“As of 2023, only 0.3% of all registered heavy-duty vehicles in the U.S. were zero emissions models according to the International Council of Clean Transportation.”

The Advanced Clean Fleets rule put forth by CARB (California Air Resource Board) would have mandated California’s truck fleet to move to zero-emission models starting in 2024 and reaching zero emissions between 2035 and 2042. Also, all new heavy-duty vehicles sold in the state were to be zero-emissions by 2036.

Just prior to President Trump’s inauguration, California regulators withdrew its proposed mandate for only zero-emission trucks over the next twenty years. Unfortunately, the state of Oregon has already implemented such legislation as of January 2025.

CARB’s chairperson, Liane Randolph was quoted by CCJ saying that “While we are disappointed that U.S. EPA was unable to act on all the requests in time, the withdrawal is an important step given the uncertainty presented by the incoming administration that previously attacked California’s programs to protect public health and the climate and has said will continue to oppose those programs.”

This particular attitude toward policies that return us to common sense and realistic answers to protect public health and the climate vis-à-vis laws, rules, and regulations that impact our industry, is typical of the myopic and almost fanatical attack foisted against the use of fossil fuel held by CARB, EPA, and most of the left-leaning regulators in Washington, D.C. What’s worse, is that until now, whenever anyone questioned the “Green New Deal” concerning any of its hypotheses, premises, projected models, or timetables warning of Armageddon, we were considered as undesirable, deplorables, ignorant, uninformed trash that was in favor of polluting the air, the water, and the atmosphere. That is and never was the industry’s position at all and the last 75 years of steady and reasonable controlled evolution prove it.

The re-awakening of the oil and gas industry will be the cornerstone of a re-invigorated economy in the USA. Developing the Keystone Pipeline, allowing new refinery capacity to be profitable, and freeing up the ability for finding and developing more buried resources will lead to global fuel independence, the creation of millions of high-quality jobs, a resurgence of research and development of new uses for products using petroleum, a much stronger military, and lower energy costs.

Our industry is overwhelmingly in favor of exploring all sources of energy and the innovative and creative ways to develop all these sources into a variety of uses. Electrical power, hydroelectrical power, nuclear power, solar power, and to some extent, even wind are some of these. The use of hydrogen and other elements are being investigated as well as battery technology. I feel that ultimately the answer to the evolving concept of long-haul trucking will be a hybrid that will use many forms of energy. It will be a “SMART” truck but not an autonomous one. It will still have a human driver and not a robot although the useful “driving life” of the CDL professional might well be extended into the eighties and nineties, age wise. It will have an increased weight capacity, not a lower one. It will get the equivalent of 15 to 20 miles per unit of energy. And, it will not be allowed to enter, exit, pick-up, or deliver, much less idle, on the West Coast.