California EV Mandate: 14,000 Trucks With Limited Chargers At Ports: Matt Schrap

As of this date, we will expect no more diesel vehicles to be able to operate. Internal combustion engines, actually, which includes natural gas, propane, gasoline. The state has its marching orders relative to protecting public health and also decreasing greenhouse gas. You have to have zero-emission trucks. That's where the priorities are. The trucks right now are pushing half a million dollars for a battery electric vehicle. The truck, while it has its challenges relative to cost, overall range, the total weight of the vehicle, the time it takes to fuel it, the truck is really not the hardest part of the equation. My guest today is Matt Schrapp, CEO of Harbor Trucking Association, who represents trucking companies that operate at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Today, he'll share his insights on what it takes for trucking companies to comply with the zero-emission mandates at the ports. And its impacts on us Californians. How many of these stations are needed to get something like this going? They would need 157,000 chargers. And the timelines that the state is trying to implement don't line up with reality. In the ports of LA and Long Beach alone, you have 14,000 trucks that are pretty much regularly doing business down there. Right now, online, there's probably about 40 to 50 chargers that are available. And there's really only two that are actually public. Are they thinking, should I just leave, go somewhere else and take my fleet? It's already happening. I'm Siamak Waremi. Welcome to California Insider. Matt, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you. It's great to be here. We want to talk to you about a very important topic that is something that's happening at the ports of California. There's some new regulations for truckers. Can you tell us what's going on? Absolutely. In California, the port gateways, maritime port gateways, as well as intermodal rail yards, there's standards that the California Air Resources Board, which is an administrative agency within the executive branch of the California state government, has passed laws that governs the emissions that can come from these trucks that service ports and intermodal rail yards in California. So when we think of ports, we think of containerized goods movement, break bulk cargo, anything that's brought off of a ship onto a wharf or a port, and then the truck that goes and picks it up after that. So what the state has done is that they've passed a suite of rules that impacts the ability of dreyage operators, as we call them. Dreyage is the terminology we use. It's those big trucks, right? Right. The trucks with the containers and the chassis that we all see every day that all of our stuff is in, right? Which sometimes we forget that, but we just get the stuff at our door or in the store. You get the stuff and you're happy that it's there. And over the years, the state of California has identified diesel particulate matter as a toxic air contaminant. So back in 1998, they listed this diesel particulate matter as toxic and effectively were given the ability to pass regulatory policy to limit the amount of diesel particulate matter that would be emitted from engines, both on the manufacturing side and in the end user side. And the issue became was the disproportionate health effects that people were experiencing, especially in and around goods movement corridors. And so they've passed these laws going back almost 30 years now on the private, on-road, heavy-duty trucking fleet. And one of those components is the dreyage sector. The dreyage sector, because you have ingress and egress from these facilities, is seemingly more easily controlled than a truck that's just driving on the highways. And so they've passed laws that effectively say you need to have a particular model year engine to do service at California ports and intermodal rail yards. And this has been going on, I believe, the initial rule for dreyage trucks was passed in 2006. And just recently, they've passed another rule and adopted it back in April that actually governs further from emissions from dreyage vehicles, saying that if you want to enter in a truck into dreyage service, it would need to be zero emissions. This is the so-called advanced clean fleets rule. And while there's been a delay right now with enforcement, the rule has been being developed for close to two and a half years now, perhaps even longer, that basically said, as of this date, we will expect no more diesel vehicles to be able to operate. Internal combustion engines, actually, which includes natural gas, propane, gasoline, anything that's not zero emissions, which in California is a battery electric drivetrain or a hydrogen fuel cell drivetrain. So far, those are the only two real zero emissions certified pathways that are available to heavy duty equipment owners to comply with the advanced clean fleet rule standards. So as of this date, there's going to be no more older kind of trucks in the new ones have to be electric. The new ones have to be electric. But we are in an administrative hold right now on the rule. The state of California has authority bestowed upon them by the federal government through the Clean Air Act to create standards that effectively apply to all new motor vehicles sold in the state of California. It's the waiver process. Perhaps some folks are familiar with this. They need waivers for both light duty vehicles, passenger cars that all of us drive, and the heavy duty vehicles, which could be over 10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating. In fact, even down to 8,500 pounds. So you think of the package delivery vans that we see every day up through all the way through those big semi class eight heavy duty tractor trailer, 18 wheeler, whatever we want to call it. What I like to call it is, you know, the backbone of our economy. But those trucks are all