“The communities have been treated like pass-through dumping grounds for industry to continue to operate in a way that is really out of date,” said Sylvia Betancourt of the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma. The alliance helps families manage childhood asthma, but Betancourt said all those trucks make that difficult. “When children are constantly exposed, no amount of medicine will help,” she said. “How do you expect a child [to manage] when you have trucks that are idling just outside their playground?”
Truck pollution isn’t the only culprit. The area is also home to oil refineries, railyards, chemical facilities and an oil field. Although particulate pollution around the ports has dropped significantly in the last two decades due to more stringent pollution standards, Betancourt said that’s not the experience of people who live alongside industrial sites. Mario Díaz Salazar has lived in a small house on Pacific Coast Highway, one of the area’s busiest thoroughfares, in West Long Beach since 2010. Trucks queue up to refuel at the Chevron station next to his home, which is constantly exposed to pollution.
“I actually have a cup of soot that I’ve collected,” he said. “It looks like dirt, but it’s not dirt. It’s a combination of exhaust emissions and maybe brake dust.”
If California’s Advanced Clean Fleets rule goes into effect as expected, some fleet operators would have to buy zero-emissions vehicles as soon as next year. Advocates for trucking fleets say that would be impossible for many operators.
“The road to get there will be littered with the corpses of businesses that no longer are going to be able to afford to do business in California,” said Matt Schrap, CEO of the Harbor Trucking Association, a trade organization that represents drayage fleets on the West Coast.
An Air Resources Board spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the board is still taking public comment on the regulation. “We listen to trucking industry concerns as well as those of other parties, including utilities, environmentally impacted communities and environmental advocates.”
The federal Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law last year, includes a tax credit of up to $40,000 for battery-electric trucks and 30 percent of the cost of a charger. California offers a $120,000 rebate for battery-electric big rigs and, in some cases, as much as $410,000 to scrap an old polluter for a zero-emissions machine. But for some operators, the cost of a zero-emissions vehicle may still be prohibitive. A battery-powered truck can cost as much as half a million dollars with taxes and fees. That’s more than twice what a diesel costs.
Before joining Hight full-time to drive one of its electrics, López drove under a contract for the company while operating two diesel rigs of his own. He said independent drivers are already under financial strain, and buying a new zero-emissions vehicle won’t be feasible for many of them. “These people had their trucks paid off,” he said. “They don’t want to finance again and fall into another debt.”
Schrap said getting loans can be difficult, and some banks are hesitant to finance them because there isn’t an established resale market for vehicles that might be repossessed.
The financial impacts go beyond the hefty upfront cost. Because of their enormous batteries, the vehicles can weigh around 10,000 pounds more than their diesel counterparts. Federal law limits a loaded truck to 80,000 pounds (the law grants electrics an additional 2,000 pounds), forcing drivers to haul less cargo. That means less profit.
Drivers may also need to reduce the number of trips they make in a day. The electric semi López drives provides a real-world range of about 130 miles — fine for going from the port to Hight’s warehouse, but not enough to reach Southern California’s inland valleys. “How long it lasts is the limitation,” he said. “How do you tell a customer that you can’t take your truck to them because you don’t have the range?”
Charging in the middle of a shift would take too long and assumes drivers can find charging stations. The Port of Long Beach currently has just two.
“Infrastructure is what keeps us up at night,” said Schrap. “This is where environmental justice groups and the trucking industry should be on the same page to say to the state, ‘Show us that there’s going to be enough energy deployed to support these trucks.’”
The California Energy Commission estimates that supporting the 180,000 medium- and heavy-duty trucks it hopes to see on the road by 2030 will require installing 157,000 chargers. That’s 52 installed per day, every day, for seven years. “We need a Manhattan Project for chargers,” CEC commissioner Patty Monahan said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Hight’s electric fleet.
Hight Logistics installed three charging stations with two ports each to power its four zero-emissions trucks. By the end of the year, it plans to have five stations and 10 electric trucks, thanks to its partnership with Forum Mobility, a Bay Area company that wants to make it easier for fleets to decarbonize. Hight pays Forum a monthly fee to use its trucks and charging stations, a model called “truck-as-a-service.”
“It’s really good to clean up ports, but we can’t crush small businesses at the same time,” said Matt LeDucq, the company’s CEO. Rather than expect fleets to navigate the transition on their own, LeDucq said the key will be building large-scale infrastructure. Forum wants to create a network of centralized depots that can house and charge 50 to 150 trucks from multiple fleets. Operators can use Forum’s vehicles or drive their own.
By 2024, Forum hopes to offer 500 chargers across California. The company just announced a $400 million joint venture that would allow it to install thousands more over time.
Until networks like these exist, Hight can’t use zero-emissions vehicles on all of its routes. In the meantime, the company is learning how to integrate the new machines. It operates them only during the day and makes about three runs to the port before plugging in overnight.
“We’re exploring it at the same time as we’re doing it,” said López. On that chilly morning in January, he was making a pickup at the Long Beach Container Terminal, a newly completed, fully electric site. An automated crane hoisted a 40-foot container and placed it perfectly onto the truck’s chassis. “We have to adapt,” he said. “The future is already here.”
March 07, 2023 at 03:30PM
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California's plan to electrify trucking may be hard for small… - Canary Media
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