The American Trucking Associations and its Intermodal Motor Carrier Conference applauded new trucking fairness legislation recently signed into law in by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The legislation, initiated by the California Trucking Association and strongly supported by ATA and the IMCC, brings to an end years of unfair intermodal billing practices, particularly arbitrary and excessive fee assessments and termination of interchange rights, against intermodal motor carriers moving containers primarily between ports, terminals and cargo customers.
The new law prohibits ocean carriers, railroads, and marine terminal operators from imposing arbitrary per diem, detention, or demurrage charges on motor carriers when trucks transporting container cargo are delayed by such events as port gate closures, labor disruptions, unanticipated equipment diversions, terminal congestion and weekends or holidays – billing practices which have become commonplace in port operations in California and throughout the country.
ATA President and CEO Bill Graves praised CTA’s initiative and the state government’s action. “Ideally, California’s example should be replicated elsewhere,” he said. “Motor carriers will no longer be unfairly billed to pay for the inefficient operational practices of intermodal equipment and terminal facilities and this law will hopefully improve the operational and work environment of the port trucking community,” Graves said.
IMCC Executive Director Curtis Whalen said, “CTA and intermodal motor carriers have won an important victory in the battle to improve inefficient and unfair port operational practices. By prohibiting the assessment of fees on truckers, which are triggered by time-sensitive events beyond their control, this new law should serve to better allocated the costs of operations on those entities that exercise the operational management responsibilities of the intermodal network.
The law also prohibits intermodal marine equipment providers from terminating or suspending the equipment interchange rights of motors carriers during the exercise of dispute resolution rights and from unilaterally adding or offsetting specific charges to the motor carrier’s freight bill. “These prohibited billing practices include charging back, deducting, or offsetting per diem, detention or demurrage charges from such bills,” Whalen said.