subject to these California standards that the state goes to the federal government to get clearance to enforce. What's happened on the advanced clean fleets rule is because they are under the impression they possibly need a waiver to enforce the standards requiring that zero mentioned entry is as of one one twenty four. Because they feel that they might need this waiver, they can't enforce the rule. So any vehicle that was added in after the beginning of the year that is not zero emissions could potentially be subject to removal from dredge service if the waiver is issued, if and when the waiver is issued. Are the trucks available for electric trucks? We have heard from some people, some companies that try to invest in electric trucks and they were not even able to get them. You can. They're out there. And I'll tell you, it's you know, you talk to the OEMs and the commercial truck dealers. Their message is basically if someone orders the truck, then we can build it. Now, depending on the original equipment manufacturer, what we call an OEM, they have varying timelines for deployment of this equipment. Some may take a year to build on the assembly line and finally deliver from when you place the order. Some are in a matter of months. So the truck is really not the hardest part of the equation. Electric vehicles have been around for a long time. Their commercial deployment is starting to get more legs under it at this point in time. The truck, while it has its challenges relative to cost, overall range, the total weight of the vehicle, the time it takes to fuel it, the truck's really not the hardest part, save those other issues. It's the infrastructure and the fueling capabilities that are available out there to folks who would want to deploy this equipment. There's just not a lot of places to fuel them. So there's no charging station. There's not enough charging stations. Let's put it that way. They're building out. It just takes time. It takes years, potentially, to have a new substation built. It really depends on how much energy you need to fuel your fleet and then where you're located. Because if there's no infrastructure that's available, and I'm talking the distribution and transmission infrastructure on the utility side, to get that power to that location, they have to build it. And that can take years, I said. I've heard some estimates of building a new substation could take upwards of 10 years before they can actually get it online. Wow. So how many of these stations are needed to get something like this going? The California Energy Commission estimated that they would need 157,000 chargers for medium and heavy-duty trucks deployed by 2030. That means that if we do the math, we're talking over 400 chargers that need to be installed each week to meet that goal that they're looking at in 2030. And the fact of the matter is that we just have not reached that threshold at this point in time. You have a couple different pathways. You have what we would call behind-the-fence infrastructure, where a private landowner, a trucking company, or a logistics firm would actually go and take their property and build out charging infrastructure or fueling infrastructure. That would be there for their own private use. Same restrictions apply. You have the limitations on the utility themselves for delivering the power, and then you have permitting agencies or fire marshals on the local level that also have questions about how this is going to function. So you still have extended timelines to get this equipment deployed. So you have the private side, the behind-the-fence, and then you have opportunity charging, which is basically how we all fuel our cars now, is by pulling up to the gas station and filling up in, you know, five, ten minutes. For heavy-duty trucks, we're talking, you know, hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel, but it still only takes about 15 or 20 minutes to fuel. If we wanted to go pull up to a public-facing charging depot, it would take potentially over an hour, depending on the total output of that charging pedestal itself, to get the battery back to a state of charge that could get you back to your home base, potentially. So while there's private companies that are investing in developing their own behind-the-fence infrastructure, where we're lacking is on the public-facing side. In the Ports of LA and Long Beach alone, right now online, there's probably about, I would say, less than 40 to 50 chargers that are available in the Ports of LA and Long Beach, and they aren't... 40 to 50 individual chargers. Individual chargers, that's correct. And they aren't, and there's really only two that are actually public, which you can pull up and fuel at. This is something that the Port of Long Beach did themselves. They expended the money. They bought the chargers. They've been very forthcoming in their goals in reaching a zero-emission transportation fleet. And they're basically putting their money where their mouth is. But there's only two of those chargers. Then you have other private companies that are setting up concepts where it's basically you make a reservation to go and charge. So you need to have an agreement up front with them to go use the equipment. You don't have the ability to drive up and just start charging. And the other chargers, while there's a few hundred that are slated to come online here within the next 12 to 14 months, that's not enough to fuel the 14,000 trucks that are doing business regularly at the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach. So 14,000 trucks are going in. We're going to go electric. Hopefully, this is the goal, to actually make them all electric. But then we only have two charging. Well, right now, yeah, exactly. And it's not just battery electric. There is the hydrogen fuel cell pathway. And there's really no heavy-duty hydrogen fueling to speak of that's available right now. It's coming online. The state of California has