Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 8/17/16


Trucks from long-haul rigs to local delivery trucks will have to be more efficient under regulations issued by the Obama administration this week.

The White House OK’d new fuel economy standards for large trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles in an effort to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such vehicles represent only about 5 percent of highway traffic but are responsible for about 20 percent of transportation-related fuel consumption and carbon emissions.

“While today’s fuel prices are more than 50 percent lower than those we experienced in 2008, fuel is still one of the top two operating expenses for most trucking companies,” said ATA President and CEO Chris Spear, in a news release about the new regulations. “That’s why our industry has worked closely with both the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the past three-and-a-half years to ensure these fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards took into account the wide diversity of equipment and operations across the trucking sector.”

The new requirements, as they are implemented over the next 10 years, pertain to a class of vehicles that includes school buses, large pickup trucks, delivery and passenger vans, garbage trucks and long-haul tractor-trailers. It is the second such effort by the Obama administration to create a national policy on the fuel efficiency of heavy- and medium-duty trucks.

The goal is to reduce overall emissions in the United States by at least 26 percent by the year 2030, compared with 2005 levels, according to a story in the Washington Post.

The American Trucking Association said in a statement that its members were “cautiously optimistic.” The ATA had worked with both the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Transportation Safety Board on the regulations.

“The standards promote a new generation of cleaner, more fuel-efficient trucks by encouraging the development and employment of new and advanced cost-effective technologies through model year 2027,” said Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The changes to the vehicles will boost costs initially, which the ATA and other backers of the regulations say will be more than repaid in fuel efficiency over the useful life of the equipment.

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