Summary

  • The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are weighing a $60-per-trip subsidy that, per the source, reimburses operating losses of the incumbent zero-emission carrier cohort while leaving the binding constraints on the 2035 phase-out trajectory — charger and vehicle availability, and a three-year sunset — unaddressed.
  • The Harbor Trucking Association, an industry group representing the early-adopter cohort, requested the program; named operators in the Hight Logistics and Tradelink Transport cohort say they have been “upside down” relative to diesel rivals since 2022.
  • The $60 million allocation, drawn from the diesel-fee-funded clean-truck balance, can support on the order of 1,667 truck-years under the $36,000-per-truck-per-year cap — a fraction of the conversion pace a linear 2026-to-2035 trajectory would require.
  • Per-trip reimbursement accrues only when a truck moves, leaving the charging-downtime cost operators describe as the binding constraint outside the subsidy frame; a subsidy that pays per trip does not shorten charger-queue waits, and a fleet whose operators cannot get vehicles and chargers online cannot grow even with the subsidy.
  • The funding source — the $10-per-visit fee on diesel rigs — exposes the program to diesel volume at the complex and is levied on the 96% of the port-serving fleet that competes with the 4% the program subsidizes.

The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are weighing a $60-per-trip subsidy that would direct up to $36,000 per truck per year over three years to carriers running zero-emission rigs, financed from a clean-truck fund built on a $10-per-visit fee on diesel trucks. The proposal, which the boards of the two ports are expected to vote on in the coming months, was requested by an industry group representing carriers who describe themselves as “upside down” relative to diesel rivals. Fewer than 700 of the 17,000 trucks that call the ports — about 4% — are zero-emission, and the source documents that the binding constraint on prior incentive programs was operators’ ability to bring vehicles and chargers online, not the dollar amounts available.

Who requested the subsidy, and on what terms

The proposal was requested by the Harbor Trucking Association (HTA), the industry group that asked the ports to help battery-electric truckers, per the source. HTA CEO Robert Loya framed the carrier position in industry terms: “Everybody wants sustainability, but nobody wants to pay for it.” Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said “struggling carriers approached the port earlier in 2026 to request assistance with zero-emission rigs.” Hight Logistics CEO Rudy Diaz, whose Long Beach, Calif.-based firm began running zero-emission trucks at the end of 2022, said the carrier side of the cohort is still loss-making: “We lost our shirts off it in ‘23, ‘24 and ‘25. We are still upside down when you compare us to diesel fleets.” Tradelink Transport Vice President of Sales and Operations Ping Burke, of the Compton, Calif.-based carrier, put a condition on the energy-cost comparison: “Hands down, the EV can win on energy cost, but we still have to make sure we don’t give those savings back through downtime and lost utilization.”

The carrier request arrives against a record fuel-price backdrop. The source documents that California diesel set a new state high of $8.439 a gallon on Sept. 22, according to energy pricing specialists OPIS, and the national average hit a record of $6.528 a gallon in September, per OPIS. Per the source, drivers of electric-powered rigs say the economics still do not work even at those prices: early adopters of the technology say they cannot command the rates they need to cover the higher costs of battery-electric or hydrogen fuel-cell trucks because they are competing with lower-cost diesel rivals. The source notes that California already offers generous grants to truckers to offset some of the higher costs of zero-emission vehicles that can run three times more than diesel rigs; carriers say they also face bigger bills for charging infrastructure and higher operating costs related to financing, insuring and running trucks.

The ports have framed the proposal as interim and as part of a multi-program posture. Seroka said, “I don’t know that just subsidizing people is a complete answer. But maybe in the interim we’ve got to do something to help.” The source does not report a plan in the proposal for what comes after the three-year term. Port of Long Beach CEO Noel Hacegaba framed the proposal as one of several his port is working on to keep existing zero-emission trucks on the road. The Port of Long Beach has separately set aside $4.8 million for one-off payments of up to $10,000 to early adopters of zero-emission trucks and a further $10 million to subsidize the cost of hydrogen fuel, per the source; Hacegaba said, “We need to make sure the trucks already serving the port that are zero-emission can keep operating.”

How the per-trip design interacts with the 2035 target

The ports’ published target, set in 2017, is to phase out diesel trucks at the complex by 2035. The source documents that fewer than 700 of the 17,000 trucks that call the ports — about 4% — are zero-emission. The proposal, per the source, reimburses ongoing operations for the incumbent ZEV cohort; the source indicates prior port-funded measures — the $10-per-visit clean-truck fee applied to diesel rigs, charging-infrastructure grants, and vehicle-purchase subsidies — operated on the capital or fee side. The per-trip subsidy, on its face, is the most direct operator-level intervention the complex has proposed since the 2017 target was set.

Sizing the proposed allocation against the target. The source indicates the $60 million allocation supports a $36,000-per-truck-per-year cap; on that arithmetic, the program can support on the order of 1,667 truck-years over three years ($60,000,000 ÷ $36,000 per truck per year ≈ 1,667). A linear trajectory from 700 zero-emission trucks in 2026 to a 100% zero-emission fleet in 2035 would require converting roughly 16,300 non-ZEV trucks over nine years, on the order of 1,800 conversions per year — a conversion pace the 1,667 truck-year figure does not, on its face, reach. The source does not specify which trajectory shape the ports have adopted, so the 1,667 figure is read against two reference points rather than one: a linear reference and a back-loaded reference in which most conversion arrives in the final three years before 2035. Under the back-loaded reference, the program’s coverage approaches zero on the binding years.