gotten grants to build out this hydrogen hub to really use the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach as an example. And for other port gateways and how they can utilize advanced technology and lower carbon intensity or zero emission fuel sources that would then be available to those individual trucking firms to service the ports. So you have 14,000 trucks that are pretty much regularly doing business down there. On any day, we're talking 6,000 to 7,000 trucks that are working there. Individual vehicles on any given day in the port complex of L.A. and Long Beach. That's out of 21,000 that are cleared to do business there. So right now, there's less than 50 chargers. And really, only two of them are publicly accessible to the point where you can just pull up and start fueling. And the port has been trying to do this. Like, it's not that they haven't. They have, absolutely. I will say Long Beach has been, again, very, I think, proactive in wanting to try to address this issue. They understand the challenges. There is no shortage of challenges, clearly. And for my member companies at the Harbor Trucking Association, where their concern comes in is the timelines that the state of California wanted to implement and whether or not the infrastructure was actually going to be online fast enough in order to fuel them. These trucks, unfortunately, depending on what you're hauling and where you're hauling, you might not get more than 150 to 200 miles of total range out of your vehicle. And so doing a round trip out to the Inland Empire, which is about 60 or 70 miles, by the time you're coming back to the port facility, you could be close to zero battery availability to drive your vehicle. So you need to go charge somewhere. You go charge somewhere, even at the chargers that are available at Long Beach, if you want to fuel up because of the kilowatt hour output and the amount of energy the truck itself can take at one time, you could be there for literally well over an hour just to get to a point where you'll have enough juice, so to speak, to get back to your point of origin. Do you think this will work? Because from the numbers you're telling me, it doesn't add up. I have faith in human ingenuity that eventually we'll get to a place where the batteries are lighter. They are not sourced with materials that are from areas of this world that are experiencing further environmental degradation from mining practices or refining practices that will get there eventually. I feel like the utilities are being very proactive and trying to build out as much infrastructure as they can. The local distribution isn't necessarily the largest hurdle. It's the longer transmission. We lose a lot of energy in transmission. So I feel like we can get to a place where we're much more well-equipped to have a fleet that is zero emissions, be it battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell. We're just not there right now. And the timelines that the state is trying to implement don't line up with reality in many instances. They've created pathways within the rule construct that would allow a fleet, if they run into construction delays or utility deployment delays, that they would get more time on the oldest trucks that they have in their fleet. So really, we're not doing anything but extending the life of older vehicles to continue to run while they're trying to build out this infrastructure. So it's, you know, unfortunately, hope is not a strategy, right? But we're in this place where we're all hoping that there's going to be enough energy online once the rule comes back into effect, once the waiver is issued, once they're able to start enforcing it. Ideally, we'll see a better rule resulting from this stay of enforcement and potential negotiation opportunities between the trucking industry and the state. So me personally, I'm sure that we will get there eventually. It's just right now, it's difficult to see the light through the forest, right? And we're wondering if that light is a train coming at us at the end of the tunnel, right? Before we continue, we would like to thank Shen Yun for sponsoring this channel. I lived in China for two years and experienced two different Chinas. One is the China we know now, unfortunately, with communism. And the other is ancient Chinese culture with 5,000 years of history, strong values, ethics, and morality that has been lost. Shen Yun Performing Arts is reviving this 5,000 years of Chinese traditional culture. It takes you back in time to magical world of ancient China with a unique blend of brilliant dancing, beautiful costumes, and legends coming to life. Go to Shenyun.com to find out the schedule and theater information. It's a lifetime experience you don't want to miss. It's so inspiring. It makes me want to go dance. Breathtaking. I was very impressed. I'm taking my program and I'm going to mention it on the news because I think it's a great performance and people should see it. What I loved about the show was the authenticity of it. It was taking me on a journey. Exceptional. The technique involved that. The thousands of hours of training. People just float. Everything was exact and then they worked to the exact moment and it was beautiful. You go away feeling with a smile in your heart from it. Have to come. Life changing. Make sure you see it. Make sure you see it. Don't wait. Get your tickets now. Based on what you're saying, the trucking companies are mandated to go zero emission, but there's no infrastructure. I don't know if anybody's planning for this infrastructure. What are your thoughts on that? There is planning happening. As I mentioned, you have the behind the fence where you have a private company that wants to develop their own infrastructure. This is happening right now. But the public one? The public one is where it's drawing a little behind. Which is much more needed, right? Or is it different for a trucking industry? It's much more needed, to