by Gabriela Aoun Angueira
March 3, 2023
Introduction:
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/environmen ... ulations/(Mother Jones) Before the sun rose on a cold January morning, Alex López navigated an 18-wheeler through busy traffic on the 710 freeway. 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. In the eight years he’s been driving trucks, it was a process López had done thousands of times. “There’s usually nothing new with the routine we have as truckers,” he said.
But on this day, there was something new: He was driving an electric truck.
López drives for Hight Logistics, a family-owned company that moves cargo in and out of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. In January, Hight added four battery-electric trucks to its 50-vehicle fleet. 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.
Trucks play a foundational role in the US economy. Forty million of them roam the nation, carrying nearly three quarters of its freight. They generate 23 percent of the country’s vehicular greenhouse gas emissions and 32 percent of its nitrogen oxides, or NOx, a main contributor to air pollution. Going electric would significantly cut those emissions and nearly eliminate the NOx.
As the country begins to decarbonize its trucking fleet, drayage trucks—which transport cargo containers from ports and rail yards to distribution centers—provide a logical place to start. They run short routes that require less battery range, and operate out of centralized locations where they could charge. Electrifying them would have a transformational impact on the frontline communities near drayage hubs that struggle to breathe heavily polluted air.
