No Relief In Sight
The energy bill fails to address areas of key concern to trucking.
Deborah Whistler
Editor
President Bush has signed the energy bill. In it are provisions that make loans and grants available to the trucking industry to investigate fuel economy measures, or in some cases, to replace older engines or trucks with cleaner, newer equipment.
But don't hold your breath. Obtaining these funds can be a long, tortuous process that only the bigger fleets will attempt.
The industry at large – and the American Trucking Assns. in particular – wanted some additional wording in the bill that would address the upcoming juggernaut of the 2007 emissions changes for heavy trucks. That didn't happen.
We've been using cleaner engines since October 2002. The feds pushed that technology forward by 15 months to punish alleged engine manufacturer indiscretions. The 2002 emissions regs brought about the introduction of new technologies – cooled EGR for most builders, ACERT for Caterpillar. Both technologies brought with them a significant upcharge for the engines – about a $5,000 increase per.
The next emissions revival is timed for 2007 when additional restriction of exhaust particulates will see all engines having to breathe out through diesel particulate filters (DPF). Other modifications to the fueling will have to be accomplished to reach the required cut in half of NOx emissions.
There are a couple of likely consequences. The engines will most certainly be even less fuel-efficient than the post '02s. The degradation in fuel economy has caused major heartburn throughout the industry. Also, the cost of all the research and development to reach the 2007 standards must be added – again – to the price of the engines.
Nobody is saying what that price penalty will be, but consensus among end users is that it could be as high as $6,000 per engine. So in a matter of just five years, the price of the engine alone on a heavy duty truck will have jumped $11,000.
For these obvious reasons, the manufacturing industry is bracing for another pre-buy. They anticipate fleets will be trying to buy up as many trucks as they can before the 2007 deadline.
What ATA, the truck manufacturers and other informed end users have been pushing for is some well-deserved financial relief to soften the impact of these regulations on the trucking industry.
What other industry is forced to withstand these outrageous increases in the name of ecology?
The trucking industry's bargaining chips are unequivocally reasonable. After all, any pre-buy that pulls sales of post-emissions trucks into the earlier phase puts more higher-emissions vehicles on the road. The intent of the regulation is thus frustrated, delaying the time when the lower-emissions engines can begin to improve air quality.
Financial incentives that push purchases of post 2006 engines would work to achieve the Environmental Protection Agency's goals more quickly. At the same time, it will ease the financial impact on the user and the impossible on-again/off-again production schedules for the equipment manufacturers.
In the long run, it will also benefit the rest of the public, who will eventually have to subsidize this clean air policy by paying more for everything they buy.
The help trucking needed to achieve a reasonable transition into cleaner air could have, and should have, been written in to the energy bill. It wasn't.
After the resulting economy tumble from the 2002 emissions debacle, I had hoped the trucking industry would have a little more clout on the Hill. Apparently it doesn't.
We are still a little ways away from 2007, but not that far. Truckers need not follow the 2002 emissions lobby. If you think other folks – OEMs for example – are going to save you, you'll be sorry.
It is vital that everybody with an interest in trucking make this argument for financial relief and incentives to their legislators. If you haven't presented the argument to your representative, now's definitely the time.
E-mail Deb Whistler at dwhistler@truckinginfo.com
