California Finishing Plans to Issue Vouchers to Help Small Carriers Buy Cleaner Vehicles

This story appears in the Feb. 23 print edition of Transport Topics.

California environmental regulators are drawing up plans to issue vouchers as early as this spring to small fleets to help them pay for replacing old trucks with units carrying a 2007 or newer diesel engine.

Eligibility for the grants of up to $35,000 would be limited to carriers with not more than three on-road heavy trucks. The grants, which could be held up by the state’s budget crisis, would help pay for replacing 1993 and older heavy-duty trucks.

However, California Trucking Association officials criticized the program because the small carriers targeted to receive the financial assistance are in the last segment required to comply with the state’s new diesel emissions reduction regulations — but not until 2014.

Carriers with more than three trucks must comply with new emissions requirements beginning in 2011 and would not benefit from the new funding assistance, a part of the Carl Moyer Incentive program, said Matthew Schrap, director of environmental affairs for CTA.

“It’s better than a stick in the eye,” Schrap said, but the plan falls far short of the estimated $5.5 billion it will cost the transportation industry overall to comply with two new truck and bus regulations approved in December by the California Air Resources Board.

Schrap said that the funding program is aimed at the estimated 50,000 model year 1993 or older trucks that do business in California. In all, about 1 million trucks operate in the state.

“It doesn’t really help everybody; it’s really only a segment of the industry,” Schrap said. “The thing is, you need to have a really old truck, and nobody in larger fleets has really old trucks anymore.”

But Peter Christensen, a CARB air pollution specialist, said larger fleets in some of the state’s air quality districts already have been provided funding assistance through the Moyer program’s fleet modernization program, in addition to the $1 billion in funding stemming from a transportation bond referendum approved by California voters in 2006.

The Moyer program this year is allocating $140 million to several transportation modes including rail and ships, Christensen said. To be eligible for the new grants of $20,000 to $35,000, a small carrier must own a 1993 or older model year truck that has operated 75% of the time in California, logging at least 30,000 miles a year over the past two years. A check can be sent to a truck dealer on a carrier’s behalf within two weeks after the application process is completed, Christensen said.

Drayage trucks are not eligible because they are funded by other programs.

The draft Carl Moyer program guidelines were posted on the CARB Web site in late January at: www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/moyer/voucher/vipgldraft.pdf

In December, CARB passed two new regulations requiring carriers to add expensive emission control devices to their trucks and to use fuel-saving equipment endorsed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWay program.

Under the new CARB fleet rule, most heavy-duty trucks operating in California must be outfitted with diesel soot filters beginning in 2011 and meet 2010 engine emission standards between 2013 and 2023.

In a last-minute decision, CARB extended the 2011 deadline to 2014 for small carriers after dozens of them commented publicly that the new regulations would be so costly their businesses would fail.

Christensen said CARB is hoping to start the $10 million-to-$15 million new small fleets voucher program, administered by the state’s air-quality districts, this spring.

However, huge state budget shortfalls have caused the state to put a temporary hold on the Moyer funding, Christensen said.

“We’re all very hopeful that we will be able to kick off this thing as we have planned,” Christensen told Transport Topics. “That said, I think that we’re facing a budget situation unlike anything I’ve ever seen before in this state. So we have to be prepared for anything.”

But Julie Sauls, a CTA spokeswoman, said the state budget crisis raised questions whether diesel emission-reduction funding, including the bond issue assistance, would be available, even in the near term.

That bond funding also is currently frozen, Sauls said.

“The bonds aren’t being sold because the credit market is tight and our bond rating is abysmal,” Sauls said. “If you can’t sell a bond, how can you have funding for grants?”

Schrap said that California legislators are considering a fuel-tax proposal to fund the small carrier portion of the Moyer program.

“So now you could have the entire industry subsidizing a whole other segment,” he said.