Senate Backs Off Truck Fuel Economy Requirement

The Senate was considering a bill to make truck builders show hefty annual fuel economy improvements, but industry lobbyists convinced members that the proposal would not work.

In its initial form, the bill would have required medium and heavy trucks to show 4 percent annual improvements in fuel economy starting in 2016. The baseline for measuring improvement was to be the average combined city and highway mpg for each class of truck in 2013.

This provision, part of the Ten-in-Ten Fuel Economy Act that would revise current standards for cars and light trucks upward to 35 mpg by 2020, was the first effort by the federal government to establish mpg standards for medium and heavy trucks.

Trucking representatives went to Capitol Hill to explain that the mpg measurement does not make sense for trucking, said Joe Suchecki, spokesman for the Engine Manufacturers Association.

"We worked with the Senate staff (to explain that) that type of program just doesn't work for medium- and heavy-duty trucks," he said.

The solution put forward by EMA and other industry interests, which the Senate adopted, is to come up with a suitable way to measure truck fuel efficiency and then propose a rule to require improvement.

The proposal gives the Departments of Transportation and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency 18 months to come up with a way to measure efficiency in on-highway trucks. The method will have to take into account the type of operation and the work that the trucks do, as well as their design and the types of roads they use.

After that, DOT will have two years to come up with a proposed rule. The rule would have to give four model-years of lead time and three model-years of regulatory stability.

The bill now moves to the House. Suchecki said the House is not likely to include this language in its version. He expects the measure to resurface when the Senate and House meet in conference committee to reconcile their two versions of the bill.

He also hopes the conference committee will consider language on a critical point for trucking interests – a prohibition against states establishing their own fuel economy standards for trucks. That language is not in the Senate bill, but sources indicate there's a good chance it will show up in the conference bill.