OTTAWA, Ont. -- Environment Canada has commissioned a report to determine how truckers are circumventing emissions regulations on newer model year trucks.
The report comes as the Canadian Trucking Alliance calls on government to crack down on shops providing services that disable a truck’s emission systems. CTA chief executive officer David Bradley wrote in his Truck News column last month, that a crackdown is in order to ensure compliance with clean diesel regs. (Truck News is a sister publication to CTL)
“By now most people in the trucking industry have at least heard about the repair shops and garages that seem quite happy to dismantle or otherwise tamper with the new trucks’ air quality controls for a fee,” Bradley wrote. “Some of the people involved in this activity are doing so on the quiet, under the noses of the regulators. Others are more brazen and are taking out advertisements or promoting their service on the Web – in plain view of the regulators.”
The announcement of a forthcoming study also coincides with an investigative report conducted by sister publications Truck News and Truck West, which appears in the April issues and will run on Trucknews.com next week.
We found a vast, well-connected network of shops willing to perform ‘DPF Delete’ or ‘EGR Delete’ services, effectively removing emissions systems from newer trucks and reprogramming the ECU to improve fuel economy and performance while restoring emissions output to EPA02 levels or worse. Some of these shops claimed to do 20 trucks a day, with weeks-long waiting lists. The services ranged in price, up to more than $6,000.
A lack of enforcement at the federal and provincial levels has allowed an underground industry to flourish at the expense of the environment.
If you have information on emissions system tampering you’d like to share with Environment Canada, you can contact the CTA’s Marco Beghetto at marco.beghetto@cantruck.ca.