Panel Recommends Including Logistics Companies in SmartWay

SmartWay should be expanded to include the other freight modes besides trucking and should recruit members among the logistics companies that steer work to drayage haulers at ports, said a special advisory panel to the Environmental Protection Agency.

SmartWay is the voluntary partnership formed in 2004 between the trucking industry and EPA to promote best practices and technology that reduce carbon emissions and fuel consumption.

The recommendations were presented Oct. 29 to the Mobile Sources Technical Review Subcommittee, which is expected to forward them in December to EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee.

The working group that made the recommendations was formed in 2011 to come up with a new realm for SmartWay now that the program has made almost a decade of progress with the trucking industry.

Another recommendation was to recruit smaller carriers to SmartWay and look for ways to ease and simplify the emissions reporting requirements for them, which may act as a barrier to membership.