MSW Management | Tier III Challenges

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The requirements bring an assortment of hurdles for manufacturers. For one thing, the folks who make chassis and cabs can’t build their next round of products until they discover exactly how large the new engines will be.

By Dan Rafter

Richard Ball doesn’t know how engine and chassis manufacturers are going to meet all the new emissions specifications demanded by the Tier III requirements of the EPA’s Clean Air Act.

But he does know who will eventually pay for whatever changes the act requires: the residents putting out their garbage cans once a week.

“The Clean Air Act has required, and is requiring, a lot of changes for the garbage-collection industry,” says Ball, marketing manager and dealer operations manager for truck manufacturer American LaFrance. “There are some government rebates that are offered, but it’s still going to require waste haulers to spend more in getting capital equipment. They are going to have to pass that cost along. It gets down to the person who sets out his can every day. He’ll be paying more to have his garbage picked up.”

The 1990 Clean Air Act gave the EPA the authority to regulate emissions, including those spewed by waste-collection vehicles. The goal of the act’s first phases—Tiers I and II—was to quickly reduce the amount of nitrogen oxide that was being pumped out by vehicle exhaust systems.

The Tier III requirements, which go into effect this year, bring a host of new challenges for engine, chassis, and cab manufacturers. For one thing, chassis and cab manufacturers are still waiting for the engine makers to finalize their designs. These other pros can’t build their new chassis and cabs until they discover exactly how large the new engines will be.

Then there’s the issue of heat. The exhaust from the new engines will be significantly hotter during the regeneration process than it is with current engines. What problems will this extremely hot exhaust—reaching temperatures of 1,200°F to 1,400°F—cause?

The biggest problem of all, though, is the uncertainty. Chassis and cab makers don’t know yet exactly what they’ll need to do to work with the new 2007 engines. At the same time, collection companies such as Waste Management are also waiting to see how expensive their new Tier III–compliant vehicles will be.

And once industry pros survive this round of changes, they’ll have to gear up for the Tier IV requirements, scheduled to take effect in 2010. What questions this round of changes will bring are still anybody’s guess.

There is good news, though: Industry officials are confident that all the questions will soon be answered. It’s just these answers that they’re waiting on.

Lofty Goals
No one doubts the new emissions requirements are needed. Who, after all, could argue against the need for clean air?

The new EPA standards are designed to reduce particulate matter emissions in on-highway diesel-powered vehicles by 90%, while also significantly reducing the amount of nitrogen oxide emissions these vehicles produce.

As reported previously in MSW Management, the Clean Air Act requires that particle emissions for heavy-duty diesel engines be reduced to 0.01 gram per brake horsepower per hour. Nitrogen oxide is to be reduced to 0.2 gram.

The Office of Transport and Air Quality of the EPA estimates that by 2030 the new emissions requirements will result in the reduction of 2.6 million tons of nitrogen oxide, 115,000 tons of non-methane hydrocarbons, and 109,000 tons of particulates.

These are all worthwhile goals, according to American LaFrance’s Ball. It’s just the unknown cost of making all these changes that worries him.

“If there wasn’t the cost, people would be all for this,” Ball says. “As far as we are concerned, we are willing to make the changes—a lot of chassis companies are—to make the environment safer and cleaner. But it does put a large strain on our customers on the price side. That’s the toughest part. Does it sway the fairness of who can actually participate in the garbage-collection business?”

Ball and others in the waste-hauling business wonder if the government-required changes—and the costs associated with them—will harm the diversity of the industry. With each round of new emissions requirements, waste haulers face the prospect of buying trucks that are more costly.

When does this cost get too high for some of the firms that don’t rank among the giants of the industry?

“Are you favoring the national accounts that have more money to spend?” Ball asks. “The mom-and-pops have to go back and find new financing sources. They are subject to rates that are going up, even if those rates are just going up gradually. That does put them at a disadvantage a little bit, whether these changes are necessary or not. What’s amazing to me is that we require this for over-the-road trucks, while we don’t have any laws for cars or SUVs to get 30 miles to a gallon. That’s always interesting to me. We hit one side, but not the other. It comes down to politics.”

