Page 244 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

If it’s not out on the road, we’re losing money.
–Bill Bryan, fleet manager, PJ’s Rebar Inc.
a lot of questions. I went to classes and got edu- cated. And then I started filling out applications for the Carl Moyer Program grant. Gary Galindo from Peterson walked me through the whole ap- plication process. He’s the one that reached out to us and let us know what was coming. He shared what he was hearing from everyone else’s ordeals and downfalls, and that made things easier.”
What Bryan hadn’t counted on was having to redo the application process for all his trucks. Multi- ple times. “I spent two weeks of twelve-hour days getting all the paperwork done. Then I’d find out that the filter CARB had approved was no lon- ger valid and I’d have to start all over again.” In the end, PJ’s was awarded $285,000 in Carl Moyer funds to retrofit seven trucks with DPF filters and repower an eighth. But the sixty-forty split would still take a big bite out of the company’s pocket. “Adding those filters wasn’t going to fix the prob- lem. It was just going to buy us some time so we
could strategize and put together a plan for buying new equipment. So we turned it down.” Instead, they opted to lease emissions-compliant trucks for their port business and save their money for new trucks down the line.
In the meantime, Bryan had to deal with PJ’s fleet of older trucks. Like most people at the forefront of the emissions craze, he’d hoped that Diesel Par- ticulate Filters (DPFs) would be the magic bullet. Turns out they weren’t. Today, the after-treatment market is big business. And CARB’s escalating re- quirements are the driving force. “The first DPF filters reduced particulate matter by 25 percent. That was in 2000. When CARB started talking about newer, stricter goals, the DPF manufac- turers knew they could make a lot of money on all these trucks. Somebody came out with a 50 percent reduction particulate matter filter, which made the other products obsolete. It became a race to out-engineer each other,” explains Galindo. “It started at 25 percent in 2000, then 50 percent in 2004, and 85 percent in 2007. And then somebody came along with an 85 percent filter that could also lower the NOx levels.” Add to that the many different brands, types, and sizes of DPFs—plus the fifty-four pages of regulations of the Private Fleet Rule—and the confusion was palpable.
For Bill Bryan and PJ’s Rebar, the whole DPF is- sue has been a big challenge. “If you’re not out on the freeway opening it up and blowing it out, these filters are going to clog more often. That’s the big- gest problem right now,” said Bryan back in Oc- tober 2016. “I’ve gotten past the compliance stuff because I’m getting pretty good at all that and I stay one step ahead of it. But the cost of maintain- ing our equipment has gone up by 15 to 20 percent over the past several years. I’m taking trucks into the shop more often now because of the CARB situation. Every time a truck gets a check-engine light and has to go in to get the DPF boiled out, that’s another cost. And that hurts because if it’s not out on the road, we’re losing money.”
Bay Area traffic congestion
242 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG