Inland Empire Industrial Watch
Port volumes, market fundamentals, the macro picture, and the regulatory load — read for what it does to industrial tenants and owners across San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. Updated every Friday.
Moreno Valley is redrawing your trucks' route to the freeway. Your lease leaves you the bill.
Moreno Valley's proposed truck route map would take through trucks off Perris Boulevard, Alessandro, Heacock, Frederick, Cactus and four other segments, and the city's own consultant says that would add 8,296 truck miles a day. On a 300,000 SF building on Perris Boulevard shipping a quarter of its loads east, that would be about $294,000 a year. A route change takes no land and counts as a new law, so the standard lease leaves every mile with you.
On a 300,000 SF distribution building fronting Perris Boulevard near San Michele Road in south Moreno Valley, the city's proposed truck route map would add about $294,000 a year in truck miles, $0.98/SF/yr, if a quarter of your round trips head east on SR-60. That is 7.9% of IE East asking rent. Nothing in a standard Inland Empire lease moves any of it to the landlord.
AB 98 turned the truck route into a moving target. Government Code 65302.02(a) requires every city and county in the Warehouse Concentration Region to “[i]dentify and establish specific travel routes for the transport of goods, materials, or freight” that “[m]aximize the use of interstate or state divided highways.” Collector streets qualify only “when strictly necessary to reach existing industrial zones,” and trucks “shall be routed via transportation arteries that minimize exposure to sensitive receptors.” The deadline was January 1, 2026. Eight of the 14 jurisdictions missed it, Moreno Valley, Perris and Riverside County among them, and the Attorney General sent them an enforcement advisory on October 5. The penalties, up to $50,000 every six months, fall on the cities. The maps are being redrawn now, in the middle of your term.
Moreno Valley's proposal, PEN26-0058, strips through-truck status from segments of nine streets, including Perris Blvd, Alessandro Blvd, Heacock St, Frederick St and Cactus Ave, and concentrates trucks on SR-60 and I-215. The city's traffic consultant, Kimley-Horn, puts the citywide result at 8,296 more truck miles a day at 2024 volumes, up 2.8%. At ATRI's 2025 operating cost of $2.336 a mile, that is about $5.8 million a year. Perris Blvd carried up to 1,671 trucks a day in 2024. The consultant's reroute for it: “divert truck traffic to San Michelle Avenue, Heacock Street, Cactus Avenue, I-215, and then SR 60.” By 2040 the model has Perris Blvd truck miles falling from 2,274 a day to 113.
Your dock stays reachable. Vehicle Code 35703 bars a city from blocking commercial vehicles “coming from an unrestricted street” by direct route to deliver or pick up, and the draft ordinance sends trucks by “the shortest practical route” between a designated route and their origin or destination. What you lose is the short haul to the freeway. Direction decides how much. From Perris Blvd at San Michele, a westbound trip toward I-215, LA and the ports runs about the same distance on the new network. An eastbound SR-60 trip that ran about 4.5 miles straight up Perris Blvd now runs west and north to the 60/215 junction and back east, about 10.1 miles, 5.6 miles longer each way. Those distances are our grid estimate, not a measured routing, and if the city lets your trucks treat the old stretch of Perris Blvd as their direct route to SR-60, the eastbound cost shrinks.
Westbound ≈ 0 added miles; eastbound ≈ +11.2 miles per round trip (Perris Blvd at San Michele)
You pay either way. A private fleet pays by the mile; a carrier reprices the lane at the next rate negotiation. The cost shows up in drayage rates, never as a lease line, so nobody negotiated it.
The AIR CRE Standard Industrial/Commercial Single-Tenant Lease touches this in three places, and all three leave it with you. In ¶2.4 you acknowledge you satisfied yourself about the premises' “suitability for Lessee's intended use.” ¶14 gives relief only when the premises are “taken under the power of eminent domain.” And ¶6.3 makes you comply with Applicable Requirements, a defined term that covers ordinances, whenever they arrive:
The route change takes no land, so the condemnation clause never fires. The building stays legal for its Agreed Use, so ¶6.1 offers no exit. ¶6.3 makes route compliance your job at your cost, and ¶2.4 stops you from arguing later that the building was sold to you as served by a particular route.
Moreno Valley adds a second exposure for anyone moving in or subleasing. Its draft logistics facilities ordinance (PEN26-0055) requires a Truck Routing Plan covering routing to designated truck routes, signage, pavement markings and a queuing analysis, revised “prior to a business license being issued by the city for any new tenant of the logistics use facility.” If your rent starts at substantial completion or delivery, it can start before the city lets you run trucks. Your subtenant faces the same gate.
