California-based drayage truck owner-operator Filiberto Cervantes is quoted in this recent story, part of the Mother Nature Network‘s coverage of news relating to the environment, reacting in dismay to California’s drayage rule, which sees at yearend a deadline for compliance for the many trucks serving the ports through the state. Essentially, trucks with powertrains older than model year 1994 will be banned, and pre-2004 engines will require retrofit with a Level 3 diesel particulate filter. While many operators have already made upgrades, many others simply couldn’t afford to, as Cervantes’ case seems to illustrate.
Problems have been ongoing among fleets and OOs serving the ports who applied and received grant funding from the state for upgrading to new trucks and/or retrofitting existing equipment, and in the latest news, not remarked upon by MNN, California granted extensions to haulers awaiting delivery of new trucks and/or funding as independents continued convoying in Oakland and L.A./Long Beach in protest of the regulations. The state’s budgetary difficulties had many in recent months waiting with baited breath for word whether their applications for funding assistance would be approved or denied, and delays in ordering trucks and/or retrofits have been legion. I reported on the problem in the October edition of Overdrive here.
The extensions do nothing, really, for operators who themselves have done nothing in advance of the deadline. Here’s hoping Mr. Cervantes and others like him make it through with their businesses intact.
