 FRESNO – Truckers have a lot of time to think.
It must have been during one of those long-haul
trips that some trucker came up with a new idea
for cutting down on those ugly black clouds
pouring out of his smokestack.
The concept goes something like this: If you
(meaning, the state) will help me (meaning, the
trucker) buy a new truck, I’ll give my
old-but-not-too-old rig to another trucker who
is driving one of those really ancient,
smog-manufacturing 18-wheelers that shouldn’t
still be on the road anyway.
The objective: to help reduce pollution. And to
help truckers replace their older vehicles,
those built between 1994 and 2002, with classier
new, low-polluting rigs. The decade-old trucks
would go to owners of trucks built before 1994,
which omit even nastier fumes.
The idea has been suggested by the state
trucking industry. So far, state officials are
less than overwhelmed. “We don’t want to be in
the position of helping Wal-Mart buy new trucks
for regular fleet turnover that would be taking
place anyway,” Jack Witowski, head of the
on-road branch of the California Air Resources
Board, told the Fresno Bee.Return to
October 2007 Issue
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