Calif. Aims to Retrofit Traps to Old Trucks

December 20, 2000 9:00 AM, EST

California, where the whole emissions thing started, is at it again. And not just for new trucks of the future, but for trucks and buses already on the road. They could eventually get — gasp! — particulate traps, the expensive, heavy and bulky devices first feared in the early 1990s, when exhaust emissions rules seemed impossible to meet.

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That is according to observers’ readings of the intentions of California’s Air Resources Board, which has been setting ever-tougher emissions standards for cars since for a generation and for heavy trucks for more than a decade (11-27, p. 1). And what happens in the Golden State tends to flow eastward.

“The head of the Air Resources Board has a goal of retrofitting every diesel over 25 horsepower in the state with a particulate trap by the end of the decade,” warned Bob Jorgensen, director of product environmental management at Cummins Inc., upon returning from a recent meeting with CARB officials.

That may or may not happen, said Stephanie Williams, director of environmental affairs for the California Trucking Association. “I think they’re just poking around right now,” she said of CARB officials, who are far from settling on any definite plan for traps.

For the full story, see the Dec. 18 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.