be honest. And even the California Resources Board, in what they call their initial statement of reasons, the ISOR, which is a hilarious acronym for this study. It's called ISOR. ISOR, right, exactly. They've said in that document that up to 75% of drainage moves would need to be publicly fueled. Which means that potentially three quarters of all of the movement that happens in every port gateway and intermodal rail yard in California, three quarters of them would need to rely on some publicly available charging infrastructure. You have the other phenomenon where if I'm at a facility that I don't own, that I'm leasing from a landlord, if I want to try to go and put behind the fence infrastructure at my facility that I'm leasing, I have to go to the landlord to convince them to give me permission to install heavy duty charging equipment. And there's reluctance amongst landlords to allow their tenants to do this. Because you're tearing up a parking lot, you're putting large chargers in, you're removing available space for additional construction of structures or parking or tennis courts, whatever they're looking to build, the landlords become reluctant. Because they don't want to necessarily give up the opportunity that they might have with that piece of property by allowing somebody to go in and install this heavy duty charging infrastructure. Now, what are the impact of all of this in California from your perspective? You've been involved with this association, you're kind of talking to state leaders, you're talking to the truckers and the companies you represent. What do you think is the impact of all this at the port? We are envisioning higher costs of doing business. There was a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal that spoke specifically to a fleet that's operating heavy duty zero mission battery electric trucks right now. And just on one day, they were losing, I believe it was $370 per day for that individual truck because of labor costs. Because they have to have their driver go and take the vehicle to be charged when they're not moving goods elsewhere. The trucks right now are pushing half a million dollars for a battery electric vehicle. You can get a comparable diesel truck that doesn't have the weight issues, doesn't have the range issues, doesn't have the fueling issues for about $170,000. While that's expensive, it's not half a million dollars. That's how much these trucks cost out the door once you put sales tax and federal excise tax on top of them. So if we're talking about what I normally do business with a brand new diesel that costs $170,000, now I'm potentially two and a half times the cost of capital outlay for that vehicle in the first place. So that should translate into higher cost of doing business. And if we start increasing the costs here at these gateways, shippers have the ability to go to other gateways where they're going to save money. Cargo is like water. It's going to take the path of least resistance. And one of the concerns that these shippers have is cost. If it's too expensive to come through these gateways, they're going to find another gateway to use. So they will go to another state? Is that what you're thinking? That's correct. They will go to another state. The eastern seaboard states such as Virginia, Norfolk, the Port of Norfolk, the Port of Charleston, the Port of Savannah, even Miami, New York, New Jersey. They have been making massive investments, especially some of the operating ports in some of those southeastern states, have been making massive investments in their port infrastructure, in transloading and warehousing that's near the port in order to attract cargo. And we saw a tremendous amount of diversion during the uncertainty surrounding the ILWU, which is the International Longshore Warehouse Union contract that was just ratified this past year, that there was concern among shippers. When the port was struggling? Right. I mean, there's lots of events that have happened over the past 10 years that kind of would give the perception that the ports are struggling necessarily. But we're still handling billions of dollars in cargo, thousands of containers, hundreds of thousands of containers. In 2021, the Ports of LA and Long Beach moved 20 million 20-foot equivalent unit containers. That's more than any other port gateway in the United States could even imagine moving. We have a tremendous amount of infrastructure, including on dock rail, transloading and warehousing facilities. We like to say, you know, that this is America's port here locally. But if a shipper is looking at cost comparisons, even though it might take more time to go through the Panama Canal, which is going through its own challenges right now because of a drought, if they have the ability to utilize that instead of going from Asia or the other manufacturing hubs in India or Vietnam or in China to bring that cargo through the Panama Canal to one of the eastern seaboard states and then train or truck that cargo back into the interior, they're going to do that. And we saw that on display during the uncertainty surrounding the ILWU contract, because they were afraid of some type of disruption might get their cargo either stuck at anchor or stuck on dock where they wouldn't be able to pick it up. So clearly, shippers have the ability to utilize these other gateways. And depending on the kind of stresses that they might experience in particular gateways, such as those in California, they could be making decisions to move their cargo elsewhere. And with cargo goes jobs. The estimate is there's four jobs that can be directly correlated with one container movement in Southern California. Four jobs with one container movement. So this port has a huge impact for us in terms of jobs. And you think some of that business will get shifted to other places? It's very possible. This is just the reality that we live in in the globalized trade network. We're talking, you know, massive