Per-trip reimbursement accrues to a rig only when it moves; a rig charging or awaiting a charger is a rig that does not collect the subsidy. The per-trip frame disproportionately rewards operators with route density and capital reserves to deploy chargers, accelerating the exit of smaller operators and concentrating the subsidy in fewer hands without adding trucks. The port-serving fleet, per the source, includes owner-operator structures. The article does not describe how the subsidy design interacts with that structure, and the source does not describe verification protocols for the per-trip subsidy.

The source supports several failure pathways under which the program could run its three-year course without moving the fleet from 4% toward the 2035 target. On the subsidy design and per-trip framing, the $60-per-trip figure is sized to a specific cost differential; operators in the source describe the differential as wider than what the subsidy closes; per-trip reimbursement accrues to an existing ZEV operator the same whether the truck would have run anyway — a transfer rather than a marginal adoption incentive — and the program could hit its budget cap without changing the conversion count. Operators who have already exited cannot be re-subsidized; a per-truck subsidy tied to current operations reimburses firms that remain in the market but does not address the accumulated losses of those who exited before the program began. On charger-queue persistence, the source documents yearslong waits for chargers and vehicles, with more than $350 million in clean-truck fee revenue since 2022 distributed at a slow rate that the source attributes in part to those waits. The size of the undistributed balance relative to the $60 million new allocation suggests the binding constraint on prior program deployment was not the dollar amount, but the operators’ ability to put zero-emission equipment into service; a subsidy that pays per trip does not shorten that wait, and a fleet whose operators cannot get vehicles and chargers cannot grow.

A post-2028 sunset is named in the source. The program is three years and the 2035 target is nine years out, with no announced successor mechanism in the reporting. Operators per the source “cannot assume that a recent increase in freight demand or the run-up in diesel prices will make zero-emission trucking more cost competitive.” Absent a successor mechanism, the program ends without bridging the trajectory. The proposal’s effectiveness depends on assumptions about diesel prices, port volume, federal-state regulatory dynamics, and the pace of charging-infrastructure deployment — all variables the ports do not control.

The funding mechanism and its exposure

The funding source is the clean-truck fund, which the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports have built since 2022 by raising a $10-per-visit fee on diesel rigs. The ports have raised more than $350 million via the clean-truck fee since 2022 and have distributed only a fraction of that money, in part because truckers face yearslong waits for charging infrastructure and vehicles. The $60 million new allocation is drawn from this balance. The clean-truck fee structure rewards diesel volume at the moment the policy seeks to reduce it: a recession, a trade-policy shift, or a freight-rate reversal would contract the fee base. The source does not describe whether the $60 million allocation assumes continued diesel volume or a backstop from port general funds.

Diesel operators, who comprise the other 96% of the port-serving fleet per the source, are not quoted in the article. Their interests — continued earning, avoided capital outlay, asset preservation — are present indirectly. The $10-per-visit clean-truck fee that funds the subsidy is levied on diesel rigs; a subsidy that flows to zero-emission operators is, by design, a transfer drawn from a fee that diesel operators also pay. Each diesel operator stands to lose by a mechanism the proposal does not address and the reporting does not name.

The federal-state regulatory backdrop

The state regulatory floor that supported the 2017 phase-out target has reportedly been pulled back. Per the source, California had been building momentum for zero-emission trucking demand, but the effort has been set back in recent years, notably when the state dropped regulations that would have forced truckers to buy battery-electric rigs because of anticipated opposition from the Trump administration. The federal-state regulatory axis is visible in the source as a structural pressure not stated by the parties quoted. The Port of Long Beach’s $4.8 million early-adopter payment program and $10 million hydrogen subsidy, per the source, are positioned in a multi-program posture that takes the post-pullback environment as given.

What the source does not address

The article reports the proposal, the named parties’ stated positions, and the operating-cost pressures on early adopters. It does not report an independent cost model against which the $60-per-trip figure can be checked; a disbursement timeline or verification protocol for the per-trip subsidy; a cliff-management plan for the year after the three-year term ends; a structural review of the clean-truck fee; an assessment of how the subsidy interacts with the federal regulatory environment the source documents has shifted; or how the subsidy design interacts with the port-serving fleet’s owner-operator structure.

Drayage drivers, who absorb the charging-downtime cost Burke names, are not named in the proposal as eligible for per-trip compensation. The source does not report whether the per-trip subsidy flows to drivers, to carrier firms, or to some other recipient, and on what disbursement schedule.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Interest Mapping
Separates parties’ stated positions from their underlying interests (Fisher & Ury).
Pre-Mortem (Action Plan)
Imagines the plan has already failed, then works backward to find out why.
Red-Team Assessment
Models a capable adversary probing a plan for the seams they would exploit.