CAFÉ Standards For Big Rigs May Hit Construction In 2014

President Obama announced last week that USEPA is going to expand the motor vehicle emission standards to include large trucks, including 18 wheel dump trucks widely in use by construction businesses. After they go into effect in 2014, the truck standards will undoubtedly result in significant price increases for new dump trucks you are planning to add to your fleet. The construction industry, so recently prized as the engine of economic stimulus legislation, is taking yet another 2x4 to the back of the head on this one.

New CAFE Standards, But No Motor Fuel Tax Substitute

In what was initially billed by the White House as "an historic" announcement of new mileage standards for cars and trucks, the Obama administration today released new rules which will accelerate by four years a mileage standard fleet average of 35.5 miles per gallon. The new mileage requirement will now go into effect in 2016 instead of 2020 as the Bush administration had planned. Meanwhile, nobody in Congress on or Pennsylvania Avenue has as yet bothered to explain how all the revenue the "cash for clunkers" program and these new CAFE rules will drain from the federal highway trust fund is going to be replaces in reauthorization legislation due by the end of this month, but which clearly will be deferred for at least six months while Congressional committees puzzle over the question how to raise taxes on the traveling public without appearing to raise taxes on the traveling public.