You guys ever hear of " glider trucks "?

[fastfredracing]

There is a large truck repair garage right across the street from me. Whenever they get stumped on a german car, they usually just farm it out to me.
I went to look at an x3 there yesterday with a horrible rod knock, and got to talking with them about all the new trucks sitting around without motors
Apparently , you can purchase a brand spanking new Peterbuilt ( or any brand for that matter) sans engine
This company then retrofits them with old school mechanically injected diesel motors, or at least pre emissions engines, and then they do what Pa calls an enhanced inspection to declare them road worthy, and safe.
Seems that this is a pretty popular move for medium sized trucking companies, and leasing companies . They say that they do hundreds of them every year.
It is all about skirting new emissions regulations, as they are super problematic, and cause lots of down time, and lost revenue for the companies.
I had never heard of this before . I always wondered what was going on down there, because there is always 4 or 5 brand new trucks,without engines, and they are also always buying wrecked semi trucks and dismantling them .

[wdfifteen]

How much extra do you have to pay for an "enhanced inspection?"

[legion]

One thing our politicians seem not to understand is that when the cost of compliance is too high, people will be willing to spend less money to get around the law.

For example, let's say that the income tax was set at 1% with no deductions and no exceptions. Compliance would be close to 100% because the cost of avoiding it would almost certainly be higher. (This is an example to illustrate a point and not intended start an argument about optimal tax rates.)

[fastfredracing]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

How much extra do you have to pay for an "enhanced inspection?"

The enhanced inspection is most commonly used to for salvaged vehicles. For a normal passenger vehicle it is roughly $150.00 , and is just a more comprehensive safety inspection, and verification of vin #'s , mileage etc. I plan on adding this onto my own certifications also.
I believe I saw that their fee was $385 for large trucks, or somewhere in that range . Minor hurdle to over come when you think of the savings .
I find it funny that a 1985 cummins with 350,000 miles is more reliable, and cost effective to run , than a brand new high tech diesel power plant .

[drkshdw]

We have enhanced inspections in Iowa for 'home built' and 'rebuilt' vehicles. Basically it's just the state patrol checking your paperwork of the parts you used to make sure they didn't come from a stolen car. For big items like engines, transmissions and body parts you have to provide the VIN of the vehicle they came from and where you got them to prove they didn't come from a chop shop. As long as you have that paperwork, there is little to no actual 'inspection' of the actual vehicle.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by legion

One thing our politicians seem not to understand is that when the cost of compliance is too high, people will be willing to spend less money to get around the law.

For example, let's say that the income tax was set at 1% with no deductions and no exceptions. Compliance would be close to 100% because the cost of avoiding it would almost certainly be higher. (This is an example to illustrate a point and not intended start an argument about optimal tax rates.)

All truth.

[greglepore]

There was a discussion of this on NPR just the other day. Its on the political radar screen now that its a big deal, and a popular way around tightening diesel emissions regs. First I'd heard of it.

[svandamme]

I don't get it

Surely the emissions rules for new trucks are tied into the vin of that new truck?

How would the regulations suddenly not appy if a new truck is retrofitted with an old engine.

Unless they also retrofit the old vin from that old truck along with it.
But isn't that VIN fraud at that point?


It's like getting a new 991
You won't get that thing through smog by retrofitting it with a 69 2.2 T engine..

You'de have to weld in the vin from a 69 T to the chassis, but it really would not fly if you roll up with a 991 and claim it's an early T

[legion]

Rules on this kind of thing vary from state to state. I'd be willing to bet that this kind of activity is concentrated in just a few states whose title laws make this possible. And generally once a vehicle is titled in one state, it is easy to titled anywhere.

A similar problem in the U.S. is "title washing". Damaged vehicles with salvage titles (marks vehicle as having been in a serious accident) are moved to states with lenient title laws. The vehicle is repaired (often poorly) and the title is clean. This is a particularly bad problem after hurricanes cause massive flood damage to a large number of vehicles.

[legion]

Lots of good articles out there:

https://www.smart-trucking.com/glider-kits.html

Statistics were released recently, revealing what those in the trucking industry already knew. The 2012 year production, Class 8 trucks, were experiencing an incidence of repair rate of almost 50%, meaning that half of all new trucks built last year had already suffered breakdowns and downtime in the first year of service.*

The majority of these breakdowns were related in some way to their new emission efficient engines and the surrounding plumbing. This came as no surprise to anyone who has been involved in trucking for any serious length of time.*

The average owner operator, when buying a new truck, cannot afford breakdowns or downtime in the first year of service for a brand new piece of equipment. The financial hit from such a breakdown could be enough to put an owner operator out of business…. the down payment plus the payments on a new truck, AND the down time involved, can easily sink an owner operator.

