The Jersey City Independent "

Ralph has been driving trucks for 31 years, including 11 years handling shipments from the busy ports in northern New Jersey. It’s those decades of experience that allow him to clearly sum up the plight of today’s port truckers.

“We need help,” Ralph says. “This industry has really changed; it has only gotten worse.”

The Jersey City resident, who asked that JCI withhold his last name to prevent potential retribution from his employer, is technically a contractor for the trucking company for which he works, but he suggests the arrangement comes with nearly all of the risks but none of the benefits that one associates with being independent.

He is responsible for all the repairs and maintenance and some of the insurance for his 2001 truck. The company doesn’t take taxes out and offers no health insurance, which Ralph says he can’t afford on his own.

And as the recession continues to take its toll, the volume at the Port of New York and New Jersey is way down. In the first quarter of 2009, cargo volumes declined 17.4 percent, representing the biggest quarterly drop in more than 15 years.

To Ralph, a drop in volume equals a drop in work. He says his work week has shrunk to two or three days during the last eight months. As a contractor, he doesn’t get paid when he’s not working, but his company still won’t let him drive for another firm.

“I don’t believe there’s anyone out there hearing our cry,” Ralph says.

Groups like the New Jersey Environmental Federation and International Brotherhood of Teamsters say they are working to help truckers like Ralph by improving both environmental and labor conditions at New Jersey’s ports.

They are calling for new regulations to curb diesel emissions from the trucks that service the facilities overseen by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. To improve air quality and protect the health of drivers and the public, the groups argue that the oldest trucks have to be replaced outright and others should be retrofitted to meet new standards.

But they say that any replacement and retrofitting shouldn’t be done on the backs of the truckers. To that end, they say drivers should be hired as employees by the trucking companies.

These companies are in a better financial position to not only take on the necessary upgrades, the groups argue, but to also provide middle-class salaries and benefits like health care to a hard-working segment of the population that risks a descent into poverty.

Advocates hold up a Clean Truck program at the Port of Los Angeles as an example of what needs to happen in New Jersey. But that program is being challenged in court by the American Trucking Association, which criticizes it as unfair regulation and a ploy to allow unions to organize drivers.

“It would do nothing for the environment,” Clayton Boyce, a vice president of public affairs with the trucking organization, says.

Meanwhile, the Port Authority is also moving forward with its own program to reduce truck emissions.

Port Drivers

About 7,000 port truckers haul shipments ever day to and from ports in Newark, Bayonne and Elizabeth, with about 12,000 daily moves in the spring of 2008 before the recession really hit, according to Rutgers University Professor David Bensman. Because of industry-wide deregulation following the Federal Motor Carrier Act of 1980, nearly 75 percent of those port truckers are independent contractors who own or lease their trucks but work for a single company, according to a 2009 report by Bensman and Yael Bromberg of the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University.

The majority of the 299 drivers surveyed for the study were minorities and the bulk lived in North Jersey towns near the ports. Jersey City had among the highest concentrations of drivers, at 24.

The median income of the drivers working as independent contractors was $28,000 after expenses, about $7,000 less than what full-fledged employee drivers made annually, according to the study.

Nearly 75 percent of the independent contractors had no health insurance for their families, and less than six percent of those families had any kind of pension or retirement plan.

The industry, however, defends what’s known as the “owner operator” model. Boyce says it provides flexibility to the companies and ensures they have the appropriate manpower to address changes in demand and costs, so “you don’t build a church for Easter Sunday.”

What’s more, Boyce adds that many truckers prefer being able to set their own schedule and handle the other aspects of their business.

“If you talk to these drivers, they’ll tell you that they prefer to be an owner operator,” Boyce said.

But Ralph says there’s too much volatility inherent in being an owner/operator.

“In the last four years, I don’t know what it is to have a salary,” he says.

What’s more, the Rutgers report says the owner operator model negatively impacts not only the drivers, but also society at large.

More than 7 percent of drivers reported truck model years of 1989 or earlier, while more than 17 percent reported model years from 1990 to 1994 and more than 46 percent from 1995 to 1999.

The 11-year-old vehicle driven by the average port trucker pollutes at least 10 times more than modern versions, the report states. But a new vehicle can cost more than $100,000, and Amy Goldsmith, director of the New Jersey Environmental Federation and The Clean Water Fund, pins the cost of retrofitting an older truck at $20,000. Just 4 percent of the drivers in the Rutgers study said they could afford to upgrade to the new, more efficient generation of diesel trucks, so pollution continues to be a problem at the ports.

Studies have shown a connection between the high levels of the tiny particles emitted by burning diesel fuel and serious medical conditions such as asthma, cancer and heart disease.

“It’s very dirty — it’s soot, it’s light absorbing,” Goldsmith explains. “It has a lot of impact in terms of creating more heat, especially in urban areas.”

Those impacted by the soot not only include residents who live in areas with heavy truck traffic, like much of western and southern Jersey City, but the drivers themselves.

“There are times I get home and I can’t breathe. I’m breathing through my nose,” Ralph says. “It’s from all this black smoke.”

Many drivers suffer from ailments ranging from asthma to cancer, according to Christina Montorio, a port representative with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. But, due to the widespread lack of health care among them, these problems often go undiagnosed.