Ball estimates that the price of trucks outfitted with Tier III–compliant engines will increase from $8,000 to $17,000. Absorbing this increase could be a struggle for some of the industry’s smaller haulers.

The Waiting Game
This doesn’t mean, of course, that the large national haulers don’t have concerns of their own.

Just look at Waste Management, one of the key players in the industry. Officials here are waiting, just as they are at every other waste hauler, to see exactly what impact the new engines will have on their company’s bottom line.

The majority of engines in the Waste Management fleet come from three manufacturers: Mack, Cummins, and Mercedes-Benz. Problem is, Waste Management officials don’t know yet exactly what the engines produced by any of these three will look like.

That, of course, makes it hard for them to know what steps they need to take to prepare for the Tier III changes. It also leaves some doubt as to how, exactly, they need to train their technicians to work on the new engines.

“Right now we are standing back and taking a look at the process as it comes to pass,” says John Lemons, technical manager for the fleet and performance department of Waste Management. “Each of the manufacturers has taken a slightly different approach to how they are going to attain the 2007 through 2010 emissions requirements.”

Waste Management—like other haulers—faces two main challenges. How will the company deal with the hotter exhaust that 2007 engines will emit? And second, how will the new engines impact the hauler’s existing maintenance schedules?

Of the two issues, the hotter exhaust seems to be the more serious.

Waste Management currently has four pilot trucks on the street that have been built and developed jointly by the hauler and chassis, body, and engine makers. These trucks feature versions of the new Tier III–compliant engines. The vehicles, though, haven’t been on the streets long enough yet to give Waste Management officials sufficient information to determine how they will operate under all conditions. The company’s engineers also haven’t yet discovered all the potential problems the hotter-burning exhaust may cause.

“We are wondering about these enhanced-cooling requirements,” Lemons says. “How do you cool these heat-making platforms? How much radiator can you put in the existing cabs without totally redesigning the cooling capacities? We don’t have the answers to that yet. We don’t have much history yet. That is a little bit scary at times. We don’t know much about the reliability or life expectations of these new platforms.”

Lemons does say he is confident the engineers working with the chassis and body manufacturers will come up with a host of alternative outlets that will pre-cool the exhaust gas before it comes in contact with anything dangerous.

This doesn’t mean that the exhaust gas during the cleaning cycle won’t generate a significant amount of high heat. The systems, though, will allow truck owners to pre-select the times when the engine will go into a regeneration cycle. The systems will also provide a visual and audible warning of when the regeneration cycle will begin. The operator can then move the truck to a safe location.

“Whenever possible, we are going to run the regeneration cycle in a controlled environment,” Lemons says. “We want to operate as safely as possible.”

Lemons also doesn’t know yet how the new engines will change Waste Management’s existing maintenance schedules. Will the new engines require more frequent oil changes? Will they be harder on a truck’s rubber components? Will there be a cost impact in terms of radiators and hoses?

Unfortunately, Lemons says, no one knows.

“We do know that the first cost, the cost of getting these Tier III trucks, is going to be a sizable impact,” Lemons says. “We are a large buyer. But still, this is going to be a significant impact in terms of the first cost of the vehicles with compliant engine packages. It will be quite expensive. There are hurdles. We don’t know what the total cost of ownership will be. There is no history here.”

Lemons estimates that the retail cost difference between a 2004 and 2007 truck could range from $5,000 to $10,000, a significant figure. He hopes, though, that this extra cost will come, at least, with some welcome marketing benefits.

“We hope there are some value-added benefits to these new trucks,” Lemons explains. “We hope they have a longer lifespan. Or maybe they will have such an impact on helping to create a cleaner environment that we can use that information as a marketing tool.”

Waste Management officials, of course, have been actively preparing for the 2007 and 2010 changes. As an example, the company’s garbage-collection vehicles all use ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, in accordance with the EPA’s desires to reduce, as much as possible, the amount of sulfur that diesel engines produce.

