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Eased rules meant to help smaller trucking companies compete with the big boys of freight hauling has resulted in a loophole that lets one in 25 trucks sold last year operate with effectively no emissions controls at all. The loophole in federal police force lets new, engineless truck bodies, or gliders, exist outfitted with old, rebuilt diesel engines — and avert conforming to electric current emissions laws in event for xviii-wheelers.

By i approximate, non-conforming glider trucks emit 43 to 55 times as many pollutants as a new truck with a new engine. The International Council on Clean Transportation says last twelvemonth's run of gliders polluted more than the recalled half-million VW diesels, were the VWs left on the road until they wore out. Research done at Tennessee Tech says the trucks are relatively non-polluting, but publicity now has the school re-examining the results.

Tests of a Peterbilt 579 tractor (in a higher place) with a rebuilt diesel engine installed show high pollutions levels. Peterbilt sells glider (engineless) tractor units, as do others, simply non onetime engines. Others add together them.

Old Engines Circumvent Current Pollution, Safe Regs

The issue has been percolating for the past yr, and gained the public heart with a Thursday New York Times article, "Steering Big Rigs Effectually Emissions Standards." Here's the backstory as we run across information technology:

Federal rules envisioned reusing crash parts, peculiarly engines. The tractor torso might become through several engines, or engine rebuilds, over its lifetime. It was seen equally a way to assistance smaller trucking companies or owner-operators who haul freight on contract. The bonus was that an older engine could be installed in a newer glider and be subject only to older emissions regulations. If the engine dated to 1999 or before, the truck driver didn't take to maintain the detailed logs that ensured truckers weren't driving without residual periods.

Others saw opportunity they could, then to speak, drive a truck through. The business concern increased to the signal where one of every 20-25 Class vii or Form 8 (big honkin') trucks now sold is a rebuild. That amounted to about 10,000 glider/rebuild trucks in 2022, up from ane,000 around 2022. The Obama assistants moved to shut the loophole, while the Trump administration embraced it.

Co-ordinate to the Times article, the biggest seller of the loophole trucks is the Fitzgerald family dealership in Crossville, Tennessee. The extended family had donated well-nigh a quarter-million dollars to US Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, now running for governor. In Congress, Black introduced legislation to keep the loophole alive. Fitzgerald also underwrote a Tennessee Technological Country University report showing few emissions bug with the glider rebuilds; the study carried the signature of the university president. Fitzgerald besides announced it would buy Tennessee Tech a new academic research eye. The kinesthesia was unhappy enough, and vocal enough, with the written report that president Philip Oldham nigh-faced and said a misconduct-in-enquiry investigation is under fashion.

In November 2022, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt — the guy who said he has to fly first class considering he gets hassled flying motorcoach — granted a waiver to whatsoever cap on how many glider kits can be built. The Obama administration planned to limit whatsoever one company from building more than 300 a twelvemonth, itself a pretty liberal estimation of pocket-sized business concern. Industry officials say there are enough old-but-rebuildable diesel fuel engines in junkyards or warehouses that the glider industry could sail along for decades.

What the Critics Say

The International Council on Make clean Transportation is a not-profit funded in function by the ClimateWorks Foundation, along with foundations prepare upwardly past Hewlett and Packard. Information technology was ICCT that commissioned the tests at West Virginia University that outed the VW diesel in 2022-14. Information technology commissioned tests on glider kit trucks versus fully new trucks. The EPA also ran tests.

Chassis dynamometer tests were run by the EPA's National Vehicle & Fuel Emissions Laboratory on the pop Peterbilt 389 and 579 sleeper-cab tractors congenital as glider vehicles, and compared against similar Peterbilts that came from the factory with new engines. The findings: "Pollutant emissions (NOx, PM, HC, CO) from the … glider vehicles were consistently higher than those of conventionally manufactured 2022 and 2022 tractors."

  • Highway cruising, the bulk of truck functioning, constitute NOx emissions from glider trucks were 43 times as high as emissions from usually manufactured trucks. PM (particulate matter) emissions were 55 times as loftier as conventionally manufactured trucks.
  • Transient operations, pregnant around boondocks, stop and go: NOx emissions were 4-five times college, PM emissions were 50-450 times higher. Particulate matter includes, simply isn't limited to, the visible sooty fume under acceleration.
  • In addition, HC and CO emissions were "significantly higher … just less of a concern than the NOx and PM emissions." Finally, CO2 emissions were lower. Translation: the glider trucks got better mileage.

It was the ICCT in a Dec article that made the Volkswagen comparison. VW had to call up 455,000 diesel engines because of adulterous on emission testing, essentially by turning off pollution controls except when the auto sensed it was being tested. Authors Rachel Muncrief and Josh Miller wrote:

Scott Pruitt'due south proposed regulation would expose United states citizens to an additional i.5 1000000 tons of NOx and xvi g tons of PM emissions, equivalent to more than 12 billion dollars in health damages over the next decade. To put this into perspective, those boosted NOx emissions are 13 times what the touch of the Volkswagen fraud in the U.s. would have been if all 482,000 VW diesel cars sold with defeat devices earlier the EPA and CARB put a stop to it were driven until they died of natural causes.

If the charges are correct, it's astonishing that VW is paying a huge penalty — not unfairly — and took a large hit on its share price for the Dieselgate offense that is an order of magnitude less severe that what a relative handful of xviii-wheelers may be doing to the environment.

As for big trucking companies and the builders of the tractors that pull big trailers, virtually have spoken out confronting the loophole. That includes Volvo, Navistar, UPS, the National Association of Manufacturers, and wellness and ecology groups such as the American Lung Association and the Consumer Federation of America.