Experienced owner operators knew that buying a new truck in 2012 was not a smart business move and didn’t buy. If their equipment needed to be replaced, they looked for alternative solutions.

https://www.overdriveonline.com/gliders-101-five-common-questions-about-glider-kits-answered/

Despite the industry’s lackluster truck sales since the recession, Cookeville, Tenn.-based Fitzgerald Glider Kits has seen sales double each year since 2010, and it expects the trend to continue in 2014.

Though Fitzgerald concentrates its builds and engine programming on fuel economy and maintenance ease, its sales point to a growing trend for its owner-operator customers: the desire to run a new truck powered by a pre-exhaust gas recirculation engine.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/16/564655569/epa-moves-to-shield-older-semi-truck-engines-from-emissions-rules

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to change how it classifies "glider vehicles" — heavy trucks that are built by pairing a new chassis with an old diesel engine and powertrain. The move would keep the EPA from imposing Clean Air Act emissions standards on the trucks.

[asphaltgambler]

Several big advantages. Initial cost is @20-30% less for a new road ready 'kit' vs dealer. There is no DEF system or EGR, etc. Which for most is a cost and mechanical nightmare. Detroit will still sell you their 60 series complete engine which you could fix with a hammer and a steak knife on the side of the road.

Overall there are no disadvantages. The biggest issue with modern diesels is the EGR system which recycles soot and particulates right back into the combustion chamber causing very short engine life causing piston / ring/ cylinder wear. DEF fluid can be pricey per mile if you're a long haul trucker.

The EPA is really trying to clamp down on these guys, we'll see how it plays out.....

[legion]

https://junkscience.com/2018/01/milloy-in-wsj-epa-bureaucrats-go-rogue-on-glider-truck-emissions/

Tommy Fitzgerald went from living in an abandoned 1962 Ford school bus in Kentucky to founding a $700 million business selling so-called “glider trucks.” Success enabled him to become an angel investor for local businesses in rural Kentucky and Tennessee.

But instead of encouraging, if not celebrating these accomplishments, the Obama administration issued regulations designed to put Fitzgerald out of business and kill thousands of glider truck industry-dependent jobs nationwide.

Fortunately for Fitzgerald, elections have consequences, like President Trump’s regulatory rollback and Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt’s implementation of that policy.

Glider trucks are a godsend to smaller trucking companies that can’t afford pricey new trucks, which are constantly being made even pricier by ever-tightening emissions regulations. Fitzgerald, who spent his early days as a mechanic and truck driver, discovered in 1989 in his one-bay Tennessee service center that he could take a salvageable drivetrain from a wrecked truck, rebuild it, add on a new cab-chassis and then sell what is almost a new truck — a “glider” truck — for about 25 percent less than the cost of an totally new truck.

Fitzgerald’s innovation took off, creating a market of about 5,000 glider truck sales annually, two-thirds of which are his.

Although the glider market is tiny compared to the approximately 300,000-vehicle-per-year new truck market, and although new truck makers sell the new cab-chasses components to glider makers, some in the new truck industry see gliders as a threat to be eliminated. Enter the Obama EPA.

Led by the likes of Volvo and trade groups, rulemaking documents show the new truck industry urged the Obama EPA in 2016 to add gliders to a then-ongoing rulemaking regulating truck greenhouse gas emissions. The problem, however, was the Clean Air Act only authorizes EPA to regulate emissions from new trucks and gliders are not new trucks. But that didn’t stop the Obama EPA.

Ignoring that glider truck engines (the part responsible for emissions) are used and then rebuilt, EPA claimed gliders could be considered as new because the truck’s cab-chassis is new. The agency supported its reasoning by citing a single ad in a trade magazine reading, “Fitzgerald Glider Kits offers customers the option to purchase a brand new 2016 tractor… Fitzgerald has mastered the process of taking the ‘Glider Kit’ and installing the components to work seamlessly with the new truck.’’ [Emphasis added] But EPA conveniently omitted the ad’s next sentence, which read, “The end result is a brand new glider with an engine and transmission that has been completely rebuilt from the ground up.”

The Obama EPA concluded that “reasonable judgments must be made, and in this case, the agency believes it reasonable that the tail need not wag the dog.” So in October 2016, EPA issued its rule classifying gliders as new trucks. The rule would have essentially shuttered the glider industry. While gliders can outperform new trucks on some emissions tests, they underperform on others and so would violate EPA standards. Enter Trump EPA chief Scott Pruitt.

In July 2017, Fitzgerald petitioned the EPA to reverse the Obama EPA rule on the grounds that gliders aren’t new trucks. Citing authority granted by several Supreme Court cases — including the 2005 decision in National Cable & Telecommunications. Association v. Brand X Internet Services which held “a change in administration brought about by the people casting their votes is a perfectly reasonable basis for an executive agency’s reappraisal of the costs and benefits of its programs and regulations” — EPA chief Pruitt proposed in November to rescind the rule.

