We have talked at great lengths about the attempts of the government, both federal and state such as California, to make the commercial transportation industry cleaner. Sometimes it involves the ban of sale of specific engines while allowing their use, but other times it is banning use altogether. There is one method left that the federal government has not yet employed that may work better than all the other regulations combined: reducing or abolishing the Federal Excise Tax (FET) on the purchase of new heavy-duty trucks.
FET Details
The FET is a tale older than most people alive today: it was a 3% tax levied on trucks in 1917 to help fund World War I, and has since expanded to a 12% tax in the current age. That means a trucker who wants to purchase a new truck that would normally cost $150,000 now has to pay an additional $18,000. This creates an incentive for fleets to hold on to older vehicles for as long as they can.
Increasing Age
On April eighteenth, Andrew Boyle of Boyle Transportation spoke to a Senate subcommittee about the environmental impact of big rigs. He brought up an interesting statistic: “The line of demarcation that most people refer to with diesel technology emissions was 2010. Right now, if we look at the national fleet of Class 8 trucks, 47% of them are still pre-2010.”
This information fits in line with the data from the American Transportation Research Institute which says that the average age of all trucks in the nation is 9.8 years.
Because a survey from the American Trucking Associations said that 60% of fleets would “absolutely or most likely” replace older vehicles if the FET were not in the equation, this means that a quick and easy way for the federal government to improve the environment would be to either reduce the FET, make an exemption for replacing a truck of ten model years or older, or abolish it all together.
Conclusion
To change the Federal Excise Tax would mean less revenue for the federal government, so it would show just how dedicated the United States is to reducing emissions in the transportation industry.
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