container ships that can haul 20,000 containers. I'm sure we've seen them in November of 2021 during the supply chain crisis after the post pandemic, where folks were just ordering things like crazy. Inventories were depleted. Shippers responded by almost over ordering and the gateway couldn't handle necessarily all of that container traffic that was coming through. So we had 109 ships at anchor in November of 2021, which is unheard of. There are zero ships at anchor right now, right? But everyone remembers the images of seeing those ships floating around out there, waiting for their time to come up to be serviced at a marine terminal. And it was an interesting phenomenon because you had shippers and shipping companies that were contracting charter vessels that were relatively small in comparison to some of the other larger vessels that the ports of LA and Long Beach normally service, that they would show up here without a reservation at a marine terminal. They literally would just show up with thousands of containers and hope that they'd be able to be squeezed in somewhere. You had crews that were stuck out there, seafarers, merchant marines for, you know, 30, 40 days at a time waiting for a slot. And so when those type of pressures start happening, shippers see the opportunity for diversion. And so anything that can disrupt the supply chain here locally, which could be cost, could in fact force them to look at those other gateways. It's just the it's the nature of the beast. People are bailing on California and half of Californians are considering moving. It's a domino effect. What's happening? Where is the state headed? People were tricked and fooled. We're being told everything's fine. This is normal. People are making money off our problems. We love regulations in the state. We just love it. We can control how people live. The regulators, I assume that you're in touch with the people at CARB. And we are. We have and we participate in the public workshops. We're in contact with staff, staff at the Air Resources Board. It's there's tremendous individuals that work there. I have a ton of respect for them, but they have marching orders, which basically are dictated by politics, for lack of a better way to put it. And so they have to craft rules and regulatory policies in order to meet, I would say, a political agenda, as opposed to trying to implement policies that are actually sustainable and can be implemented and enforced over the long term. When they pass short sighted rules, just which amounts to them throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, you just end up in court. And that's what is ultimately deferring their goals of emissions reductions aren't being achieved because we're fighting it out in court. So we're in contact with them, our partner organization, the California Trucking Association, as well as the American Trucking Association. Absolutely. We are in contact with the state of California to try to help them understand the challenges that the trucking industry has in deployment of advanced technologies. Do you have access to, is there anybody in the state, because their role is to clean the environment and they're doing whatever they can to bring the emissions to as low as possible with their orders. But somebody needs to make a business decision here or a bigger decision that what is worth it. You know, if we lose the business at this port and a bunch of people go out of business and we lose some of these jobs, is reducing emissions to that level this fast, is it worth it? Is there anybody that you guys. Well, we're in a game of tradeoffs, right, that all of this transition is really about what we can stomach from a tradeoff perspective. And while there's departments within the state of California that are focused on business development, this is tempered against the Air Resources Board needs to protect public health. So cleaning the environment for them is also goes hand in hand with protecting public health. So it becomes a safety issue to an extent where they're trying to protect those vulnerable communities from those disproportionate impacts that I spoke about earlier from exposure to toxic air contaminants. So we've moved now in this world of tradeoffs from protecting public health into climate change and greenhouse gas reductions, which they would assert also has its own public health impacts. but they feel that because of transportation's contribution to overall statewide greenhouse gas emissions, that by curbing those emissions, we'll see also an improvement in some of the effects of climate change, perceived or otherwise. That's where the priorities are. There was a document many years ago during the development of the initial truck and bus rule, which was passed in conjunction with the drainage truck rule back in 2006, which came up 2007-2008 during the Great Recession. There was a document that basically gave trucking companies three different options for surviving the transition. You either pass it on to your customers, you suck it up and basically absorb the costs, or you go away. And those were your three choices. And those are still basically the three choices that are available to us at this point in time. If we're not able to pass on those costs, we need to absorb them. And if we're absorbing those costs, eventually you can't sustain that and you're going to go away, which then decreases the amount of capacity that's available for shippers to utilize in the first place. And good old supply and demand, less capacity equals higher prices. And how do your members, you're in touch with your members on a regular basis, right? Absolutely, every day. How do you guys, how do they, what do they think of all this? What do they feel? We, what's challenging is, is that many made massive investments ahead of the 1-1-24 date to put brand new internal combustion engines into their fleet so they would receive that legacy useful life protection. Or until 2035, where