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Troy: Hello and welcome truckers, today is April 3rd, this is the 27th episode of Big Rig Banter I’m your co-host Troy Diffenderfer.
Lenay: And I’m your favorite co-host Lenay Ruhl.
Troy: Lenay how are you doing today?
Lenay: Pretty good, how are you Troy?
Troy: Good, enjoying the weather you know, it’s finally spring I feel like we’re getting a few days of warm weather so I’m definitely enjoying that. What about you?
Lenay: I totally agree, I think uh, this was a really hard winter for me, it was so cold, it snowed a lot, I’m like, feeling much happier.
Troy: Yeah. What is your favorite thing about Spring?
Lenay: I’m really excited to just see everything start to bloom and um, that’s like my favorite time to go out and like go hiking uh, even though it can be a little soggy but, um, I just like to get out into nature. What about you?
Troy: Um, I like baseball season. Baseball season is fully underway now, I’m a big baseball fan for any of you New York truckers out there I’m a big Mets fan. Um, so I’m excited to kick back and watch some baseball and enjoy definitely the outdoor weather, um
Lenay: Do you go to any baseball games?
Troy: Yeah, I’ll go, I will definitely go to some Barnstormers games, um, that’s our local team here in Lancaster and um, hopefully I can, I do want to make it to a Mets game sometime up at Citi Field so… that would be really exciting.
Lenay: I know this might be hard to believe, but I used to go to a lot of baseball games when I lived in Florida.
Troy: Wow, nice!
Lenay: Yeah, I mean all the Spring training was down there so I’d go to the Phillies, the Yankees um, and then we had the Tampa Bay Rays, um, which they played right in St. Petersburg where I lived so… we’d go to those games at least once a week. I really just went for the French fries and the beer but, I did uh, eventually figure out what was going on.
Troy: Yeah Lenay, we’ll have to definitely hit up a baseball game this summer, but uh, truckers we want to know what your favorite baseball team is. Feel free to reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag Big Rig Banter. We want to know who you’re rooting for this spring. But yeah truckers, we have an exciting episode today for you, we’re talking all about sustainable trucking. You know, we’ve had topics in the past that covered uh, doing some green trucking, or maybe some new technologies on the road like um, autonomous vehicles and electric trucking but, these new trucking emissions standards are really interesting, and they definitely have a lot of truckers talking.
Lenay: Yeah for sure! And we uh, you know we’re trying to understand you know why these emissions standards are so important and um, they’re rolling out a phase two of the emissions standards regulations so that’s going to bring some changes so, we pulled in some experts to kind of give you guys an idea of what to expect.
Troy: Yeah, if you’ve seen our teaser video that we released last week, if you haven’t make sure to check it out on our Big Rig Banter YouTube page, but um, we were talking about basically the who, what, when, where, and why of these emissions standards and we left off with the why. And I think the why is really just to promote, uh, sustainable trucking and you know, reduce our carbon footprint but uh, we’ll have a guest on from the California Air and Resources Board (CARB) and they’ll be able to give you a little more information on that.
Lenay: Alright! Let’s uh, give that interview a listen!
Music
Troy: Alright I’m here with Kim Heroy-Ragalski, she’s from the California Air and Resources Board, and Kim is the chief of the mobile source regulatory development branch. Kim, how are you?
Kim: I’m great, good morning!
Troy: Good morning! Well, good afternoon for me, and good morning for you! Um, but just right off the bat, I’m so… why don’t you give us a little run down of your job, job title, it’s definitely a mouthful!
Kim: It sure is but it’s not as bad as my terribly long last name.
Troy: *Laughing*
Kim: Um, I am an engineer by training, and I’ve been with the Air B for about 20 years and I have a couple dozen people working for me, um we’ll see engineers and scientists and what we do, we mostly do, is work on setting um, the standards that ensures that engines and trucks that are um, sold for use in California are as clean and low-emitting as um, as they can be. And so our, my teams, work on emissions standards for what we call criteria polluters, like oxides of nitrogen, and diesel particulate matter so um, compounds that can be released into the air and that can cause health problems like heart attacks, and cancer and can cause formation of smog and ozone. And then we also work on standards for greenhouse gasses, um, like um, like carbon dioxide. So, to ensure that emissions of carbon dioxide are as low as possible so that folks can use their trucks and do all the commerce that the need to do while having as little impact as possible on um climate change. And the cool thing about setting emissions standards for CO2 is that if trucks have lower CO2 emissions, that means that they burn less fuel so it means um, that truck owners can be spending less on fuel. So, it’s kind of a win-win. So those are the big things my group is working on, emissions standards for heavy duty trucks.
