Last week, The Coalition for Responsible Transportation (CRT) announced a partnership with the U.S. EPA SmartWay Transport Program to develop a national SmartWay certification program and rating system for port drayage trucks. According to the press release, the goal of the partnership is to develop “a certification and rating system for green port drayage trucks that will build upon the immensely successful SmartWay Transport model that the U.S. EPA has created for over-the-road freight transportation. The drayage rating system will provide a national framework to measure emissions levels of port trucking activities, set benchmarks for air quality improvement at our nation’s ports, and certify emission reductions that are achieved through the deployment of clean port trucks by members of the shipping industry.”
The press release goes on to say, “Initially, the SmartWay port drayage model will be developed based on air quality and truck fleet data that has been collected through clean truck deployments at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which collectively represent the largest U.S. seaport for ocean freight. The goal is to ultimately use the model developed in Southern California as a template for a SmartWay port drayage rating system that would be used on a national level, and could be individually tailored to major seaports across the country. In less than two years, leading shippers, ocean carriers and drayage companies have financed and deployed nearly 5,000 clean trucks at the Ports of LA and Long Beach.”
What does this all mean?
First, leading shippers continue to shape the “green” transportation agenda, which everyone else will ultimately have to follow. A growing number of shippers are now making SmartWay certification an almost mandatory requirement for over-the-road carriers (see posting on Wausau Paper). This latest action by CRT members, which include Target, Best Buy, Converse, Dunavant Enterprises, Gap Inc., The Home Depot, HP, JC Penney, Lowe’s, Nike, Wal-Mart Stores, is effectively extending this SmartWay requirement to port trucks.
Second, this partnership may signal the nationalization of California’s clean trucks program. I’ve written about this topic several times this year (see ”California and the Trucking Industry“ and here and here), so I won’t repeat myself again. Sufficient to say that going “green” always comes at a price, so shippers can expect increased costs down the road, whether it’s some form of a “clean trucks” fee implemented by the ports or costs passed on by drayage carriers.
