The owner of Southern Counties Express, a motor carrier that operates 200 trucks serving the ports, went out and spent $10 million of his own money to buy 50 liquefied natural gas and 55 clean diesel trucks, each priced around $100,000.

But more than two months after the kickoff of the port’s Clean Trucks Program, most of his 105 clean trucks are sitting on his Rancho Dominguez lot gathering dust. There’s no financial sense in starting up the expensive-to-drive trucks because the ports’ program, which would compensate the clean trucks, essentially has been delayed.

“It’s almost like a joke,” said Griley of the ports’ $2.2 billion program, which seeks to reduce diesel truck emissions by 80 percent within five years.

Griley’s grumbling mirrors the frustration of licensed motor carriers who decided to embrace the green program with their own green when they simply could have met only its minimum initial requirement: retiring all trucks built prior to 1989.

Instead, Griley and perhaps scores of other motor carriers purchased “clean trucks” meeting 2007 federal emissions standards – some of the cleanest rigs on the market today.

In order to encourage motor carriers to make the switch, the ports planned to charge truckers not using the cleanest trucks a fee of $35 per 20 foot cargo container, or $70 per 40 foot cargo container they haul. The idea is that owners of clean trucks like Griley who don’t pay the fee will have a cost advantage when negotiating drayage rates with cargo owners.

That fee was supposed to be assessed on Oct. 1 when the Clean Trucks Program kicked off, but it was delayed to Nov. 17 when the Port Check organization the two ports developed to collect the fee wasn’t up and running in time. Now, it’s been suspended pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by the Federal Maritime Commission, which regulates port activity.

The commission’s lawsuit, filed Oct. 31, alleges the ports don’t have the authority to require motor carriers to get concessions – essentially permission – to operate at the ports. Complicating the situation, the lawsuit also seeks to overturn a requirement specific to the Los Angeles port – that carriers hire their drivers, who have historically operated as independent owner-operators.

As a result, there is a financial disincentive for motor carriers to use clean-burning rigs, which Griley said are more expensive to run because of their higher insurance and maintenance costs, given the sophisticated technology they use.

Port officials say their inability to charge the fee also is cutting into the projected income they plan to tap to fund incentive programs that will subsidize the cost of new clean trucks. The ports have committed to subsidize as much as 80 percent of the cost of new clean trucks for every motor carrier that signed up for the program. (Griley is still waiting for those incentives to be put in place.)

“We share in the frustration,” said John Holmes, the Port of Los Angeles’ director of operations.