Pruitt’s EPA to Waste Taxpayer Dollars on Redundant Truck Emissions Hearing and Review Process

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, Scott Pruitt’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hold a hearing for the reconsideration -- with intent to repeal -- pollution limits from glider kit trucks (freight trucks with a used engine installed in an otherwise new frame). The repeal would declassify "glider kits" as new vehicles or engines, making them no longer subject to air pollution control requirements. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced his intent to revisit the glider loophole that was just closed in August of 2016.

Glider trucks are freight trucks with a used engine installed in an otherwise new frame. After pollution limits on heavy-duty freight engines were updated in 2010, glider trucks sold with old, dirty engines are dramatically more polluting than new trucks with modern engines.

Used engines in gliders can emit as much as 40 times the pollution of modern engines. If the glider truck loophole were left open until 2025, EPA estimates indicate that glider vehicles would comprise only 5% of the freight trucks on the road but would account for one third of all nitrogen oxides and particulate matter emissions from the heavy truck fleet, resulting in as many as 12,800 premature deaths.

In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune released the following statement:

"Once again, the Trump administration is trying to pull one over the American people, this time trying to pass off a wolf in sheep's clothing: the outside of these trucks may look new, but inside, they're run by old dirty engines. One just has to look at the dirty smog billowing from these truck exhaust pipes to know that a rollback of this clean air standard doesn’t benefit the American people. This is a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to rig the system for the truck glider industry at the expense of public health and safety.”