LOS ANGELES — According to the Los Angeles Business Journal, truck sales are booming in California.

Tracey Craik, fleet sales manager at a truck dealer called TEC of California is reported as saying business is “much better than last year.”

Indeed, because business is up by a third compared to the same time last year, the Business Journal reports, the lot is home to four times the normal inventory. Since October, TEC has sold 700 new rigs.

Most of the new trucks are being put to work on short hauls into and out of the L.A. Port, which is what Craik attributes the surge in sales to.

The port’s stringent Clean Truck Program, while driving some truckers to the dealerships, is driving others out of business.

The president of FTR Associates, Eric Starks, is also quoted in the article noting the side effect of the clean-truck program. “If there is one place where trucks are selling well, it’s in places like California… businesses either have to come and by them or be forced out.”

FTR reports that dealers across the States sold 284,008 class eights in 2006, only 133,473 in ’08; and they predict sales of only 87,600 trucks this year.