But anti-glider forces, including Volvo, began re-lobbying EPA after the July filing of Fitzgerald’s petition, according to lobbying disclosure records. Somehow by October, without the knowledge or authorization of Pruitt according to EPA staff, an EPA laboratory in Ann Arbor, MI ran two glider trucks through an emissions testing protocol. The resulting report, also released without the knowledge or approval of Pruitt, concluded the tested gliders exceeded new truck emissions of nitrogen oxide, particulate and other conventional pollutants.

Neither the report’s process nor its results, however, salvage its sketchy origin. It was not peer reviewed. It was not printed on official EPA letterhead or assigned an internal EPA document number. It is not even available on the EPA lab’s web site. But it was mysteriously made available to be cited by glider opponents in the early December public hearing on the proposed rollback. The report does not reveal the origins of the two tested gliders. It further indicates that one truck was run with its engine harness full of oil and its “Check Engine” light on. It was hardly a fair test.

Yet there is much irony in that the tested gliders had lower greenhouse gas emissions than new trucks — the emissions that were the original reason EPA wanted to regulate gliders as new trucks.

The effort to destroy the glider truck industry should be more than just another example of the regulatory state gone rogue.

Philip K. Howard wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently that bureaucrats protected by civil service protections are powerful, yet often unaccountable. They can, with virtual impunity, thwart the legal authority of a President to implement his own policies.

As Fitzgerald put it, “In the business world, employees who actively seek to undermine are usually terminated for insubordination. Why should it be different for government?”

[dlockhart]

Tommy's sister Lisa is a motorcycle trackday regular in the east/ south east so the tie-in with TOBC was pretty natural. And they are beautiful trucks.

[ossiblue]

Originally Posted by svandamme

I don't get it

Surely the emissions rules for new trucks are tied into the vin of that new truck?

Originally Posted by legion

Rules on this kind of thing vary from state to state. I'd be willing to bet that this kind of activity is concentrated in just a few states whose title laws make this possible. And generally once a vehicle is titled in one state, it is easy to titled anywhere.

A similar problem in the U.S. is "title washing". Damaged vehicles with salvage titles (marks vehicle as having been in a serious accident) are moved to states with lenient title laws. The vehicle is repaired (often poorly) and the title is clean. This is a particularly bad problem after hurricanes cause massive flood damage to a large number of vehicles.

This sums it up, IMO.^^

Those states, like California, which tie emission rules to the VIN, would not allow these glider trucks to be titled/registered. In fact, in California, if you install an older engine into a newer body, it must meet the emission standards of the newer vehicle. Pa. obviously does not have the same restrictions so the glider truck industry will flourish there unless there is a state legislative change or the EPA settles on a policy defining what is a "new" truck.

[ckelly78z]

I suspect that the older IDI diesels are being used for their ability to run on less than ideal fuel (I.E. DIY biodiesel fuel). Nothing more than a good filter system, a mounted centrifuge, and a good supply of used oil for endless cheap fuel.

[speeder]

I can’t believe that in 2018, major truck manufacturers cannot build an emissions compliant engine that performs well and is reliable. New cars are cleaner than ever and w less scheduled maintenance and last longer than old ones. Mercedes turbo diesels have run egr systems since at least the 1970s and while the actual egr fails eventually, they don’t cause any engine problems. And those were much, much dirtier engines burning much dirtier fuel.

There are late model HD pickup trucks w 400k miles running DEF w zero problems. None of this makes sense.

[speeder]

Originally Posted by ckelly78z

I suspect that the older IDI diesels are being used for their ability to run on less than ideal fuel (I.E. DIY biodiesel fuel). Nothing more than a good filter system, a mounted centrifuge, and a good supply of used oil for endless cheap fuel.

Used oil and biodiesel are two different things. Clean biodiesel is great and any emissions compliant 2018 diesel will run fine on it. If by, “used oil”, you mean used motor oil, anyone burning that in a vehicle should be shot in both kneecaps. What makes some heinous people think that they have a right to pollute the air that everyone breathes in order to save a couple bucks?

[RKDinOKC]

Back in the day had a Full Size 81 GMC Jimmy. It had a 305 that was anemic. Bought and old 78 Monte Carlo with the big valve 400 and swapped em out. Had to take the Jimmy to an inspection place and for $5 the guy checked the serial number off the engine block and gave me an emissions exemption certificate. Pre 1980 vehicles were exempt from emissions. So since the motor was from a pre-1980 was able to run the 81 without smog stuff including catalytic converter. Went from 12 to 20 mpg to boot.

So can understand the logic of putting in an older powerplant.

[berettafan]

lets hope this 'new' EPA can offer some relief to the auto industry.

[LWJ]

When I had Freightliner / Daimler as a customer waaay back when, my most favorite project was a fan shroud for the new low emissions engines. This was about 2000 or so. The emissions rule was then kicked down the road.

Summary: a S-ton of engineering was done to make these oil burners run cleaner. Not an easy task.