The Los Angeles Times ran an article earlier this week about the program instituted by the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California “launched an ambitious plan to replace 16,800 older [heavy truck] rigs by 2012 with the nation’s lowest-emissions fleet.
The piece written by reporter Ronald D. White focuses on one independent driver who has leased a new truck burning Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to generate nearly all of its power.
The truck is so much cleaner than the older trucks burning imported diesel that the driver, Heriberto S. Perez Jr., “at first had to deal with suspicion from his wife when he was no longer coming home smelling like a tailpipe. “She wanted to know where I had been,” Perez said. “She figured I wasn’t going to work.”
Like trash and recycling trucks running on diesel, the trucks moving containers into, out of, and around America’s major port facilities spend a lot of time idling giving older trucks “that dull primer paint-like finish and faded chrome look typical of older port trucks suffering from long exposure to diesel exhaust and salty air.”
The Ports are using a synchronized system of loans, grants and preferences to move its truck fleet from imported diesel to domestic natural gas. About half the trucks have made the switch.
To read the entire report, click HERE.
— The Pickens Team