By Duggan Flanakin
January 15, 2026
It was a long, hard fight, but California’s destructive “clean truck” mandate is (maybe) finally dead. But the problems caused by the “zero emissions” zealots linger on. Moreover, other California problems threaten to slow the nation’s rebounding economy and do great damage to the nation’s supply chain.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order requiring a total phaseout of gasoline- and diesel-powered new cars and passenger trucks by 2035 also included a mandate to achieve 100% zero emissions from medium- and heavy-duty on-road vehicles by 2045 (earlier for drayage trucks).
The California Air Resources Board began enacting clean fleet regulations in 2023 that included a ban on the sale of new diesel big rig trucks and buses starting in 2036. CARB also set a date of 2042 for a total ban on non-ZEV trucks and buses – meaning that older vehicles could no longer operate in California. Another provision barred California state and local governments from acquiring non-ZEV medium- and heavy-duty vehicles by 2027.
In July 2023, original equipment manufacturers, including Daimler, Volvo, International, and Paccar (which owns Peterbilt and Kenworth), entered into a Clean Truck Partnership, agreeing to follow CARB’s strict emissions standards in exchange for longer lead times and looser nitrogen oxides emissions rules – regardless of California’s authority to implement them.
After a California Trucking Association lawsuit failed to stop the state’s assault on the trucking industry, Nebraska and 16 other states filed a lawsuit in May 2024 seeking to block the California regulations on grounds that California was asserting power over the entire nation’s trucking industry.
The suit charged that the Advanced Clean Fleet regulations would supersede federal law, disrupt supply chains nationwide, not be able to handle higher payload capacities, and harm every state that did not have such mandates. Nebraska and 23 other states filed a separate lawsuit against the Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency over its March 2024 rule requiring 30% of heavy-duty trucks in the U.S. to be electric by 2032.
Buoyed by the lawsuits, the U.S. Senate in December 2024 voted 51-44 to block the California ban on new gas-powered vehicles, a move condemned by state officials. But things really began to change at the EPA once President Trump took office.
In March 2025, newly installed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a rollback of auto and truck emission rules he said would have imposed more than $700 billion in regulatory and compliance costs on American businesses and individuals, making every product trucks deliver more expensive.
In July 2025, President Trump signed three Congressional Review Act resolutions that rolled back a trio of California emissions standards. Supporting the action, John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said the EV mandates were both unachievable and harmful to auto affordability, consumer choice, industry competitiveness, and economic activity.
In August 2025, the Department of Justice issued a cease-and-desist letter ordering truck manufacturers to ignore the Clean Truck Partnership, an agreement which the DOJ said violated federal law. That prompted the Federal Trade Commission to close an antitrust probe into the CARB-OEM agreement.
The OEMs then sued California over the Clean Truck partnership, but CARB filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit seeking to force them to honor the partnership agreement and comply with CARB’s standards. But on Halloween, Judge Dena Coggins, a Biden appointee, granted their request to bar California from enforcing the agreement during the ongoing litigation.
With the dust at least temporarily settled, the fact remains that Governor Newsom’s initiatives, coming in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been costly for the nation’s auto and truck manufacturers, trucking companies, and the general public. During 2020, the nation lost more than 88,000 trucking industry jobs and more than 3,000 trucking companies closed.
Even before the pandemic, the was a nationwide shortage of nearly 60,000 truck driver jobs, and during the pandemic many more veteran drivers retired, prompting efforts to hire even non-English-speaking foreign workers in states like California. Truckers were also faced with spiraling prices for diesel fuel, which can account for over 40% of a fleet’s total operational expenditure. And California’s fuel prices are the highest in the continental U.S.
Last October, Newsweek announced that America’s trucking industry is in “deep trouble,” a sentiment agreed with by the American Transportation Research Institute. Equipment Finance News reported that over 30 trucking companies had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just since April, and ACT Research predicted a “highly uncertain” future for the industry.
Newsweek sited a July survey by Tech.co that found 69% of freight businesses were struggling to meet demand due to driver shortages – a problem exacerbated by prior decisions to hire non-English-speaking, even illegal immigrant drivers that has resulted in federal actions against states and companies. The hidden reason is that cash-strapped companies hired low-salary drivers rather than pay veterans the wages they demanded.
According to A&M Transport president Andy Owens, trucking companies were dealing with an extended freight recession caused by highest-ever operating costs and bottomed-out freight pricing. But back in 2023 the American Trucking Associations stated that California’s clean truck “dream” was becoming “America’s supply chain nightmare.”
Even though CARB’s Advanced Clean Fleets rules were never enforceable without an EPA waiver, many California trucking companies felt they had been strong-armed into making costly decisions, especially after CARB issued an enforcement notice that it would retroactively enforce the rules once it received that waiver.
That put companies in a bind. They could either spend the extra money to purchase ZEV trucks that had lower cargo capacities, higher upfront costs, and other concerns – or they could take their chances by buying non-ZEV diesel trucks that CARB could soon make illegal to operate. That led to decisions that made little business or operational sense in the real world – and was the precursor to many companies’ ongoing financial problems.
The utter stupidity of the CARB rules was called out by the Western States Trucking Association, which pointed to notorious, unchecked California wildfires that often leave large areas without electricity for days at a time – making charging ZEVs an impossible challenge.
The ATA noted that diesel trucks can refuel anywhere in the nation in 15 minutes and travel up to 1,200 miles before refueling again. With a ZEV truck, the range shrinks to under 350 miles, with frequent refueling that can take hours waiting in line, and the trucks cost two to three times the price of a diesel truck and weigh thousands of pounds more, reducing payload and requiring more trucks to be on the road.
Why, one might ask, did anyone think that was a good idea whose time had come? And yet Newsom and others who see gasoline and diesel as inherently evil continue to push for a ZEV mandate when the technology is still not ready for prime time.
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
