ATA wins round in SoCal port truck bout

ATA wins round in SoCal port truck bout    A federal judge ruled Monday that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach cannot force drayage companies to hire employee drivers as part of a program to reduce pollution from trucks operating in the ports.
   U.S. District Court Judge Christina A. Snyder made the preliminarily ruling in a hearing Monday, and it is major boost to the American Trucking Association, which sought an injunction to halt the ports' truck concession requirements as part of their wider clean air plan.
   Snyder also rebuffed the ports' efforts to require that trucking firms find off-street parking, as well as other provisions like providing drivers with health insurance opportunities and the collection of fees from registered trucks to offset administrative costs for the program.
   Her decision fell in line with a March decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit, which ruled that certain provisions in the ports' clean truck program didn't jibe with interstate commerce laws.
   Snyder will issue a final ruling later this week and the case is expected to go to trial in six to eight months.
   Until then, the ports' concession program — a plan intended to force the 16,000-strong trucking fleet that hauls thousands of containers in and out of the two ports each day to significantly cut air emissions — will be scaled back. Snyder's decision didn't stop the program outright, it merely preserved the aspects that related to motor carrier safety. And requiring drivers to be employees rather than independent owner-operators, as most in Southern California are, did not meet that benchmark, she said.
   'Based on the holding of the Ninth Circuit, and because it appears this provision is addressed to concerns unrelated to motor vehicle safety, the court finds that ATA is likely to succeed on the merits in showing that the provisions of the (ports' concession) agreement dealing with the independent operator phase-out are preempted under the (Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act) and do not fall within the scope of the safety exception,' Snyder's said in her tentative decision Monday.
   The motor carrier concession plan, which went into effect in October, had required that trucking companies phase out independent operators over a period of five years, among other mandates. ' Eric Johnson