicle is fully and lawfully able to operate and conduct business, without the burden or saying of someone else, your claim about reducing the harmful micro particles of the dangerous truck fumes has no base nor any credible documentations besides the so called “studies” you have conducted, this is not rocket science, we have truckers and longshoremen that have been breathing these fumes for 10, 20, 30 or even more years without a single case reported that they acquired cancer or any other lethal illness from being around truck fumes all of these years, not mentioning that when the truck industry fully started, trucks didn’t have that much smog filtration except for a device that was installed mainly to reduce the noise and not the emissions.
We all have seen the real pollution that the train produces, not mentioning the cargo vessels and the cranes, are you going to force the ports to replace their equipment too and the shipping companies to do something about their vessels? Because, they produce in 10 minutes what we produce in weeks or months, it seems that you have seen in truckers an excuse to keep getting a paycheck behind a desk without actually doing anything productive and a lot of damage. If we have to, we may have to write a letter to the president to send someone to investigate this whole thing to its roots and let the chips fall where they may, because is somehow suspicious that NWSA is helping the truck manufacturers get rid off the junk they produced when they started using this new emissions system, some truckers, to their regret, have wasted thousands of dollars to replace their older much better and reliable trucks, thousands of truckers are hesitating to get a newer truck that will force them to get out of trucking business and as you can see, you have created a lot of anger around, if we are forced to get newer equipment, you may be facing a huge class action lawsuit very soon from any side of the lane.”
Port drivers have been voicing their complaints on social media for some time now, however with the enforcement date around, drivers’ outreach has picked up considerable steam.
Nearly 25% of Seattle’s port drivers have joined the Facebook page Pier Trucker / Seattle to demand relief from the crippling new rule.
One member, Trish Madden, explains how, in her opinion, the regulations will have an overreaching affect on the local and state economy.
The fact is the industry is already short on trucks . If they decide to go with the plan it will only be worse . Prices for everything will increase . Containers will stack up and sit longer than they should . It will hurt the truckers the most but it will eventually hurt the overall economy in the NW . It amazes me that they don’t look at the long wait times at the terminals ? Idling for 3 hours to get a container off the dock ? they are willing to put 100s of small business owners out of business . Seattle has so many other issues besides “old” trucks . What about the piles of garbage under freeways ? Why are they looking at the truck driver ? The guy working for a living ? Paying his taxes and taking care of his business and his truck ? Why him ? Seems to me if air quality is really the issue … why would it only apply to Seattle and TACOMA Ports ? Why not SeaTac airport? or the rest of the hwys in our state ? The new trucks can’t idle the length of time needed to pull a container out of one of our ports . Period . And with less trucks the wait times won’t improve because less labor will be hired . If this goes through Washington state will suffer in the cost of freight going up and consumer goods going up – unemployment will increase – productivity at the ports will be down and I’m willing to bet the air quality will be the SAME.
Although the enforcement date has been delayed in the past, it appears that the April 1st date may now be set in stone — and if so, there’s a real possibility that Seattle loses nearly half of its port drivers overnight.
