Rolling along: trucks serve well as the only way to get consumer goods to point of sale.

TWO VIEWS

Would Los Angeles be better served if fewer trucks were on the road? These two opinion pieces address that question.

TRUCKING is the most essential mode of the goods movement transportation chain. Our transportation partners, the railroads and steamship lines, provide essentially intermediate services that are dependent on trucks for completion. Every goods movement trip begins and ends with a truck, making rail and vessel movement an option for only a portion of the trip.

The other transportation modes are optional because of their inability to deliver goods to end users. Trains and ships cannot pull up to grocery stores to unload fruit or drive into a construction site to deliver dirt or lumber. This agility and capability to provide just-in-time deliveries is responsible for trucks' dominant market share in goods movement.

Investment is needed to expand the capacity of the goods-movement infrastructure, but only trucks finance needed improvements on an ongoing basis through fuel taxes and weight fees. A single big rig pays in excess of $10,000 annually to state and federal highway accounts.

Infrastructure improvements for rail and steamship modes carry with them long-term risks. Once Wain tracks are laid and river channels dredged, routes are final. But planning cannot always anticipate the future. The Alameda Corridor is a good example. Freight moving in a different direction than planned is causing unanticipated traffic on the I-10 and 60 Freeways. The cost of moving train tracks is astronomical whereas trucks can take a new route and adjust to changed freight patterns.

Imports will not continue to experience double-digit growth. As developing countries develop labor laws and adopt environmental standards, their ability to make cheap goods will diminish. What will happen to steamship traffic and the infrastructure built to support them when the cost of importing goods approaches the cost of manufacturing them in the United States?

The environmental story for trucks changed this year. California has adopted a special fuel formula that the rest of the nation will follow in October. Trucks are required to fuel with ultralow sulfur diesel fuel that reduces sulfur from 500 parts per million (ppm) federally to 15 ppm. The new truck engine standard for 2007 requires a 90 percent reduction in emissions.

The California Trucking Association not only supported the new clean diesel and engine standards but also advocated nationally to secure their implementation because 1.8 million trucks travel into California from other states while only 400,000 tracks are domiciled here.

CTA also supports increases in federal and state fuel taxes to pay for roads. We are glad to pay our fair share.

When evaluating the environmental performance of any mode of transportation, the trip must be considered from beginning to end to end. The trip always starts with a truck and when a train or ship is involved, it is usually a very old, high-polluting truck going into a port or rail yards. When the rail or marine leg of a trip ends, the cargo is typically transferred to a very old truck. Because of congestion, large numbers of older trucks congregate at facilities such as ports or rail heads and idle for hours while waiting to load.

When a truck makes the entire land trip, the truck is newer and cleaner and its emissions are no longer concentrated but are dispersed over the route. Communities do not have to listen to idling trains or hear their klaxons as they pass by. Trucks don't congregate at truck facilities; they leave the site to move goods around the highways.

Trucking delivers a quality of life that trains and ships cannot approach. Without tracks, you couldn't eat at a restaurant, buy food at a grocery store or build a house. We run the cleanest engines that have advanced noise control. Trucking provides communities high paying wages and employs one out of 12 Californians. Trains and ships are partners, but the state needs its trucks.

Stephanie Williams is senior vice president of the California Trucking Association, the professional organization for the state's trucking industry.