Two years ago, Rudy Diaz made a gutsy bet. The 45-year-old owner of Hight Logistics, a trucking company that hauls containers from the bustling ports around Los Angeles, began adding some of the country’s first electric heavy-duty trucks to his fleet.
One rolls by on an overcast morning earlier this month, eerily silent except for its large tires crunching on the asphalt. “There’s no fumes, there’s no noise,” enthuses Diaz, who now boasts 20 electric trucks among his fleet of 75 tractor trailers.
Efforts like Diaz’s were supposed to quickly become the norm for operators of the nation’s heavy-duty fleets, including long-haul truckers traversing multiple states and drayage firms carrying containers from ocean ports.
California enacted a rule in 2020, which has since been adopted by 10 other states, requiring truck makers to sell an increasing portion of emission-free models, including for the largest semi-trucks. California soon followed with another regulation requiring fleet owners to buy more zero-emission trucks. Drayage companies like Hight Logistics faced the most aggressive timeline: They would need to be 100% emission-free by 2035.
Meanwhile, the federal government last year tightened tailpipe requirements for heavy-duty vehicles, which would effectively force truck manu