The mentally ill are still passing false information and trying to scare people into unemployment, inflation and scarcity.
“But CARB was counting on federal approval for the rule under the Biden administration. When that didn’t come, the board decided to dodge challenges to the regulations under President Donald Trump and withdrew the waiver last month.
For smaller trucking companies like Ritchie Trucking Service in Fresno, before CARB backpedaled, they were worrying whether they’d be able to stay in business.
Poncho Baker, CEO of Ritchie Trucking, said he considered whether they’d need to scale back operations. The company’s current routes take them as far north as Oregon and as far east as Nevada. Baker worried the current electric vehicles on the market wouldn’t be able to accommodate those long-distance trips without adding significant time to drivers’ shifts.
“It’s not that we’re against technology,” he said. “It’s just not there yet.”
Newsom wanted to get all trucks off the road. If successful, food would no longer be delivered from farms, goods needed could not be transported. If Newsom had succeeded, California would be closed down. That sounds like a mental illness (I am trying to be kind).
Fresno trucking companies celebrate end of electric mandate – but health advocates question clean air goals
The California Air Resources Board withdrew its Advanced Clean Fleet rule in the lead-up to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a move some Fresno area trucking industry leaders are applauding while clean air advocates worry the move will come at a cost for residents.
by Julianna Morano, Fresnoland, 2/5/25 https://fresnoland.org/2025/02/05/fresno-trucking-companies-celebrate-end-of-electric-mandate-but-health-advocates-question-clean-air-goals/
What’s at stake?
After the California Air Resources Board “alienated an entire industry,” some people in the Fresno area trucking industry said, they’re celebrating the withdrawal of the board’s diesel truck ban. But clean air advocates worry about the health impacts for residents of one of the nation’s dirtiest air basins.
After the California Air Resources Board withdrew regulations that would’ve largely phased out diesel trucks in the state over the next two decades, local trucking companies let out a sigh of relief.
They’d been bracing for CARB’s Advanced Clean Fleet rule, which required manufacturers to stop selling diesel trucks by 2036 and large trucking companies to go zero-emissions with their medium and heavy-duty vehicles by 2042.
But CARB was counting on federal approval for the rule under the Biden administration. When that didn’t come, the board decided to dodge challenges to the regulations under President Donald Trump and withdrew the waiver last month.
For smaller trucking companies like Ritchie Trucking Service in Fresno, before CARB backpedaled, they were worrying whether they’d be able to stay in business.
Poncho Baker, CEO of Ritchie Trucking, said he considered whether they’d need to scale back operations. The company’s current routes take them as far north as Oregon and as far east as Nevada. Baker worried the current electric vehicles on the market wouldn’t be able to accommodate those long-distance trips without adding significant time to drivers’ shifts.
“It’s not that we’re against technology,” he said. “It’s just not there yet.”
CARB’s withdrawal of the Advanced Clean Fleet rule bought companies, like Ritchie Trucking, some time.
The move drew applause from some industry leaders and even some elected officials, too, including Asm. Esmeralda Soria.
“California’s withdraw(al) earlier this month of federal approval to implement Advanced Clean Fleets and other air quality regulations now provides a longer runway for small owner-operators of truck fleets to transition their fleets,” Soria said in a statement shared with Fresnoland. “I support California’s decision.”
But clean air advocates in the San Joaquin Valley worry if the region can afford that extra time – and that delays will come at the expense of residents’ health.
The San Joaquin Valley consistently has some of the dirtiest air in the nation. Despite efforts from CARB and the local air district to regulate harmful emissions from trucks and other pollutants, the region still not only fails to meet up-to-date air quality standards, but they’re currently striving to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency targets from decades ago.
The consequences of these failures are deadly. Diesel exhaust is a known carcinogen, and it can exacerbate conditions like asthma and heart disease. Neighborhoods, like south central Fresno and Calwa, located close to highways and truck routes suffer the most acute impacts.
“Those people will pay the price,” said Kevin Hamilton, the Senior Director of Government Affairs at the Central California Asthma Collaborative.
“The climate and air pollution benefits we could have gotten will be delayed,” he said of CARB’s rollback, “and consequently this will drive temperature increases, climate events, and the cost to the healthcare system.”
How the diesel regulations would’ve worked
CARB’s now-scrapped Advanced Clean Fleet regulations required manufacturers in California to sell only zero-emissions medium and heavy-duty truck models by 2036.
By 2042, the rule required certain trucking companies to electrify their fleets.
