Long Beach backs zero-emission truck corridor

The Port of Long Beach, The Wonderful Company, and Lincoln Transportation Services have signed a memorandum of understanding to support a Green Truck Corridor connecting Long Beach with California’s Central Valley.

The project is designed to reduce emissions on one of the busiest inland freight routes in the United States, linking the San Pedro Bay port complex with agricultural and logistics hubs in the Central Valley. The route will connect port operations with the Wonderful Logistics Center in Shafter, California, a 2,000-acre inland logistics hub located on the BNSF Railway main line.

Lincoln Transportation Services will act as the corridor’s lead truck operator. The company has ordered 300 Tesla Semi electric trucks and expects to receive its first 50 to 70 vehicles in June. Its affiliated company, Voltz, is also manufacturing 100 electric trucks scheduled for delivery by the third quarter of 2027.

The corridor will include rapid charging infrastructure at the Port of Long Beach and Shafter. The port already operates 102 EV truck charging stations, with a further 92 expected to become operational later this year.

Port decarbonisation becomes more complicated once freight moves beyond the terminal gate. Electrifying a drayage move inside a port complex is one stage; extending zero-emission freight into longer inland corridors requires vehicle availability, charging capacity, grid readiness, route planning, dwell-time management, and coordination between terminal, truck operator, customer, and inland facility.

The Central Valley connection carries commercial weight because more than 300,000 TEUs move between the San Pedro Bay ports complex and the southern Central Valley each year. Agricultural exports, imported consumer goods, retail distribution, and industrial freight all depend on predictable port-to-inland movement. A green corridor has to match the reliability of existing diesel operations while reducing emissions exposure along the route.

Battery-electric heavy trucks are best suited initially to routes where range, charging location, vehicle duty cycle, and load profile are known. Port-to-inland shuttle operations can fit that pattern better than highly variable long-haul work, particularly where trucks return to defined charging points. Charging time, peak congestion, and grid constraints will still have to be managed carefully if the corridor is to avoid creating new bottlenecks.

The Port of Long Beach has been building towards zero-emission cargo movement through truck charging, clean truck policies, shore power, and wider sustainability investment. The corridor gives that work a more networked form by tying port infrastructure to an inland logistics centre and a dedicated trucking partner.

Defined industrial routes are becoming the early test beds for heavy-duty electrification. In the UK, Masters Logistical has added electric trucks for British Sugar flows, using a controlled operating model where distance, charging, and customer requirements can be planned around a known lane. The Long Beach corridor applies the same principle at port scale.

Sustainability is also moving from corporate reporting into network design. Emissions reduction now affects warehouse location, charging strategy, carrier selection, port operations, customer contracts, and the design of inland hubs. Freight operators that cannot prove lower-carbon movement on strategic routes will face increasing pressure from shippers, regulators, and public authorities.

The MoU does not remove the hard questions around zero-emission freight. Electric truck cost, charging speed, battery performance, payload impact, and grid capacity remain live issues. It does show how decarbonisation will be built lane by lane, with ports, carriers, customers, and infrastructure owners forced into much closer operational coordination.