Troy: Yeah, I wanted to jump into that I mean, this episode’s all about these emissions standards and obviously the big question that truckers have is, why is it so important and how it’s going to- how is it going to benefit them. I know you touched on it a little with uh, the fuel costs, how else can uh, this benefit truckers?
Kim: Well, I think, well okay. I think as far as in their role as being in their business role in being a truck owner or truck operator, probably the biggest thing is um, the fuel savings, but of course we all kind of live on the same planet and the reason that um, the reason that we are limiting CO2 emissions from trucks is to address the problem of climate change and I think um, probably everyone was paying attention to the news over the past couple years is aware that um, overall worldwide temperatures are increasing, um, there’s just a lot more weird weather, um, and a lot of um really harmful events like droughts and heatwaves and um, forest fires and these are all happening um, because of the accumulation of uh, greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. And so, um, big rig trucks are um, a major contributor to the overall CO2 emissions and so, um, if we’re able to altogether get those emissions down that’s you know, one step towards addressing that broad global problem.
Troy: Yeah for sure! A big thing our truckers are talking about and we’ve written blogs on is kind of this two-phase roll out when it comes to the greenhouse gas emissions standards. I know uh, phase two rolled out, or phase one rolled out and phase two is in full swing can you kind of give our truckers some more information on that?
Kim: Yeah yeah, absolutely! Um, so yeah, you’re absolutely right that the phase one standards began with um, model year 2014 and then ratcheted down again with model year 2017 and then the phase two standards came again with model year 2021 and then get more stringent again in 2024 and again in 2027 so it’s really been this more than you know, decades long um series of standards to make gradual progress towards making the uh, trucks more and more fuel efficient, and lower emitting. And the way the phase one standards were set up, they were intended to really just use only technologies that were um, already available. Um, and then the phase two standards pushed a little further to try to um, push manufacturers to make some advances that could be incorporated into, into trucks. If you want, would it be helpful to walk through like the elements of the standards? Like what they actually um, cover?
Troy: Um, let’s hit on, so what does this mean for the trucking industry or what changes can we expect to see and are they going to affect truckers, I know there’s a bunch of kind of um, different implemented changes like you said, um, whether it’s a current technologies or stuff going on in the future.
Kim: Yeah well, the, so the standards regulate the engines and the vehicles. And they sort of set a numerical limit for manufacturers and then manufacturers have a lot of flexibility in choosing sort of from a broad menu of options of different technologies that they can use to meet the um, numerical limits and so what truckers will see in um, in their daily life is just they’ll see these technologies becoming more common on new vehicles. Oh and just to clarify, when we’re talking about the phase one and phase two standards are requirements on manufacturers, that they just apply to new vehicles so there’s no retrofit requirement, there’s no requirement for vehicles that are already in use, these would just be things that would um, they’ll just see more technologies when they’re going to like purchase a new, a new truck. If um, if you want I could um, mention a couple of the technologies that people might be seeing? Would that be helpful?
Troy: Oh, for sure, I think our truckers would love that.
