From Patricia Castellanos, Chair, CCSP

There's no shortage of half-baked ideas being floated by the profitable goods movement industry to get themselves off the hook from purchasing a new era of clean, low-emissions port trucks. Among them: Dole out grants to drivers, which would in effect make the LA and Long Beach Ports, and hence, taxpayers, the backers of the next generation of sub-prime loans.

Just like the real estate industry created schemes to ensure that families most likely to default on a loan were approved for one, trucking companies and their super rich shipper clients would like nothing more than to see underpaid workers borrow away.

Even with generous subsidies, few drivers could tack a several hundred dollar note on top of the rent, medical and grocery (and fuel, maintenance and insurance) bills they're already paying. To skim costs, these truckers will take their LNG trucks to the curbside mechanic who used to monkey with their old diesel rigs, a poor substitute for the expensive but trained technician who actually knows how to tune the technology to keep the new engines clean. (At the risk of sounding like a broken record, see the Los Angeles Times exposé on what impoverished "independent contractor" port drivers must do to eek on by.)

Once the seductive adjustable-rate mortgages reset, America's bubble burst. Expect the same crisis in port trucking if harbor commissioners fail to turn the current drayage system that relies on "independent contractors" on its head. Because after the warranties expire - when expensive repairs are needed - drivers who aren't treated as employees (by companies who hold no responsibility) will haul cargo in dirty, polluting trucks once again.

The industry must keep those new trucks clean or the Ports are going to be the ones left holding the bag; like the lending companies, they will have to write-down hundreds of millions of dollars from some 16,000 sub-prime borrowers whose American Dream lies even further out of reach than it does today.

Bank on this: A bailout isn't the kind of green Southern California taxpayers had in mind.