With less than a month to go before the effective date, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has suspended enforcement of the state’s greenhouse gas (GHG) trailer standards for at least two years. At the same time, a trailer industry group has asked a federal appeals court to move forward with a ruling on whether trailers can be regulated under the federal GHG standards scheduled to take effect in 2021.
The California Phase 2 GHG regulation is designed largely to align California’s standards and test procedures for medium and heavy duty engines and vehicles with the federal Phase 2 GHG emission standards and test procedures, finalized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in late 2016. The standards call for an array of equipment and technologies – such as aerodynamic devices, tire pressure monitoring systems, low-rolling-resistance tires, and lightweight materials – that can improve a vehicle’s fuel efficiency when applied to a basic trailer.
The Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA), however, filed a federal petition for review of the trailer standards under GHG 2, arguing that a trailer could not be regulated as a “motor vehicle” and that the standards are “arbitrary and capricious” because they don’t accurately reflect the way trailers operate in the real world. The court granted a stay in October 2017 and put the case in abeyance, pending EPA and NHTSA’s reconsideration of their respective trailer standards.
CARB nonetheless approved the state GHG plan in September 2018 and set a January 1, 2020, implementation date. In the notice posted December 3, CARB acknowledges the “uncertainty” surrounding the federal rules on which the California standards are based, including the court challenge and subsequent bureaucratic inaction, but many in the industry have expressed concern in recent months that the state agency simply isn’t ready to move forward on its own, given the challenges of ramping up certification and compliance programs. Equipment manufacturers and trucking companies are also concerned about problematic state-by-state regulations.
Mike Shuemake, president of Fresno-based Central Valley Trailer Repair, suggested CARB had taken an aggressive stance on trailer regulation even with the federal trailer GHG rules in a legal limbo – but the agency hasn’t been able to keep up with its own plan for implementation.
“I think they finally realized the rule had some issues, especially with the definition of model year, and that it might be easier to take a breather for two years and let that part of the rule become moot,” said Shuemake.
He added that enforcement of its rules has always been “the elephant in the room” for CARB.
“I have not yet heard of one enforcement violation being issued for the original GHG rule that I believe went into effect in 2011,” said Shuemake. “They are well known for writing rules but not having the resources to enforce them, which can be proven by looking at current compliance rates with various rules effecting our industry.”
Indeed, to date CARB has certified only one trailer manufacturer, Frank Maly, director of CV transportation analysis and research for ACT Research, told TBB.
“The trailer manufacturers were getting pretty frustrated trying to get their different certifications,” said Maly. “Other than one trailer OE who happened conveniently to be in the state of California, nobody else was on the list. And it wasn't because they weren't trying.”
As Maly explained, manufacturers have reported going through several rounds of submitting documentation for review, receiving instructions for revisions, and making those corrections only to have CARB ask for additional, completely different changes. Similarly, answers to questions would differ depending on which CARB staffer responded.
“It looks like logic prevailed,” Maly said. “They actually put this suspension of enforcement into place because, if they wouldn't have, the trailer sales situation in California would have been a three-ring circus.”
TTMA, meanwhile, expressed satisfaction with the CARB suspension. Jeff Sims, TTMA president, noted that the organization supports expanded use of GHG equipment “wherever greater fuel economy can be achieved,” and he suggested “competitive market forces” in the trucking industry will achieve that end.
“Manufacturers will be able to build trailers in 2020 and 2021 [and perhaps longer] according to individual customer specifications, with or without CARB’s mandated GHG equipment, depending on the customer’s particular operations and the ability of that equipment to actually reduce fuel consumption in those operations,” said Sims. “The customer’s decision will apply for the life of those trailers. There will be no retroactive enforcement on trailers not equipped with all of the mandated GHG equipment if CARB later reinstates enforcement after a six-month advance notice. In the meantime, if customers and manufacturers desire to start voluntary compliance with the CARB regulations in 2020, they may do so.”
Federal review stalled
Separately, Sims reported that TTMA has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to move toward a final decision on the petition for court review of the federal rules, and not to wait for EPA and NHTSA to announce results of their ongoing regulatory reviews.
Simply, according to the December 3 filing, the federal agencies “have made no discernible progress, and there is no prospect of progress in sight” for reconsideration of the GHG 2 standards for trailers.
“The Agencies have filed eight consecutive 90-day status reports [with the court], each of which says, in essence, ‘we’re working on it,’” the TTMA request states. “None of the status reports offer any meaningful information about the Agencies’ progress; what if anything has been accomplished; or what if any schedule the Agencies have in mind for completing their review or even completing any initial step in their review.”
And, with the NHTSA rules scheduled to take effect in January 2021, TTMA members now would rather let the court decide the legality of the trailer standards than continue to wait for action from the federal government with a deadline looming.
“Trailers are highly customized and are ordered months in advance because they are built to order, meaning that TTMA’s members will begin taking orders for 2021 in the coming months,” the filing continues. “TTMA’s members need to know whether the Rule will apply to the trailers they sell for the 2021 model year, and they cannot realistically continue to wait for the Agencies to engage in the rulemaking that has been promised since 2017.”
ACT’s Maly has previously noted EPA’s lack of progress on the matter, based on the quarterly court updates, and he suggested that the latest TTMA filing was the right move.
“I can certainly appreciate the industry association’s position that we need to come up with a solution here, so we all know what's going on as we move forward,” he said.
The court has yet to rule on the request to lift the abeyance and to establish a briefing schedule for the TTMA challenge.
