Green Rules Force Small Truckers into the Red
In a move opposed by many small trucking businesses, the California Air Resources Board has proposed new regulations in an effort to curb diesel emissions from trucks.
The agency says it is taking the action to reduce the 9,000 annual deaths attributed to poor air quality in the state. But Indian American truck owners, who make up about one-third of the industry in California, say the regulations, which require costly upgrades and replacements, will force many smaller trucking companies to shut down.
Daljeet Singh, owner-operator of Khalsa Trucking in Bakersfield, Calif., told India-West he would be forced to shut his one-man operation down if forced to replace his 1992 truck.
“It’s going to 100 percent put me out of business. There’s no way I can afford it,” he said. Singh, who has run Khalsa Trucking since 1989 and moves dry freight to Las Vegas and Texas, said he would be forced to drive for someone else, which would be financially difficult for his family, with his two college-going children.
Diesel emissions in California contribute more than 40 percent of the two biggest components of air pollution: particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen, known as Nox.
“California has the worst air quality in the nation, and toxic diesel emissions have played a significant role in gaining us that distinction,” Karen Caesar, information officer for the California Air Resources Board, told India-West.
The American Lung Association ranks four California regions as the most polluted in the country: Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside, Fresno-Madera, Bakersfield and Sacramento.
Eight California counties are in the ALA’s top-10 of the country’s most ozone-polluted areas: San Bernadino, Kern, Riverside, Tulare, Los Angeles, Fresno, Placer and El Dorado.
The proposed CARB regulations would reduce PM emissions by 85 percent and half of Nox emissions statewide by the year 2020. The new rules, which will be voted on this October by CARB, require trucks manufactured after 1994 and doing business in the state — including interstate trucks — to be retrofitted with diesel trap oxidizers by 2010, which can cost up to $25,000. Trucks manufactured before 1994 would have to be entirely replaced by 2010. Smaller fleets with less than three trucks would have until 2012 to come into compliance.
Beginning in 2010, federal standards will require truck manufacturers to make new diesel engines run 90 percent cleaner than engines in 2004 trucks. All trucks doing business in California would then have to come up to 2010 standards by the year 2020, according to the proposed regulations. Fines for non-compliance can be assessed at up to $10,000 per day.
Some resources are available to fund up to $5,000 for CARB-mandated retrofitting and $50,000 for a truck replacement, said Caesar. Proposition 1B sets aside $760 million for such upgrades.
A separate Carl Moyer Memorial Fund has $140 million available for trucking companies doing upgrades before the regulations go into effect. That money is limited and can be accessed through local air districts. CARB is also working with the California Pollution Control Financing Authority to provide low-interest financing.
An additional $35 million is available to Class 8 trucks, through the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Amanda Felson, a spokesperson for the district, told India-West truckers can apply to retrofit, repower or replace their existing trucks within the next month by applying online at www.baaqmd.gov/goods. The deadline to submit an application is Aug. 15, 2008 and the district is conducting grant workshops on July 24, 29, 30 and Aug. 2 at locations around the Bay Area.
“There’s no one that’s against clean air,” Paul Sihota, CEO of Royal Express Trucking Company in Fresno, Calif., told India-West. “But you’re going to drive the mom and pop companies out of business by making them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on new trucks,” he said.
Sihota and his brother started out with one truck 30 years ago and have since built a fleet of 185 trucks, which transport mostly freezer food: meat, poultry and finished goods. Foster Farms is one of his bigger clients.
Most of Royal Express’s fleet comprise newer trucks, but the required retrofits will nevertheless cost Sihota $4.6 million to implement, he said, adding that he would have to pass the cost on to his clients, who would in turn pass them on to the consumer.
“You’re going to see the effect of these regulations at the checkout counter,” said Sihota.
Lucky Dosanjh, a truck owner-operator in Fresno, has a single 1993 truck in his operation. “This is going to kill me,” he said of the proposed regulations that would require him to pony up more than half the cost of a new truck by 2012. “We don’t have that much money in our pockets.”
Dosanjh told India-West higher fuel prices have shrunk his profit margin from 15 percent to about six percent in the last three months. The cost of a new truck for him is roughly $125,000.
“Diesel trucks are the biggest source of air pollution in the state,” countered Bonnie Holmes-Gen, senior policy director for the American Lung Association. “Diesel exhaust is the predominant risk for cancer from outdoor pollutants in California,” she told India-West.
The American Lung Association estimates 9,000 people in the state die annually of illnesses associated with poor air quality. About 3,700 of those deaths can directly be attributed to diesel-related illnesses, according to the ALA, more than the number of deaths attributed to traffic accidents or second-hand smoke.
Diesel truck exhaust produces 40 percent of the state’s particulate matter, soot and dust particles that penetrate the lungs and are captured by lung tissue. Exposure to PM can cause respiratory infections, asthma, lung cancer, emphysema and decreased life expectancy.
PM exposure also causes chronic bronchitis, which can lead to heart attacks because of diminished lung capacity, forcing the heart to work faster.
Children are particularly vulnerable to PM exposure, because they breathe more quickly than adults and spend more time outdoors. The ALA estimates one million children and four million adults in the state suffer from chronic asthma.
Diesel exhaust also produces half of the state’s Nox, which, when combined with sunlight and hydrocarbons, produces ozone. Ozone exposure causes inflammation of lung tissue, reduced lung capacity, asthma and can lead to lung cancer.
Jim Ganduglia, chairman of the California Trucking Association’s Environmental Policy committee, said no retrofit device currently available traps Nox. “Even if you get the trucking industry to retrofit every one of its 1.7 million trucks, you’re only going to have cleaner air, not clean air,” he told reporters June 18 at an air quality workshop in Fresno.
“(CARB’s) regulations could have a pretty devastating effect on the trucking industry,” acknowledged Rick Ratazzi, senior vice president of Johansen Transportation Services, a brokerage firm that works with several Indian American truck owner-operators. “A lot of the guys running long haul have fairly new trucks so the impact is going to be a little less. But the cost to retrofit those trucks is going to be coming right out of their paychecks,” he told India-West, adding that local carriers would have to increase rates, making California less competitive than other states due to the cost of moving goods.
Sohinder Athwal, founder of Fresno-based Market Express, said he’s uncertain about the impact to his business. Athwal’s fleet consists of 20 trucks, which were manufactured between 1998 and 2007. Athwal inherited the 40-year-old business from his father, which moves produce around the state. He told India-West he replaces his trucks every eight years and hoped state funds would help mitigate the costs of immediately retrofitting his trucks.
“It’s something we have to do,” he said simply.
CARB held a series of workshops on the proposed regulations throughout the state earlier this month and expects to hold more this August. Materials about the proposed legislation are available from CARB in three languages, including Punjabi.
