USA Today Newspaper, Section B, Dec 29, 2006
Cleaner Diesel engine rules take effect.
Federal regulations that take effect Monday mandate cleaner diesel engines in new trucks and school buses, dramatically cutting pollution but raising costs. The new engines in combination with low-sulfur diesel fuel that began selling nationwide in October will reduce particulate emissions by up to 98% over the previous generation, the Diesel Technology Forum says. Nitrogen oxide emissions will fall by half.
But the new engines
could add up to $12,000 to the cost of a new big rig truck, which can run upward
of$100,000. In addition, operators fear higher maintenance costs and worse fuel
mileage.
Clean air is not free, says
Rich Moskowitz, who handles regulatory affairs for the American Trucking
Associations, which supports the transition.
Truckers seeking to
beat the price increases made 2006 a record year for truck makers. More than
373,000 big rig trucks were built in North America says Ken Vieth of A.C.T
Research, which follows truck sales trends. The tally easily topped the
previous record of 330,000 trucks in 1999.
But next year, Vieth
predicts "a production drought" with sales falling by more than 40%
to 220,000 as trucking fll1Ils hold off buying to see how the new clean Diesel
trucks perform.
One big maker,
International Truck and Engine, built up to 200 vehicles a day during 2006,
double the normal rate of production. Only about four years ago, production was
as low as 37 vehicles a day because of sagging demand, spokesman Roy Wiley
says.
The Navistar unit
dealt with the extra orders this year "in an orderly fashion", mostly
by having employees work overtime, Wiley says. He says International expects to
weather any industry downturn next year with a sales boost from a new fuel
saving model.
One trucking firm delaying purchases is Schneider National, which
operates a fleet of 15,000 trucks from Green Bay, Wis. Schneider increased its
truck buying in the past three years to make its fleet younger, but will only
take delivery of about 1,000 new tractor trucks in 2007, about half its normal
replacement rate. Most of the new big rigs will arrive in the latter half of
the year, which will "buy us time to
understand the
technology (to) make sure it is reliable," Vice President Steve Duley
says. The company didn't have enough time to conduct long-term test of sample
clean-diesel models to check durability and costs.
The cost to truckers
goes beyond new big rig purchases, according to Moskowitz. The new fuel cost 5
cents to 10 cents more per gallon to refine and may produce lower fuel mileage.
The new engines weigh more, further cutting mileage. "Over the long run,
their increased costs will be passed on to the shippers and ultimately, the
consumers, " Moskowitz says.