None of it is final yet. The Moreno Valley council hearing on PEN26-0058 was set for September 1, 2026, both ordinances are still drafts with blank adoption dates, and the Attorney General listed the city as noncompliant on October 5. The truck route ordinance takes effect 30 days after second reading. Perris plans its council vote in December on an update that drops two stretches of Ellis Ave and one of San Jacinto Ave.
1. Now, before Moreno Valley's second reading and Perris's December vote, pull the proposed maps (Moreno Valley's interactive map at moval.org/truckroutes; Perris's Initial Study, SCH 2025110111) and run your actual lanes against them. Split daily trips by direction. Eastbound SR-60 and cross-town moves are where the miles go. Comment letters go to transportation@moval.org; a tenant with 150 trucks a day carries weight at a hearing.
2. 15–24 months before expiration, put the route delta into the renewal rent argument. Option rent is set against “comparable” buildings, and a building that lost its direct truck route is no longer comparable to one on SR-60 frontage. Bring the city's own Kimley-Horn VMT memo to the table.
3. At renewal or in any new lease, add a truck route change clause. Sample language: “Truck Route Change. If, after the Effective Date, any governmental authority removes, restricts or re-designates any public truck route serving the Premises such that heavy-duty trucks cannot travel between the Premises and the nearest state highway or interstate interchange by the route available on the Effective Date, and the shortest lawful truck route between the Premises and that interchange increases by more than [one] mile, then (a) Base Rent shall be reduced by [$0.0X] per rentable square foot per month for the remainder of the Term, or (b) at Lessee's election, delivered within 180 days after the change takes effect, Lessee may terminate this Lease on [nine] months' written notice without penalty. Such a change shall not be deemed a Condemnation, an Applicable Requirement for purposes of Paragraph 6.3, or a matter assumed by Lessee under Paragraph 2.4.”
4. On a relocation into a Moreno Valley building, key rent commencement to the city's approval of your Truck Routing Plan and your business license, and make the landlord deliver the plan's signage and pavement markings at its cost. Sample language: “The Commencement Date shall not occur until the later of (i) Substantial Completion and (ii) the date the City of Moreno Valley approves Lessee's Truck Routing and Operations Plan and issues Lessee's business license, provided Lessee has submitted a complete application within [10] business days after Lessor's request. Lessor shall, at its sole cost, install all on-site signage and pavement markings required by the approved plan.”
5. Before you sublease or assign, remember your subtenant needs a revised Truck Routing Plan before it can get a business license. Write into the consent request, or into the lease now, that the landlord signs the plan application within 10 business days, and that the subtenant's operating date, not the sublease signing, starts any recapture or profit-sharing clock.
6. In CAM review, treat on-site truck route signage and markings as a landlord capital cost. The city's FAQ puts private property signage on the property owner. If your lease allows a pass-through, cap it as amortized capital.
300,000 SF distribution center, south Moreno Valley, fronting Perris Boulevard near San Michele Road
Assumptions, not survey figures: 150 heavy-truck round trips a day, 300 operating days, 25% of round trips head east on SR-60 and the rest west or north via SR-60 and I-215. Westbound trips add no miles. Eastbound trips add 11.2 miles per round trip under the proposed map, on our grid estimate of the old and new paths. Cost is ATRI's 2025 $2.336 per mile. Plug in your own trip count and direction split.
Over five years that is $1,471,680, undiscounted. If 10% of your round trips head east, the cost is $117,734 a year, $0.39/SF/yr; at 50%, $588,672, $1.96/SF/yr, 15.9% of IE East asking rent. ATRI's rate is a national average, so it likely runs low for California. See the full dashboard.
Sources (14)
Container volume, San Pedro Bay
Monthly TEUs, both ports · Jul 2024 – Aug 2026The pull-forward ahead of the July 24 Section 301 duties was supposed to borrow from August. It mostly did not. Combined volume held at 1.88 million TEUs, up 0.8% year over year, with Long Beach loaded inbound up 3.6%. Two months of resilience is not a trend, but it removes the easy explanation that the summer was borrowed.
West vs. East
September 2026 · Q3 asking rates| Metric | IE West | IE East |
|---|---|---|
| Base inventory | 374.5M SF | 326.1M SF |
| Availability | 11.99% | 13.53% |
| Vacancy | 4.82% | 6.47% |
| Net absorption YTD | +3,937,551 | −209,172 |
| Gross activity YTD | 44.0M SF | 39.7M SF |
| Transactions | 486 | 299 |
| Under construction | 5.76M SF | 3.51M SF |
| Avg NNN, 100K+ (Q3) | $1.034 | $0.915 |
West closed the third quarter at 4.82% vacancy and 11.99% availability, with YTD absorption up to 3.94M SF. East cut its absorption deficit from 739,044 SF to 209,172 and brought vacancy to 6.47%, though availability is still 13.53%. East moved 39.7M SF across 299 transactions against West’s 44.0M across 486, so the average East deal is about 133,000 SF to West’s 91,000. On Q3 asking the West premium is 13%, down from 17% in Q2: West eased to $1.034 while East rose to $0.915. The quarter’s larger commitments ran east, with DP World Logistics taking space in Moreno Valley and Wayfair renewing in Perris.
