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STEVE MILLOY: Trump EPA Swamped Again On Glider Trucks?

3 5
13.08.2025

As I wrote last week, the Trump Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to rescind the Obama EPA’s endangerment finding is fantastic. But now that the actual proposal has been published, there is one thing that makes it fall short of being 100 percent MAGA: Part of the proposal doubles down on an anti-independent trucker rule first issued by the Obama EPA.

“Glider trucks” are used trucks whose engines and chassis have been rebuilt and outfitted with new cabs. They look new on the outside, but they are old and rebuilt on the inside. Gliders cost about 25 percent less than totally new trucks and are a favorite of small, independent trucking firms. Gliders were the 1990s brainchild of Tennessee mechanic and eventual Trump supporter Tommy Fitzgerald, who built a $700 million glider business from the ground up.

In 2016, the Obama EPA reclassified glider trucks as new trucks so that gliders would have to meet stringent new truck emissions standards. In the first place, new trucks only meet new truck emissions standards in the ideal-but-unreal conditions of an emissions lab testing facility. Emissions from rebuilt glider engines, however, are not materially different from new truck engines in head-to-head real-world emissions testing.

The Obama EPA rule against gliders was illegally issued. When proposed, the emissions rule only applied to totally new trucks. But when the rule was finalized, it........

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