The electrification rule applied to government agencies that own trucks, operators of drayage trucks at seaports and rail yards, and large trucking companies that either had $50 million or more in gross annual revenue or a fleet of 50 or more vehicles, according to CARB.
Trucking industry leaders have long been critical of the regulations, saying the timeline was infeasible.
“They alienated an entire industry,” said Mike Betts, president of the Betts Company in Fresno, which manufactures truck parts, among other products.
For Victor Martinez, the mayor of Mendota, the restriction on purchasing diesel vehicles could’ve been make or break for the small trucking company he co-owns, R. Hernandez Express.
Martinez’s fleet has only eight vehicles. But he said they can’t afford the zero-emissions models.
“We’re not on the same level as Coca Cola. We’re not on the same level as Pepsi. We’re not on the same level of all these giant companies,” he said.
He was pleased to see news that the Advanced Clean Fleet regulation was being scrapped so they can continue buying the diesel models they can afford.
However, other industry leaders say despite the rollback of the Advanced Clean Fleet rule, other CARB regulations have already restricted the availability of diesel vehicles.
“A lot of people think everything’s been solved with the PR that said ACF (Advanced Clean Fleet) is canceled, no more electric,” said Kim Mesfin, president of the Affinity Truck Center dealership in Fresno, “and nothing has been solved here.
“We still have our battle to clean the air, and we have our battle to free up the selling mandates,” she added.
Among the challenges for truck dealers like Mesfin is the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which requires an increasing percentage of truck sales to be zero-emissions models over the next decade.
In the absence of a buying mandate for trucking companies to pair with the selling mandates for truck manufacturers and dealers, Mesfin said, dealers like herself are stuck in a bind.
“Now, with ACF not being put in place, the fleets don’t have to buy electric. And if they’re not forced to, there’s very few that would choose to – only the ones where it works.
“There are some wonderful cases where electric vehicles work wonderfully well,” she added, “but it’s generally the smaller trucks, not the big Class 8 trucks – the biggest ones we see on the road.”
What’s next for the air quality regulations?
Now that CARB has tossed the Advanced Clean Fleet rule, the state’s air regulators have to find another path to meeting air quality goals in California’s heavily polluted basins.
But that was an uphill battle already in the San Joaquin Valley Air District. Right now, regulators’ goal isn’t current EPA guidelines – it’s a 2012 standard on diesel particulate matter and other pollutants.
While the statewide Air Resources Board oversees “mobile sources” of emissions, like passenger vehicles and heavy duty trucks, the local air district is responsible for regulating “stationary sources” of emissions in their district, like smokestacks at factories.
Without the emissions reductions anticipated from the Advanced Clean Fleet rule, CARB as well as the local air district regulators now have to go back to the drawing board and find other reductions for their next update to the plan.
“How and where they’ll find those additional reductions that they need is as yet unknown, because they were right up against the wall on this,” Hamilton said, alluding to the San Joaquin Valley’s 2024 plan.
When asked where those additional reductions might come from, Tania Pacheco-Werner, who sits on both the CARB and San Joaquin Valley Air District boards, said it’s difficult to say what’s going to end up in the plan.
“It’s a complicated formula,” she said.
“It’s in the early stages of running the data and seeing what we need.”
Other paths forward for one of the nation’s dirtiest air basins
Regardless of CARB regulations, some experts believe the trucking industry will voluntarily head toward electrification.
Pacheco-Werner pointed to the Clean Truck Partnership, an agreement that the country’s biggest engine manufacturers signed with CARB. The agreement states the manufacturers will comply with CARB’s 100% zero-emissions sales rule by 2036 regardless of any legal changes.
“The nation’s manufacturers are still committed to working with CARB and others around the nation,” said Pacheco-Werner, “to ensure that we have the cleanest trucks available out there.”
Some companies like Pepsi and Amazon have already rolled out electric and hydrogen vehicles, CalMatters reported.
But the question remains about the timeline, and whether it’s one communities can afford.
Political volatility from one presidential administration to the next also makes it difficult for trucking companies and regulators to know what to plan for going forward.
“In four years, it could change again,” Baker of Ritchie Trucking Service said.
Pacheco-Werner said she’s hopeful some of the other transportation plans coming down the pike – including the region’s next shot at Measure C transportation tax renewal – could provide other sources of emissions reductions, like bike lanes and public transit.
“That’s my hope because no matter what,” she said, “no matter who is in office, kids with asthma still breathe our air.”