The company has also pre-bought a large number of trucks for 2007.

“That being said, you could say we are in a wait-and-see mode right now,” Lemons says. “This places us in a significantly different light for 2008 and 2009. We will have to accelerate our buying picture to deal with the short buys we’ll make in 2007. At this point in time we have no clear picture of what this engine or chassis platform can do for us. We need to get the research and development finished before we make any definite judgments.”

The good news is that once companies like Waste Management survive the 2007 changes, the new requirements for 2010 might not seem as challenging.

Haulers and manufacturers both agree that the Tier IV changes proposed for 2010 are far less significant than are the new rules for 2007.

“What we’ve heard from most of the suppliers we deal with is that the electronics and base-engine platforms will remain pretty much the same as they are right now,” Lemons says. “There shouldn’t be as many dramatic changes between 2007 and 2010.”

Waiting on the Manufacturing Side, Too
Raymond Peterson, director of engineering with Heil, isn’t unlike Lemons: He’s waiting to see what the full impact of the 2007 engines will be.

“We are still waiting to see exactly what’s going to happen,” Peterson explains. “It’s my impression that it won’t be until April or May that we start getting the 2007 engines. The rollout is significantly delayed from what it was expected to be a year ago.”

Like others in the business, Peterson is most concerned with the hotter exhaust that the new engines will produce.

When burning off particulate during regeneration mode, the new engines’ exhaust can reach heat levels of 1,200°F to 1,400°F. Today’s engines, during the same process, generally reach levels of 600°F to 700°F.

Some solutions have been tossed around, though nothing has been finalized. Some manufacturers have considered developing systems that would draw in streams of cool external air to help reduce the temperature of the exhaust stream. The goal is to reduce the temperature to the levels generated by today’s engines.

Peterson says Heil has three main worries about the hotter exhaust. First, what happens when a 2007-compliant vehicle is driving through a landfill that has paper and trash blowing around? There’s a real danger, he says, that the hotter-burning exhaust could set this trash aflame.

Second, can trucks operating in drought conditions and surrounded by dry grass start fires with their hotter exhaust?

And finally, what happens during the loading and unloading processes? Drivers with exposed skin could easily scald themselves if they’re not careful.

“A majority of our customers are concerned over these higher heat levels,” Peterson says. “Haulers face a lot of driver turnover. They deal with a lot of new drivers all the time. These companies may have to install some extra training for their drivers.”

Like Lemons, Peterson—while waiting to see what 2007 brings—isn’t overly concerned with the Tier IV changes scheduled to take place just three years from now.

“With Tier III, engine and chassis manufacturers have had to take a large step,” Peterson says. “They’ve had to deal with two new processes: a diesel catalyst and a diesel particulate filter. In 2010, it’s going to be mostly about collection changes. What we’re dealing with now is a big adjustment, but 2010 is going to be an incremental step in comparison. Now we are dealing with brand-new hardware installed in the vehicles. That’s a big change.”

An Ever-Changing Business
Scott Edelbach, refuse vice president for McNeilus Truck and Manufacturing, is also waiting for information on the impact of the new engines. Like others, he has his own concerns about the reliability of the new engines, how they will perform, and the new maintenance schedules they will require.

“The problem is that the technology requirements of the government are quite stringent,” Edelbach says. “The problem is that the chassis guys have to package this engine under the existing cab. That is a struggle. The engine just runs so much hotter.”

The cooling package that the new engines require is more expansive. Cab manufacturers can’t simply throw in a bigger radiator to handle the cooling needs. Body makers then have to modify their bodies to fit in the new parts.

“The body person says, ‘My body doesn’t work for this thing.’ A downstream effect can happen,” Edelbach observes. “This can create a lot of problems. There is a lot of concern in the industry in general about these changes.”

Based in Chesterton, IN, Dan Rafter is a frequent contributor to Forester publications.

MSW - Elements 2008