"Green logistics/trucking news: President Obama and trucking industry agree on new fuel standards"A fully loaded 80,000-pound tractor-trailer gets perhaps five miles per gallon of costly diesel fuel. If the truck is properly maintained. Going downhill. With a tailwind. Maybe.
By John D. Schulz, Contributing Editor
May 25, 2010
President Barack Obama wants to change that. And, somewhat surprisingly, the American trucking industry largely agrees.
In a Rose Garden ceremony on May 21 with a handful of top U.S. trucking industry and heavy truck manufacturers on hand, President Obama signed a presidential memorandum that for the first time would set mileage and pollution limits for big trucks. The rules are set to take effect with the 2014 model year.
Although heavy trucks comprise just 4 percent of vehicles, they account for perhaps as much as 21 percent of air pollution from mobile sources. Heavy trucks consume 16 percent to 22 percent of this nation’s fuel, or about 54 billion gallons of fuel annually. When diesel reached its peak in 2008, the U.S. trucking industry had a fuel tab that exceeded $150 billion. Although this year’s figure cannot be determined precisely, the tab will approach that again.
After labor and equipment, fuel is the third-highest cost for a motor carrier. The average truckload carrier spends about 12 to 14 percent of its revenue on fuel, with the average LTL carrier spending perhaps 6 percent (The difference is because of the longer lengths of haul of a TL carrier, typically over 1,000 miles).
With the White House under pressure from environmentalists after the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the president chose to go the executive order route on truck mileage standards. That was an end-run around Congress, which could have been expected to dither for years (if not decades) on the issue. Instead, the presidential memorandum directs the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency to develop national standards for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions for heavy- and medium-duty trucks.
“The nation that leads in the clean energy economy will lead the global economy,” Obama declared on May 18. “I want America to be that nation.”
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