![]() No regulation will put more pressure on companies like Hight than California’s Advanced Clean Fleets Rule. “If you’d told me five years ago that batteries were going to haul freight, I’d have said no way … Now, manufacturers have started to deliver.” Mike Roeth of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency. “I don’t want to be in a position where the mandates are on top of me and it’s too late.” He knew some of the trucks Hight used would need to be retired, and moved quickly to find zero-emission replacements. ![]() “It was a wake up call,” Rudy Díaz, Hight’s CEO, said of California’s drayage goal. Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Oregon also are moving to decarbonize drayage. It wants to make all trucks used for drayage zero-emissions within 12 years, and medium and heavy-duty vehicles of all kinds zero-emission “where feasible” by 2045. While the Biden administration hopes to see zero-emission trucks make up 30 percent of big rig sales by 2030, California has more ambitious plans. But as the state’s effort to electrify the sector begins, some fear it is moving too quickly and could drive small operators out of business. Hight is one of about a dozen fleets in California that have added electric trucks, a number that will grow as companies rush to comply with looming zero-emissions mandates. Statewide, medium and heavy-duty vehicles account for one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions. No state has moved more aggressively to decarbonize drayage than California, where 33,500 trucks trundle in and out of ports and rail yards. They will mostly haul containers between Hight’s warehouse and the port, a route that cuts through a cluster of communities that have some of the dirtiest air and highest rates of asthma in the country.Ī shipping container is lowered onto an electric truck at the Port of Long Beach. In January, Hight added four battery-electric trucks to its 50-vehicle fleet. López drives for Hight Logistics, a family-owned company that moves cargo in and out of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. “There’s usually nothing new with the routine we have as truckers,” he said.īut on this day, there was something new: He was driving an electric truck. ![]() In the eight years he’s been driving trucks, it was a process López had done thousands of times. He was headed to the Port of Long Beach, just south of Los Angeles, to retrieve a shipping container and haul it to a warehouse. Subscribe to its newsletter here.īefore the sun rose on a cold January morning, Alex López navigated an 18-wheeler through busy traffic on the 710 freeway. This story was co-published with KCET, part of the donor-supported community institution, the Public Media Group of Southern California. ![]()
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