TRUCKERS' COMPLAIN * USA - CARB Dumps On Dump Truck Industry

"It’s hard to read or write anything about CARB without becoming angry"

Sacramento,CAL,USA -Calwatchdog -Feb 23, 2011: -- For Lee Brown, who’s run a dump truck company in Upland for the last 20 years, business is as bad as it has ever been. The construction industry in California is half of what it was three years ago, and credit is tight for those small companies still hanging on... The $650 million agency (CARB) is a behemoth, responsible for all the state’s pollution and global warming regulations, which it enforces with all the subtlety and kindness of a barroom brawler. Even the revelation that one of its own pollution researchers had falsified his credentials didn’t phase the agency, which received no official sanction... In any case, the new CARB regulation in question imposes tough new pollution standards on all diesel vehicles in the state. It also levies the same steep fines on anyone found out of compliance that CARB observers have come to know and love... According to Brown, who is also executive director the 70-year-old California Dump Truck Owners Association (CDTOA), membership three years ago stood at 1,700 companies. Today it’s about 900, 60 percent of which are small, independent owner-operators. If the rule goes into effect, Brown said it could destroy virtually all of the small business operators... Brown says a truck manufacturer recently told him that the price of a new truck has already gone up $18,000 to take into account the mandatory new pollution equipment. And that’s a year before the rule actually goes into effect. All of this adds up to considerably higher prices charged by dump truck operators. It’s a grim picture of an already grim industry... (Photo from inetgiant.com: A Peterbilt dump truck)