Lee Ontario’s own comps for the twelve months to October carry 34 closed industrial leases in Moreno Valley and Perris: median $0.944 NNN, median 172,000 SF, five months free and a median 65-month term. Across the whole Inland Empire the median closed lease is 21,100 SF at $1.160 on a 39-month term. The corridor leases big boxes long. A 65-month term signed this month runs into 2032, past every AB 98 truck-route deadline and past whatever Moreno Valley and Perris adopt in the next six months.
Regulatory and tax load on IE industrial tenants
In force · phasing · watchAB 98 / SB 415 warehouse standards
South Coast AQMD Rule 2305 (WAIRE)
Tariff regime after the IEEPA ruling
Cap-and-invest tightening
Local moratoria and mitigation fees
Macro backdrop
Q2 2026 actuals and current bank forecasts- The Fed raised rates on September 16, moving the target range to 3.75%–4.00% on a unanimous 12–0 vote. The statement says inflation “remains elevated” and frames the increase as support for “a timelier return” to the 2% goal.
- Wells Fargo called it. It moved in August to forecast a hike before year-end, citing tariffs, elevated oil and AI data-center power demand. Bank of America had core PCE easing to 2.8% by Q4, a path that implied cuts. September settled the argument in Wells Fargo’s favor, and the day after the hike Wells Fargo put the funds rate at 4.00%–4.25% by year-end with no changes through 2027, on the reasoning that the excess inflation is supply-driven and the labor market is not overheating.
- GDP grew 1.5% in Q2, below the 1.8% expected and down from 2.1% in Q1. Consumer spending carried it at a 3.2% annual clip; business investment ex-housing rose 8.4% on AI buildout.
- Inflation is why. Headline PCE +3.7% year over year, core +3.3%, both well above target, with energy disruption from the Iran conflict feeding through.
- Labor is tighter than the growth rate suggests. Private payrolls averaged 88,000 a month in the first half, roughly three times last year’s pace; initial claims hit 187,000 in July, the lowest since 1969. Locally the picture is softer: Inland Empire unemployment is 5.5% and the labor force shrank 1.0% over twelve months.
- CoStar’s September 24 read on the Inland Empire puts vacancy at 8.7% for 2026 Q3 and availability at 12.5%, a 15-year high, against a 6.2% historical average vacancy. Trailing 12-month net absorption is 6.0M SF versus a prior 10-year average of 17.5M SF, deliveries 7.7M SF, and market asking rent growth −0.9%. Construction underway is 14.0M SF, down from the 45.7M SF peak in 2022, with less than 10M SF forecast for completion across 2026 and 2027.
Relocation is capital. Racking, conveyor, dock equipment, moving the operation, the months of duplicate rent: most of it gets financed, and financing just got more expensive rather than less. That strengthens the case for negotiating hard where you already sit and weakens the cheap-capital case for moving. For owners it cuts the other way on a 2027 refinance, which is the same pressure that makes a landlord willing to trade on rent to keep a covenant in place.
Port volumes in context
Calendar year| Period | POLA | POLB | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 full year | 10,297,352 | ~9.6M* | — |
| 2025 full year | 10,239,318 | 9,881,597 | 20,120,915 |
| 2026 YTD (Jan–Aug) | 7,038,973 | 6,678,078 | 13,717,051 |
| 2025 same period | 6,934,004 | 6,592,708 | 13,526,712 |
| Change | +1.5% | +1.3% | +1.4% |
*Long Beach's 2024 was a then-record 9.6M TEUs, up 20.3% on 2023. 2025 broke that record again.
September: Los Angeles posted 1,042,652 TEUs, up 18.1% on September 2025, taking its calendar year to 8,081,626 and +3.4%. Long Beach has not posted September, so the combined table above and the chart stay through August.
Loaded imports, not total TEUs, are what convert into pallet positions in Fontana and Perris. Empties are roughly 37% of the combined count, and repositioning them tells you nothing about occupancy demand.
Regulatory deep-dive
Last week: AB 98’s 20% trigger and the expansion option that may not be buildable.
Submarket spotlight
This week: Moreno Valley’s proposed truck route map and the miles your lease keeps.
Lease economics
Issue 05: the 4% escalation compounding against a market that fell.
Trade & supply chain
Issue 04: the foreign-trade zone your lease will not let you have.
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