the state has said every dreyage truck in the country, or excuse me, in the state, sometimes I feel like California is its own country. It is like one. Yeah, it can be, and it acts like it. And, you know, they kind of set the tone that every truck in 2035 would need to be zero emissions. So you have that back end date of 2035, but in the interim, you'd be able to operate a truck until it reaches this useful life. And so folks made massive investments to put equipment into the system so they would have some breathing room to get through this transition, to allow the technology to evolve, to get cheaper, to allow that infrastructure to come online. Of course, there is the caveat that their resources board has said is that any vehicle that's entered in after 1-1-24 potentially could be removed from service once they have the waiver issued. So we took the California Resources Board at their word during the development of the rule that they didn't necessarily need a waiver from the federal government. And then come in November of 2023, all of a sudden they say, OK, well, we're going to apply for a waiver now. And that effectively is what has said and given them the ability to stay enforcement of the rule because they don't have the waiver. And so my members are a little frustrated, but also looking at this as an opportunity to hopefully get the state to sit down and craft a better pathway towards achieving the goals that they're trying to get to. So there's a lot of there's a tremendous amount of concern on on every angle. So is this is this uncertainty to some of some of your members? Are they thinking, should I just leave to go somewhere else and take my fleet? It's already happening. I have companies that have either just handed in the keys, so to speak, or moved to other states or just stopped operating in California altogether. And frankly, this mentality of the state of California is like, well, there's going to be 10 other people behind you to come and take advantage of this marketplace. Because, again, California being the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world and having a massive amount of cargo that's being moved. Not only the imported goods that we're bringing in from other countries to keep Americans, you know, in the lifestyles they become accustomed to. But we're also talking about agricultural exports out of the Central Valley, nuts and citrus, things that are feeding the world essentially. So the mentality, again, of the state is like, well, if you leave, someone else is going to come and replace you. Is that happening? We'll see. Right now, not necessarily. We've been in a sort of a freight recession, for lack of a better way to put it, over this past about, you know, about 10 months or so. And so at that time, with the state of enforcement, there will be the ability to add additional capacity, internal combustion capacity. And if the standards for someone who would like to enter into the marketplace says you have to have zero emission trucks, it's going to limit the type of company that's going to have the ability to move into California. And a lot of these companies, for better or worse, are very large, very well capitalized companies, not your kind of small mom and pop business that really this entire economy is built on the back of. You'll have these larger companies moving into it. Well, those batteries are heavy. In some vehicles, you could see a weight penalty of up to 14 to 16,000 pounds when you compare to a diesel vehicle fully fueled. So you have that translates into basically less cargo, which means you need more trucks to do the same amount of work that's being done today because there's this weight and range limitation that's out there on the technology as it exists today. And Matt, most of us, when we think about trucking, we've kind of forgotten what it means for this economy. We just get we just order things online and they show up. And then we also go to the store. We get we get we buy whatever we want. But can you tell us more about what is this industry? It's one of those industries that are kind of forgotten. It's the unsung heroes. I think that, you know, it became very apparent to America and the rest of the world during the pandemic, you know, the toilet paper phenomenon, right, where people were going and buying toilet paper like there was no tomorrow. And folks would go to stores to try to get other goods and the shelves would be empty. And that was a function of depleted inventory. That was a function of, you know, companies not being able to sustain through the pandemic. But the trucking industry never stopped rolling. And while they were, you know, hailed as heroes of the highway, they were also still the last people to have any access to the vaccine out of the, you know, out of the essential worker category. And now we're right back into this. Well, it's just trucks. You know, they're big. They're scary. Right. The people are stuck behind them in traffic. They don't appreciate that that is all of our stuff that's in those trucks. I mean, in the United States, it's almost a trillion dollar industry. That's 72 percent of goods are moved exclusively by trucks. You have communities that cannot be serviced by anything but trucks. They are an integral part of our economy. And many would say that looking at the health of the trucking industry is indicative of what our overall economic health of this country is. Unfortunately, people aren't clambering to become truck drivers. It's just not as, you know, attractive and sexy as it was back in the 70s during the Smokey and the Bandit days and, you know, the B.J. and the Bear and these other shows that, you know, really highlighted how cool trucking was. We'd love to make trucking cool again, right, to bring more folks in. And some of this advanced technology may may actually succeed in doing that. But until that happens, we're trying to help the American people understand that, you know, the person