Kim: Okay, okay. So um, it’s all technologies aimed at reducing um, CO2 and improving fuel economy. So, one element is aerodynamics so vehicles can move through the air with less wind resistance, so um, you could see different farings, skirts, on um, on the sides of uh tractors and trailers and rear farings, um. Also in addition to improving aerodynamics, there’s improved tires to reduce rolling resistance, so low rolling resistance tires um, and those are for both of these, we expect some improvements well actually we know some improvements were put in place to meet the phase one standards and we expect more and more as the phase two standards kind of come into um, come into effect. There’s also um, some technologies that might not be so obvious but um, the engine manufacturers have really been doing a lot of work to try to make the engines absolutely as efficient as possible. So, they’re looking like in great detail at what’s going on inside the engine and trying to like, reduce friction wherever they can and like use better um, lubricants so that the engines can, so the engine parts can move without, with wasting less heat. So, there’s all kinds of um, little improvements that um, go into the engine and some can end up improving the um, cutting the fuel used by like 5%. So, it’s the manufacturers are really looking high and low to um, come up with every way they can eke out a little bit more fuel economy improvement. Um, let’s see. I’m trying to think what else would be of most use, um there’s also some um, more advanced technologies that are um, an option for, for getting credit in the rules so we’re hoping as, particularly as time goes on and that outer years, like towards the 2027 years that manufacturers would be um, making more zero emission vehicles, more vehicles with um, more hybrid vehicles, systems like stop-start systems that turn off the engine when its not propelling the truck forward, some cylinder deactivation, which is you know, shutting down the cylinder when the engine’s under relatively low loads so you don’t waste um, fuel um, running cylinders that aren’t needed. There are all kinds of improvements like that um, it should be relatively, if you’re just buying a truck, it’ll probably all uh, be relatively seamless, like you wouldn’t necessarily be aware of every one of these technologies but it’s all, it’s all in there. Oh, another one that truckers might notice is um, like predictive cruise control. So, like helping the truck um, helping the truck drive in such a way that it takes advantage sort of the natural terrain um, and wastes less fuel. So um, yeah! So those are some, hopefully that helps.
Troy: For sure! And Kim, if you can, can you kind of paint our listeners a picture when it comes to maybe what the landscape of trucking emissions was like before these regulations were passed? Kind of how things were like before and why it was so important for there to be change.
Kim: Yeah, yeah absolutely! Again for the greenhouse gas standards it’s really um, heavy duty trucking is um, one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions so it’s one of the places if you look at like where the nation uses fuel, it’s one of the um, the big categories so if you’re you know as a policy maker, if you’re looking at like how are we going to address this overwhelming problem of climate change, you have to kind of try to address all of the, the big sources. So um, I believe heavy duty trucks in California are responsible for about 8%, so like almost 10% of the total greenhouse gasses. So that’s, that’s why from an environmental regulator stand point, we were interested and then the nice thing about um, this issue, is of course that lower emitting trucks can be the fuel savings, that the truck owners and operators can benefit from. So um, whereas, so as these standards are coming into effect, the fuel economy, like the average sort of miles per gallon for a class A truck is getting better and better. Before the phase one standards went into effect, we think on average it was about 5 1/2 miles per gallon. And of course, there’s assumptions that go into this about what the truck is hauling and everything that’s just a rule of thumb. We think before phase one it was about 5 1/2 miles per gallon once phase one was fully implemented in 2017 it was up to about 6 miles per gallon.
Troy: Awesome!
Kim: So, um, when phase two is fully implemented in 2027, it’ll be at like 9 miles per gallon.
Troy: Great!
Kim: So that’ll make a, hopefully, save folks a lot of money while benefitting the planet.
Troy: And obviously the election is coming up soon and there’s going to be definitely some changes within the government, is it possible that the government could modify these standards? And um, are you predicting them to change at all within the upcoming couple years?
Kim: Hm. It’s always possible I mean both California and the Federal government have a rule-making process and we’re kind of, you know, it’s always possible that things could change… I suspect that the phase two standards um, will be quite stable because they were really, um, they were really consensus standards that we worked out um, with you know, California and the Federal government and really the cooperation of industry so including, um, you know manufacturers and um, trucking organizations because it’s, it was a really nice situation where it kind of does benefit everybody um, and so, I know when the latest administration came into power um, the latest federal administration came into power, they have a really strong um, agenda at uh, at trying to prevent unnecessary regulations so they were really scrutinizing um, all the existing regulations and new ones that were coming into effect to look for things that they could um, throw out right, or roll back. And I know that the um the engine and truck manufacturers um, were quite vocal in letting them know that no no, as you’re looking for regs, regulations to eliminate, don’t eliminate this one because this is really a win-win for everyone.
