Diesel drayage freight trucks are a major source of toxic emissions. Forum Mobility replaces them with electric models for a monthly fee.
Every day, dozens of heavy-duty diesel trucks rumble into a freight yard lined with shipping containers near the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. As the big rigs pick up some of the 11 million cargo containers that pass through the ports each year, they spew an invisible mix of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter. The toxic exhaust is not only cooking the planet, but damaging the hearts and lungs of drivers and residents in surrounding low-income communities of color.
This is the hidden health and climate cost of consumer goods carried by tens of thousands of “drayage” trucks that shuttle shipping containers from ports to warehouses for distribution across the United States.
Drayage dates to the days when horses hauled goods from ports on carts called drays. Today, there are about 34,000 active drayage trucks in California, according to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, heavy-duty trucks account for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, a 2019 University of California at Los Angeles study on the Southern California drayage industry found; together, these ports are the single biggest source of air pollution in the region.
Change is coming, though, in the form of electric trucks and new business models that could speed the transition to a zero-emission drayage industry. A proposed regulation, likely to be approved this spring, would allow only zero-emission trucks to be added to a registry of vehicles authorized to work at California ports starting in 2024; all diesel trucks would be phased out by 2035. The move comes as ports in New Jersey are also taking steps to electrify. It represents a potentially seismic shift in trucking, a small part of the transportation sector but one with an outsize contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and pollution in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Electrifying drayage trucks in particular could have a substantial impact on public health in communities surrounding the ports.
“A lot of experts call it the diesel death zone,” says Colleen Callahan, co-executive director of UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation and co-author of the university’s study, which cited significantly higher rates of asthma among children living near the ports. “You have these kids going to school adjacent to rail yards and freeways where all these diesel trucks are transporting goods from the ports.”
But there are a few hurdles in the way of this electric future. While more heavy-duty electric trucks are coming to market, charging infrastructure for them remains nearly non-existent. Then there’s the price tag. Diesel drayage trucks can cost $100,000 to $200,000; electric versions retail for more than twice that. Most drayage truckers are independent contractors who own their own rigs, but often lack the capital to go electric, or the time or wherewithal to navigate government bureaucracy to obtain incentives available for zero-emission vehicles.