driving that truck is your neighbor. That person driving your truck is is doing a service to this economy and to your local community by hauling medicine, other essential goods that are needed to survive. Whether it's toothpaste or tube socks or whatever it is, they're being moved by truck. And so we always try to instill as industry representatives back into the consumer culture about critical the trucking industry is. And hopefully that starts to resonate more and people start appreciating it much more so instead of just like I'm stuck behind this truck in traffic. Get that thing out of the way. You know, we don't really have the emissions associated with our fleet here in California because of the aggressive rules on internal combustion engines that the state of California has perpetuated. Because they're already clean, right? Already right. They're cleaner and cleaner. And it's a it's a relative term also. Yeah. And and one of one other thing is the jobs that this trucking industry has is a good pathway for people to absolutely earn good income. Right. Absolutely. A lot of immigrants, too. Absolutely. And what's happening is, is those opportunities are slowly being eroded away by aggressive regulatory policy. And unfortunately, when you have a tremendously high cost of entry because of zero emissions equipment or because of some other labor standards, it just prevents people from being able to enter into the industry. And buy their own truck. Start with one. Exactly. The largest trucking companies in this country were started by one person and one truck. And that opportunity literally with the costs, insurance costs, fuel costs, labor costs. It's very difficult to enter into this economy, into this industry. And, you know, unfortunately, we're hoping that the tide turns a little bit because this is a great entrepreneurial opportunity for someone who wants to work in a blue collar. It's hard work. Right. You have to have a lot of good skills to have skills. This is a highly skilled position. These are, you know, these trucks, those big tractor trailers weigh 80,000 pounds and you could get into a lot of trouble. And even, you know, speaking of accidents as VMT has increased over the past 20 years, we're seeing traffic incidents and fatalities, especially decreasing by the amount of VMT that's going up. Technology has come into play with the lane mitigation and collision avoidance. You have a lot of technology that's assisting the driver. There's a lot of talk about autonomous driving vehicles. Whether or not that gets implemented here in my lifetime will remain to be seen. But it's a perfect platform for long over the road driving, which is can be very challenging and very taxing on on a driver. And so that again, because there's not this feeling that amongst your normal citizens out there about how amazing trucking is and how what great things it does for the economy. We don't have people jumping over themselves to become a truck driver necessarily. And we need to bring more young people into this industry because it's so crucial. Without trucks, nothing moves. A colleague of mine from Oweta, Todd Spencer, he likes to say that we would all be naked and hungry without trucks. Do you have any other thoughts for our audience? Well, what's what's important to remember in all of this is that no one in our industry has said that we can't get to this zero emissions utopia that is being sought by the state. No one has said that. It's about timelines. It's about how, not necessarily the why. And if we can start to remove some of these hurdles that's limiting the deployment of this technology, we'll see adoption of it. For the trucking industry, if it works, if it saves money, if it's more efficient, fleets are going to use it. There's no doubt about it. Members of the Harbor Trucking Association were some of the first fleets in the nation to deploy class eight heavy duty zero emission trucks, especially into port service. We are the pioneers in trying to make sure that this technology works and can perform the duties necessary, again, to keep the American people in the lifestyles that they've become accustomed to. And I think that this is an opportunity for everybody, including the state of California, appointed officials, elected officials, to really take a step back and say, you know, what are these tradeoffs that we're willing to accept? And ideally, they'll take a, you know, some modicum back from that that says how crucial and important, especially our port gateways are to the overall economic health of this state. And to create policies and to open dialogue and have honest dialogue about what it's really going to take to get there. And again, what tradeoffs we can stomach as a society in order to reach that point. For my member companies, they're very proud of what they do. They're proud to have a massive amount of employees. They're providing health benefits. They're helping people realize the American dream. And the more of that regulatory policy that comes into account that doesn't take into the realities of the situation of how to deploy any type of this advanced technology, we're going to see those opportunities start to erode. If we see diversion because of localized politics, because of localized emission reduction of programs, we're going to see jobs go with them. And that's the last thing that we need. And, you know, that's really what we're hoping for. But I'll tell you, it's tough because the politics out there doesn't lend itself to honest dialogue. Hopefully we see more of these honest conversations starting soon. Soon. Sooner rather than later at this point in time. Matt Schropp, CEO of Harbor Trucking Association. It was really great to have you on California Insider. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And I look forward to further dialogue, further honest dialogue. Hopefully we'll see something good soon. Absolutely. 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