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Feds poised to unveil mileage standards for medium and heavy trucks

Any day now, the U.S. EPA and the DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could announce the next step toward implementing the first ever fuel mileage standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks.

Attendees of a Diesel Technology Forum press conference held Monday, Oct. 18, stated that EPA and NHTSA were very close to issuing recommendations.

In May, President Obama announced that the two agencies would be teaming up to initiate regulatory action pertaining to truck mileage standards. Prior to the announcement, jurisdiction over fuel mileage fell exclusively to NHTSA.

On June 14, the agencies filed a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register. A pending announcement this week or next would provide insight into what the agencies would like to see in a final rule.

OOIDA leadership is concerned with the involvement of the EPA. The fear is that small-business truckers would be caught in the crossfire if mileage standards were to be too overarching or one-size-fits-all.

“OOIDA strongly supports the concept of better fuel efficiency of MD/HD vehicles and reductions in their overall emissions. However, there are clearly those who believe achieving the goal of increased fuel efficiency can be used as a cloak for other initiatives that are counterproductive to increasing fuel efficiency, the environment and highway safety,” OOIDA President and CEO Jim Johnston wrote in comments filed with the agencies on July 14.

“An application that may work well for one specific operation can have negative consequences to fuel efficiency in a different application,” he said, pointing to loaded and unloaded miles and the diversity of owner-operators to haul a van trailer one day and a flatbed the next.

Johnston said proposals for speed limiters or increased truck size and weight would be counterproductive to both safety and the environment.

“Speed limiters on MD/HD vehicles may certainly increase the efficiency of that one particular vehicle but have the opposite effect on traffic operating around that one vehicle by causing them to consume more fuel as a result of needing to slow down below posted limits, the desire to pass, and the creation of ‘micro-congestion,’” Johnston wrote. “In the trucking industry this is euphemistically referred to as an ‘elephant race.’”

Increasing the size and weight of commercial vehicles would have an adverse effect on infrastructure conditions and would compromise safety for all highway users, Johnston wrote.

Proposals to make truck cabs out of lighter materials wouldn’t have the benefits that some agencies and companies believe. Johnston instead is urging the overseeing agencies to implement crash-worthiness standards for truck cabs where none exist now.

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