The Teamsters and the New Jersey Environmental Federation are among several organizations that make up the Coalition for Healthy Ports, which is calling for reforms. But those changes — including truck upgrades — will clearly cost money, leaving the question of who will foot the bill.

“We wouldn’t be able to do that with the money that we’re making in this industry,” Ralph says.

Learning from California

For the coalition and others, the answer doesn’t lie in forcing independent truckers to shoulder the cost of cleaning up the industry, but in pushing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to follow the lead of the Port of Los Angeles.

There, the Los Angeles Harbor Commission has set immediate and future requirements for trucks servicing the port. All pre-1989 trucks were banned from entering the port when the program took effect in October 2008, all 1989 to 1993 trucks and 1994 to 2003 trucks that had not been retrofitted will be banned by the start of 2010, and all trucks that did not meet 2008 Federal Clean Truck Emissions Standards will be banned by 2012.

To help pay for the new, cleaner trucks, the port imposed a $35 fee on each container entering or leaving its facilities; the program includes grants of up to 80 percent of the purchase price of new trucks as well as low-cost lease options.

Trucking firms would have to secure a five-year “concession,” which is effectively a permit to operate at the port and adhere to several regulations. One of the more controversial stipulations mandates that companies have their shipments handled by employee drivers within five years. Another requirement for a firm to operate at the port is using a hiring program that gives preferential treatment to local drivers and those with previous service at the ports. The plan also calls for an application fee and an annual fee per truck.

Much like the Port of Los Angeles has, The Port Authority has to “drive the policy engine” when it comes to its own facilities, says Goldsmith, who is chair of the Coalition for Healthy Ports. Montorio agrees, saying the agency has to use a variety of incentives, directives and possibly fees to level the playing field for companies to invest in new trucks.

However, several elements of the Los Angeles plan are tied up in litigation after the American Trucking Association filed suit against clean port plans there and in neighboring Long Beach.

“This litigation is about removing unconstitutional and illegal red tape, and about protecting the rights of the owners of small businesses that the Port of Los Angeles has trampled,” Boyce said in a statement earlier this year. He said the lawsuit wasn’t intended to target public health or safety and security aspects of the plans, but that requiring drivers to be trucking company employees was unfair and would allow unions to organize them.

In April, a U.S. District Court judge in California halted several of the requirements the ports wanted to impose, including the employee mandate and concessions fees, pending the outcome of a trial on the association’s lawsuit scheduled to start in December. The ban on certain diesel trucks and the collection of container fees was not affected.

Although parts of its plan are on ice for the time being, the Port of Los Angeles has claimed some successes. Pollution at the port complex was reduced by 23 percent during the first six months of the program. Boyce argues that the progress on air quality — achieved without the employee mandate — undercuts the arguments of the environmental and labor groups.

“The process of cleaning up the air is ahead of schedule without this brutal action to steal an entire sector of the economy’s livelihood,” Boyce says. “What has happened in Long Beach and Los Angeles has shown that the owner operators are able to buy their own trucks.”

But the success in that arena has been heavily subsidized (to a tune of more than $100 million so far) by the ports, according to Port of Los Angeles senior communications director Arley Baker.

“The only way to really ensure that we are not going to face this same problem a decade from now — when today’s new trucks need to be replaced — is to have a system that places the responsibility of the truck maintenance and operation on the asset-based motor carrier versus the individual, paid-by-the-load owner-operator,” Baker says.

Baker adds: “Licensed motor carriers with employee drivers are in the best position to run an efficient fleet, have control and quality assurance over the person behind the wheel of the rig, and properly maintain that rig to get the best use out of it for the longest amount of time.”

The Port Authority

“We have no intention of doing something similar here,” Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman says when asked about the Los Angeles program.

He says the agency is moving ahead with other measures instead. The Port Authority recently received two grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency totaling $9.8 million and a $1.8 million grant from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority to implement parts of a broader clean air plan.

One aspect of the plan will target the oldest trucks that service the ports. Pre-1994 trucks could be replaced through a $28 million program, including a $7 million EPA grant and a $21 million incentive fund from the Port Authority. Coleman said truckers will be eligible for 25 percent of the cost of a new vehicle using the grant money, while low-interest loans available from the Port Authority can cover the balance.

Sixteen percent of the trucks that frequent the ports were built before 1994, and they contribute 33 percent of the fine particulate matter and 10 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions each year, according to the Port Authority. However, it remains to be seen what the Port Authority will do about vehicles built after 1994 that are still dirtier than newer models.

“We have a whole program,” Coleman says. “This is just one piece of that program and we’ll take a look at that as well.”

The recent funding will assist other environmental efforts, including the installation of a shore power system at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal to reduce emissions from berthed cruise ships and the retrofitting of two diesel switcher locomotive engines.

“There’s much more involved than just the trucks,” Coleman says.

Coleman says Port Authority has no opinion on the condition of port truckers, and whether its facilities are better served by independent contractors or truckers who are full fledged employees.

Meanwhile, Goldsmith calls the Port Authority’s efforts “a first step,” but adds that “now the port must look at fixing the broken system on the whole to permanently rid our roads of dirty diesel trucks and sustain clean-up efforts in the long term.”

And for Ralph and the coalition, there’s no separating clean air efforts from improving what they argue are the unfair working conditions of many port truckers.

“I believe that would be the only way to correct the situation,” Ralph says.

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