It wasn't supposed to be like this. The trucking industry largely expected the transition to the 2010 emissions rules to occur pretty much without a hitch. After all, the emissions control systems being deployed to meet the 2010 standards — selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and advanced exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) — were “known technologies” that had been around for a while.

And though freight volumes started to slump halfway through 2008 while fuel prices yo-yoed to new highs and lows, truck and engine OEMs still figured there would be a pre-buy ahead of the new standards in late 2009, maybe not as severe a spike as what occurred in late 2006 before the 2007 standards, but one that would at least offer a chance to reap some healthy revenues ahead of another expensive technological changeover.

What a difference a few months makes. The U.S. economic slowdown turned into a full-blown global recession, new-truck sales cratered, and the expected pre-buy vanished from the forecasts of most OEMs. With fleets and owner-operators focusing on survival, plans to buy new equipment may well be shoved deep into 2010 — if they buy any at all — delaying any expected return on the hundreds of millions in research and technology OEMs invested preparing for stricter emissions rules.

The downturn proved so bad that Navistar International joined forces with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn. (OOIDA) to request an “economic exemption” to the 2010 rules — allowing OEMs to keep selling 2007-compliant engines past the Jan. 1 2010, deadline. While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied that request, the issue of delay continues to crop up as the economic outlook remains gloomy at best.

The EPA fired an even more serious shot across the bow in a Dec. 11 letter last year to Cummins Inc., publicly calling into question the safety of its SCR technology, in particular the use of copper zeolite as a catalyst material to reduce the oxides of nitrogen (NOx) levels in diesel exhaust.

“The EPA has a long-standing concern that copper has the potential to catalyze dioxin formation in conditions experienced in incinerators and in diesel exhaust,” wrote Karl Simon, director of the agency's compliance and innovative strategies division, in his letter to the engine maker. “Therefore, questions have been raised regarding the potential for copper containing diesel SCR catalysts to promote the formation of dioxin compounds.”

As a result, EPA is conducting its own tests of engines equipped with copper-zeolite-based SCR technology (a time-consuming process at best, and this with less than a year to go before the deadline) and warned even “inconclusive results” would prevent those engines from being certified — a move that in effect would tell truckers not to buy them.

“If the data are inconclusive or show increased dioxin emissions, then the EPA likely will not certify an engine family utilizing such products unless a manufacturer can provide data that demonstrates the intended use of the copper catalyst doesn't increase dioxin emissions,” Simon stresses. “Emissions test data provided for this purpose must have been conducted using sound sampling and testing protocol.”

Not exactly a move that creates a smooth final approach to the 2010 deadline.

• MORE A BUMP THAN BUST
• THE FREIGHT RECESSION
• TESTING 2010