And so, um, I think they really helped protect these standards from being changed. There is one wrinkle that I should talk about…
Troy: Sure!
Kim: The way that, so, the phase one standards cover engines, and vehicles. From class 2b up through class 8. So that’s everything, 8500 lbs. gross vehicle reading and up. Kay? So, engines and vehicles for phase one. For phase two, it covers engines and vehicles and also trailers. So, for the phase two um, federal standards, that was the first time the federal government ever put in place regulations trying to make trailers more efficient. Because to make a trailer more efficient you’re putting on skirts, you’re putting on um, uh, tire inflation monitoring systems, tire pressure monitoring systems and automatic tire inflation systems and you’re putting on low rolling resistance tires. So as part of the federal standards, um, that were originally adopted for federal phase two standards they included trailers. However, there was a lawsuit, that um, tractor trailer manufacturers association sued saying that USCPA didn’t have authority to regulate trailers and subsequently USCPA put a stay on their trailer standards. So USCPA is not implementing their standards for trailers. However, California is. So, when we aligned with the federal phase two program, we aligned with the whole thing including the trailer standards, and we are implementing those in California. So, your question was, are there parts of this that are likely to change? And I think that’s an area where it would be um, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if um, if something happened with the federal trailer standards even, they may be completely rolled back, they may be modified or um, what I kind of personally hope happens is that they be um, sort of brought back to life and aligned with what California’s doing. Because one thing that kind of makes everything simpler and easier for everyone is just that the emissions standards are uniform across the country. So, it just makes it much simpler for manufacturers to understand what they need to do um, if there’s just one set of rules for the whole country rather than something different if you’re selling in California versus everywhere else. So, the trailer standards might um, might change. So, we’re implementing them in California, they’re starting with model year 2020 and then the federal trailer standards are currently in limbo. So, if folks are watching for potential changes that’s definitely one area to watch.
Troy: Awesome Kim, well thank you so much, that was a ton of great information and I’m sure our listeners are going to really appreciate it, it’s definitely something that’s going to affect them within the next couple years. Um, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Kim: When you were talking about what does this mean for truckers, what are they going to see, one other issue that the phase one and two standards actually address is the issue of refrigerant leakage. It turns out that refrigerants are actually incredibly potent greenhouse gasses and I don’t know if you’ve heard of the term global warming potentially, when scientists look at different chemicals to see kind of how bad they are for climate change they compare everything back to CO2. Um, so compare everything back to carbon dioxide and when you look at kind of how potent refrigerants are compared to CO2, they’re like, they can be a thousand times more potent. So, we’re so worried about eking out little improvements in fuel economy but if you leak pure refrigerants onto the road and they just evaporate into the atmosphere, that can cause a huge impact. And so, one of the things that EPA did and that we aligned with is um, putting stricter controls on refrigerant leaks. And like we actually in California, we felt this was so important that we are requiring manufacturers to do a really careful, thorough job in showing us exactly how the refrigerant system is designed, and making sure that they’ve really crossed their T’s and dotted their I’s and checked carefully to make sure that it’s put together so that it won’t, won’t leak. So that’s, that’s something that folks might be aware of and might notice so hopefully they’ll be having less trouble with refrigerant leakage.
Troy: Well thank you! Once again that’s Kim Heroy-Ragalski, from the California Air and Resources Board. Kim, thanks so much for joining us today!
Kim: Thanks for having me!
Troy: Of course!
Troy: Alright, and a big thanks to Kim Heroy-Ragalski from the California Air and Resources Board and truckers, feel free to leave a review wherever you’re listening to the podcast, we’d really appreciate it!
Lenay: Yeah and for those of you who are tuning in for the first time, I’d just like to give you some background, that Big Rig Banter is powered by AllTruckJobs. AllTruckJobs is an online job board so you can go over there to AllTruckJobs.com and check out our blog which Troy and I both have articles on and um, you can find jobs all across the country.
Troy: Alright and thank you. Once again, I’m your co-host Troy Diffenderfer.
Lenay: And I’m your favorite co-host Lenay Ruhl.
Troy: And this has been Big Rig Banter.
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