FMC to discuss SoCal ports truck plan

The Federal Maritime Commission is scheduled to hold a closed-door meeting Wednesday to discuss a trucking re-regulation plan proposed by the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

The closed-door portion of the meeting will focus on the ports February filing of an antitrust agreement with the FMC. The agreement would allow the Southern California ports and marine terminal operators to meet, discuss and agree upon various programs falling under a broadly defined scope of security and environmental programs such as the Transportation Workers Identification Credential and the ports environmental manifesto, the Clean Air Action Plan. The ports require the agreement to hammer out details of their $2.2 billion Southern California drayage overhaul program, a major component of the CAAP, with the terminal operators.

The FMC first considered the agreement last month and decided to request more information from the ports on details of the agreement before allowing the agreement to take affect.

The lengthy FMC request for information, issued April 3, said that while it was not the intention of the commission to delay implementation of the agreement the Shipping Act (of 1984) requires the commission to fully analyze the agreement that is now before it. To complete the oversight analysis of the requested agreement, the FMC is seeking the answer to nearly 50 detailed questions, many dealing with the truck plan and its potential impacts on such things as the national economy, local workers, and security within the ports.

Indicating a lack of clarity in the February agreement filing, the commission asked the two ports to provide a timeline indicating the planned dates of effectiveness, promulgation, and implementation of important milestones?for the truck plan.

The FMC is also unclear on exactly what will be discussed between the ports and terminal operators under the plan, and is asking that the ports to provide details on all currently adopted programs, legislation, requirements, etc.?that will be implemented under the agreement.

The ports legal teams have been working on the FMC questions, but have yet to respond to the commission's request for information, according to FMC officials.

While the ports do not have a timeframe for responding, once they do the FMC has three options. It can allow the agreement to move forward, in which case the agreement takes affect within 45 days. The commission could also return to the ports for more information or seek to stop the agreement through court action. FMC officials said Monday that given the complexity of the ports-terminal operators agreement, and based on past FMC decisions in such cases, it is unlikely that the commission would accelerate the 45-day time frame if they decided to allow the agreement to move forward. A further request for information is not likely, according to FMC officials.

If the FMC decides to allow the agreement to move forward, it would likely be mid-May before the ports/MTO agreement goes into effect.

The ports trucking plan, approved in March, calls for creation of a concession scheme that would require ports-servicing trucking firms to obtain a ports-issued license to gain access to any of the two ports facilities. To obtain an access license, a trucking firm must meet a lengthy list of ports-defined criteria covering everything from maintaining proper documentation to allowing the ports to approve potential buyers of a trucking firm. The two ports split on a contentious labor component of the plan, with the Long Beach version allowing trucking firms under the plan to hire drivers as employees or independent owner operators. The Los Angeles Harbor Commissioners retained a stipulation in their version banning independent owner-operator drivers and providing that trucking firms must hire drivers as per-hour employees.

The first steps of the truck plan are set to take effect on Oct. 1, when nearly 3,000 pre-1989 trucks of the nearly 17,000-truck drayage fleet will be barred from entering the ports. The FMC request for information has stopped the clock on the ports?truck plan process and may make meeting the scheduled implementation date very difficult to meet. Industry experts watching the development of the truck plan have said the ports would need at least three months before the Oct. 1 start date to finalize operational details of the plan. 

Source: American Shipper