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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Among many things that former head of the EPA Scott Pruitt did during his time at the agency was to cease enforcement of emissions standards for so-called "Glider" trucks. Gliders are new heavy truck chassis that have older, less technologically advanced and emissions-compliant engines installed into them.
The Obama administration sought to close the loopholes that allow gliders to be built and sold in significant numbers in an effort to curb their pollution but Pruitt opted to toss that aside in the name of business. We've covered the glider situation in the past, but the big news is that the new acting head of the EPA, a former coal lobbyist, has moved to reinstate the Obama regulations after a court insisted that they be enforced once again.
[...] Many trucking fleets like gliders because they are often cheaper to maintain and run than modern trucks, but the amount of pollutants that they emit can be hundreds of times more than the federal standards would allow. The laws that permitted gliders to be built in the first place were designed primarily to reduce the number of wrecked trucks going into scrap yards, instead giving their engines new homes. That kind of backfired.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday July 30 2018, @01:43PM (2 children)
There are several key pieces of data that merit mentioning here.
1. Many freight contracts specify a 3 or 5 year maximum age for the truck. You can't just keep your 6 year old truck and make a living. It's a $150-350k investment that becomes worthless in 5 years.
1a. Dropping your engine and trans into a glider lets you kit up for 5 more years of work for <$100k
1b. To a single truck owner-operator, a $120k glider is a huge cost savings starting out.
2. There are significant right to repair issues on new trucks. The newest ECU and CCUs are very closed, with dealer-only interfaces.
3. If you don't want electronic logs, a glider is the only way to avoid them.
4. The emissions controls they are touting are particulate filters, a complicated filter system that goes on the exhaust to catch soot and then burn it. These were and are twitchy failure prone expensive systems that had serious reliability issues when they were introduced. The owner operators that are afraid of these are afraid with a good reason.
4a. Non-PF engines get better fuel economy than PF engines. 1MPG may not seem like a lot to a gasser, but when you are filling 100 gallon tanks it makes a big difference.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday July 30 2018, @01:46PM (1 child)
1c. If you do keep your 7 year old truck, e.g. for a dedicated or company freight route, you'll get pulled in at every weigh station you cross no matter how good your maintenance is.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday July 30 2018, @01:52PM
1c.i "Pulling in", a friendly state trooper or DOT inspector will flip a switch that turns the green light at the weigh station into a red arrow. You follow the arrow, park, get out of your truck, walk inside, they scrutinize your logbook for compliance violations, then send you back to the truck. Then you sit there for however long it takes them to saunter out and "inspect" the truck. If they find a lightbulb out or a brake out of adjustment, or a drop of oil on the sidewall of a tire you are stuck there unable to leave except on a tow hook until a mechanic comes out and fixes it.