Heavy-Duty Electric Truck ‘Subscriptions’ Could Clean Up Polluting Ports

Every day, dozens of heavy-duty diesel trucks rumble into a freight yard lined with shipping containers near the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. As the big rigs pick up some of the 11 million cargo containers that pass through the ports each year, they spew an invisible mix of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter. The toxic exhaust is not only cooking the planet, but damaging the hearts and lungs of drivers and residents in surrounding low-income communities of color.

This is the hidden health and climate cost of consumer goods carried by tens of thousands of “drayage” trucks that shuttle shipping containers from ports to warehouses for distribution across the United States.