Fuel-Efficiency Focus Should Be on Tractors, Engines, Rather Than Trailers, ATA Says
This story appears in the Aug. 2 print edition of Transport Topics.
Federal transportation officials considering fuel-efficiency standards for heavy trucks should concentrate their early regulatory efforts on engines and tractors, not trailers, American Trucking Associations said.
In written comments to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, ATA said that of five heavy-truck fuel-efficiency alternatives proposed by the agency, initial mandates should not be focused on costly and complex modifications to trailers.
ATA said that requiring trailer standards is not a “viable short-term solution” to address fuel-efficiency gains, given the large number of trailers and trailer manufacturers and the high initial capital costs for fleets.
“We’re not opposed to trailer regs,” Glen Kedzie, ATA vice president and environmental affairs counsel, told Transport Topics. “We recognize that trailers won’t be taken off the table entirely. But from everything that we’re hearing and based on the ratios of tractors to trailers, it probably isn’t prudent addressing trailers in the first of many rounds of these regulations.”
NHTSA is considering several options in proposing fuel-efficiency standards for heavy trucks that probably would be voluntary for model year 2014 and mandatory for 2016 trucks. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also plans to propose fuel-efficiency standards by 2014, but President Obama has asked the two agencies to work together to “harmonize” their requirements.
The five NHTSA alternatives under consideration range from taking no action to setting a performance standard that addresses engines, tractors and trailers. The alternatives were outlined in a June Federal Register posting for the agency to complete an environmental impact statement.
ATA said NHTSA also should consider requirements to govern truck speeds to 65 miles per hour, make highway infrastructure improvements to mitigate congestion and allow heavier, high-productivity vehicles.
The Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association agreed with ATA, calling trailer requirements “impractical.”
“While on the surface it may seem that there are only a few types of trailers, the reality is that for each type of trailer (van, reefer, flatbed, low-boy, tank, etc.), there are a myriad of possible configurations,” Jeff Sims, TTMA’s president, said in written comments.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association disagreed with some of ATA’s suggestions.
“Speed limiters on [medium-duty/heavy-duty] 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,’ ” OOIDA’s president, James Johnston, wrote in comments.
Johnston said that constructing a uniform fuel-efficiency standard for any particular medium- or heavy-duty vehicle poses challenges that must contemplate myriad multiple- uses, operating environments and nearly innumerable other factors that could render “any fuel-efficiency standard set by the government impossible to attain outside a perfect laboratory setting.”
Johnston also opposed allowing heavier trucks as a way to increase fuel efficiency.
“It is widely recognized that our nation’s highways and bridges are already in dire need of significant maintenance and rebuilding,” Johnston wrote. “Increasing vehicle weights will lead to accelerated deterioration of highways and bridges, thus reducing their life cycle and requiring significant maintenance and rebuilding.”
“Increasing the size and weight of MD/HD vehicles does pose significant safety risks to the motoring public besides the hidden environmental costs,” Johnston wrote.
