A Possible Unintended Consequence Of CARB '14 Regs....

The ships are a very complex issue. Legally the US can not tell a foreign ship that it can not burn bunker. Bunker is the waste from the refineries. The oil industry does not want the ships to stop burning bunker. If the ships stop burning bunker each refinery would have to deal with a large quantity of hazardous wast in the form of bunker. Bunker is basically the waste from the refinery mixed with used motor oil. The ships can burn diesel but there is not enough diesel produced to feed the shipping industry. The tugs used today are maneuvering tugs and do not have the horsepower to move a dead ship, the exception is the bulk LPG terminals. It would have taken a decade or more to produce enough tugs to cover just the California ports. The ships have added diesel generators to reduce there port emissions.

 

It took a decade for this scheme to be enacted as it is. It would have had a true impact on air quality, far more than the skewed results CA estimated from trucks in the ports. Like I said before, this scheme had very little to do with emissions or air quality, and everything to do with labor.

 

Yea me too. Im already seeing trucks leaving the biz. It is nice to have more loads to choose from. I kinda of knew 2013 was gonna be the worst year though. You have a situation here where some truckers have already upgraded to compliant trucks or bought filters and charging accordingly competing with truckers who are running hard for the last year to either to cash out or save for the upgrade and still being cheap about it.

 

I'm talking about the truck scheme, not CARB. I remember watching The Price is Right as a kid and hearing this new car comes with CA emmisions.

 

LOL, yeah. When you go to the DMV in Florida to reg your truck, they will tell you that CA has a flag saying DO NOT ADD CA to this cab card.

CA will not issue 3 day trip permits to non compliant trucks.

This is all as simple as a basic computer program that even a government employee can create in a week.

Even if you could get away with getting a three day trip permit, you would have to report those miles to IFTA, at that point you are admitting that you entered the state illegally.

 

I drove through Pasadena everyday in the 90's. I drive there once a month now. Trust me, there is a day and night difference. I remember times when I could not see the next offramp in front of me, it was a rare treat to see the mountains 5 miles to the north of the 210 freeway. Today both of those are expected.

 

California is shooting themselves in the foot. Simply because you think I am going to spend 150 grand+ on a new truck so I can enter their state? Not hardly.

When you look at what is produced in California, you have some aerospace manufacturing, you have a lot of agriculture, a couple of car companies, and some other manufacturing industry.

The bulk of the freight I have ever brought out of California has come out of the ports. Anyone who has been to the port years back knows that there were not a lot of new trucks running around there, in fact there was a lot of old junk.

What I suspect is going to happen once all this nonsense comes to pass is that all of the sudden the ports are going to slow down, freight is going to back up on the docks, and either they will have to start letting old trucks back in, or the ports are going to lose traffic.

On that note in Corpus Christi Texas right now they are building a brand spankin new container terminal there, and Texas is building all kinds of brand new 4 lane highways and a couple of interstates to get from there to the border of their state in several directions.

What does this mean, what is going to start as a trickle is pretty soon going to mean there is a ton of container traffic coming out of Texas headed north and east, and california is going to be losing business in a big way.

This is the plan for the new terminal: http://www.portofcorpuschristi.com/images/pccpdfs/La Quinta Site Plan 1.3.11 Rodman[1].pdf

If you look at it you can see there is a ton of room for expansion, as well other ports in Texas are working on expanding. Thus by playing their games California is going to see Texas get richer.

Keep in mind right now what is spurring a lot of this on is the expansion project on the Panama canal which is making it possible for larger ships to pass. When these things come to fruition, I think we are going to see loads out of California start to slow down substantially.

As well I think we will see a lot of the shipping traffic pushed further north to Portland and Seattle.

What will happen is people who have newer trucks will see a bump in rates to and from California for a while, but then I think things will taper off again as the traffic redirects, because quite frankly freight is going to take the path of least resistance.

 

How do you explain the 3.5 Billion dollar port expansion at Long Beach?