18 Oregon Trucking Association, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch Threats to Trucking in 2024 Will I Be Able to Buy a Truck Next Year? By Jennifer Sitton | OTA Communications Consultant TRUCKING COMPANIES AND owner-operators in Oregon are not new to legislative and regulatory threats or laws that impact their ability to operate, but in 2024, there are a variety of new regulations coming from out of state that will significantly impact Oregon-based trucking companies’ ability to purchase new trucks in the coming years. OTA members who have been involved in our legislative and regulatory discussions over the last year—or attended OTA’s annual leadership convention this summer—know that the threats to trucking in 2024 are immense. While many of these new regulations are moving targets, with implementation dates constantly being pushed back or adjusted, OTA is keeping a very close eye on how they are progressing and the impacts they will have on our members. Below, you will find summaries of the primary regulatory threats to trucking that we expect to be implemented in the coming years. EPA’s 2027 Low-NOx Rule & California’s Omnibus NOx Rule In Dec. 2022, the U.S. EPA finalized a NOx regulation that established more stringent NOx and particulate matter standards applicable to heavy-duty trucks beginning in 2027. The rule decreases the existing 0.15 NOx standard to 0.035 by 2027. More than a dozen states followed the EPA’s lead and implemented their own NOx regulations, including California and Oregon. On Aug. 1, 2023, California proposed its own Omnibus NOx regulation which established a new NOx rule for new 2024 and later model year medium and heavyduty diesel engines. The rule would have decreased the NOx standard to 0.05 in 2024 and 0.002 in 2027, making California’s standard more stringent than the EPA and on a faster implementation timeline. When it became clear that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) would be unable to supply any engines that qualified for the EPA regulation by the beginning of 2024 and would be unable to sell any trucks once the standards went into place, most states delayed their implementation timelines to 2025, including Oregon. California, however, has yet to delay implementation of its NOx rule. Trucking industry members have expressed significant concerns with these new stringent requirements and have made it clear that newly manufactured vehicles that comply with the new NOx rules will come at a significantly increased cost to truck companies. California’s Advanced Clean Truck (ACT) Rule To reduce emissions, ACT requires OEMs of medium and heavy-duty vehicles to sell zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) or near-zero-emissions vehicles (NZEVs) such as plug-in electric hybrids as an
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