I work for a utility that has a very large fleet of medium duty trucks (mostly Freighliner FL60's and Ford F750's with a mixture of cummins and CAT's)..

Fleet Management is doing alot of running around and having meetings right now. It looks like they will be required to retrofit the entire fleet to meet the new 2007 diesel emissions standards. It is still unclear what exactly will be needed to meet the emission requirements at this time and so far the Light duty portion of the fleet does not appear to be affected.. They are definatly running a little scared..

It is hard to believe that the government can make someone retrofit a truck for emissions whenit passed all the emissions for the year it was sold.

Last time I remember that happening was in the late 60's with the NOX stuff..

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR US!!!!?????????

Hope they don't extend it to light duty trucks...!!!

Gerry

 

Not a chance!
The stock vehicle bought from the manufacturer met the emission requirements of the time.
There is no way you would have to retrofit your private vehicle.
Municipal and government fleets may be different, but I doubt it.
I think the government would be in for one heck of a class action if they tried to pull that stunt.

 

I second that! I have been involved in the California State Smog inspection system and even they do not force you to upgrade to the new standards of emissions. If you bring a vehicle in from out of state with noncalifornia emissions they will still let you register it as long as it has over 7500 miles on it and has not been tampered with.

As for heavy duty trucks for fleet use.....who knows! I just think it would be asking too much of them to make a company retrofit to new standards.

 

exhaust aftertreatments are an easy add on to make older engines better meet current emissions standards. most will just be a soot trap or single stage reduction catalist. they will be a service item though, every xxxxx miles it will need to be exchanged with a new/reman one and the old one sent to be cleaned [furnace burned probably]. it will never happen for private vehicles, but for fleet/goverment vehicles, i can see that happening

 

I wouldn't put it past California.
A few years ago they were talking about retrofits for all agricultural tractors and stationary engines. Don't know what ever came of it.

 

Gotta love the garbage that goes on here!

 

Yes they can make you do it , right now refuse trucks and buses are involved , with road trucks getting hit by the end of the year. off road equipment will be next year. along with stationary engine coming after that , even the railroad is not safe from the ruling.

Gerry , tell your fleet management to go with Cleaire , they have great systems to work with different uses.

 

Wouldn't call it garbage one54ton...

When a agency that has several thousand trucks start jumping through hoops to keep those truck on the road I tend to take notice.

Sorry so you are skeptical about it and if you have any information that supports your thoughts then please share it with the rest of us so we can all be better informed..

 

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) in So. Cal passed laws for the phased outlaw of all diesel engines in the smog basin several years ago. Engine manufacturers fought it tooth and nail for several years all the way to the US Supreme Court where the law was finally declared unconstitutional. After the ruling the SCAQMD vowed to come back with laws that would stand up in court.
In the years while this was going to court most of the large diesel fleet operators in the district started phasing out diesel in favor of LNG. In fact just because of the anticipated law Cummins greatly expanded their LNG division to the tune of tens of millions of dollars and came out with several LNG engines.
It's coming eventually.

 

We have tried CNG (no LNG yet) and it really didn't work out for us. Unfortunatly every time we would get some CNG vehicles they would work for awhile but would eventualy have problems. The last large truck we had on CNG sat in the yard for over a year until it was finaly salvaged with less than 5,000 miles on it. A part of the cng system went bad and the comapny that made it went out of business.

Range was also a problem. Our truck usually run 6 to 7 hours out of the day. They drive to a job, and then the compressor and back hoe is run by PTO. by the time you had enough CNG tanks on the truck to allow it to run all day there was no room for the equipment.

I know LNG is much better as far as storage space but the technology to liquify natural gas is still very expensive and at this time not very cost effective.

 

Never say never in this day and age.

 

I can see every class 8 in Cali registered out of state to get around this crap. How they ever going to get the old Mack engines not to blacken the sky??