California is ruled by regulators answering to no one at all

On January 1, 2021, the California Air Resources Board ended the three-day pass program that allowed out-of-state trucks to operate in the state for a few days each year without meeting the state’s costly requirements for a new or retrofitted diesel engine.

It’s right there on the CARB website, on the Truck and Bus Regulation Reporting page, under Truck and Bus Reporting Documents.

With container ships stacked up off the coast of Long Beach waiting to be unloaded, it probably would be helpful to allow out-of-state trucks to drive into California and increase the capacity for transportation from the ports.

But California isn’t governed that way.

The California Air Resources Board shows no mercy in enforcing its 2008 Truck and Bus Regulation. Even the DMV helps out with enforcement. Beginning in 2020, trucks that were not CARB-certified compliant were not allowed to renew their DMV registrations.

The financial penalties for non-compliant trucks can be massive. In November 2018, two national carriers reached a settlement that saw them pay $125,000 and $100,000 each for operating non-compliant trucks in California, and they also were ordered to pay $575,000 for air filtration systems at L.A.area schools. In a separate case earlier in 2018, three trucking companies agreed to a settlement that cost them a combined $201,000 for having noncompliant trucks in California.

Even shippers who don’t own or operate trucks can be hit with regulatory fines in California. According to CARB regulations, companies that hire trucks for use in California must verify that the carrier they hired is only using compliant trucks. The fines can run up to $10,000 per year, per carrier, if the shipper fails to verify compliance.

It’s enough to make anybody flinchy, and it certainly limits everybody’s options during a supply-chain crisis.

CARB’s sledgehammer enforcement regime follows years of highly questionable, if not wholly indefensible, regulatory tightening around the throat of the trucking industry.

For example, the Truck and Bus Rule, adopted in 2008, made it illegal to operate a truck on California roads if the engine was manufactured before 2010.

You read that right. Although every truck on the road in 2008 was manufactured before 2010, CARB made them all illegal. Under the Statewide Truck and Bus Rule, existing diesel engines could only be operated if they were retrofitted with a special diesel particulate filter. Those devices cost about $15,000 and had other problems – the Alliance for California Business documented fires and mechanical malfunctions caused by the filters, filed a lawsuit against CARB, and unearthed a CARB study that proved CARB itself had concerns about the functioning of the filters.

Tens of thousands of relatively new trucks that previously had been legal on California roads had to be sold by their owners at fire-sale prices to people in other states or countries, because effective January 1, 2020, they were no longer eligible for California DMV registration.

Add it all up: fewer California trucks, fewer out-of-state trucks, higher costs for new trucks with new diesel engines, and not even a three-day pass to let non-compliant trucks into the state to help out during a supply-chain crisis. This is how regulatory agencies mindlessly strangle the economy while writing glowing reports and press releases about their accomplishments.

The story of the adoption of the Truck and Bus Rule is a scandal in itself. The vote followed a review of staffer Hien Tran’s statistical analysis of the health effects of diesel particulate matter, otherwise known as soot. Later it was revealed that Tran had purchased his doctoral degree in statistics from a diploma mill for $1,000.

By the end of 2019, the Truck and Bus rule had cost the trucking industry an estimated $10 billion.

Now CARB wants to force the trucking industry to replace diesel trucks with zero-emission electric trucks. The Advanced Clean Trucks regulation is part of CARB’s effort to enforce the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, which initiated evertightening mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The question that’s never asked in California: “At what cost?”

As long as California is ruled by regulators who answer to nobody, you’ll have to pay whatever it costs. That is, if you can find it on the shelves.