Businesses that dispatch vehicles or owner operators in California must verify that each contracted vehicle is in compliance with the California Truck & Bus regulation or has reported compliance to the California Air Resources Board.

This requirement applies to all motor carriers, whether based in California or not. And now with the year-end deadline approaching, almost every owner operator will be faced with either replacing their truck or retrofitting to meet CARB’s January 1, 2014 compliance deadline.

 After January 1, motor carrier fleets will not be able to dispatch non-compliant owner operators and risk facing penalties

The available pool of owner operators with 2010 engines or retrofits is small and the possibility of replacing any non-compliant owner operators will be difficult and also put the fleet at a loss of trained and dedicated owner operators, according to  diesel retrofit installer, Ironman Parts & Service, based in Calif.

It says in some cases, a fleet can submit a single purchase order by August 31 for all of its owner operators to extend the retrofit deadline by four months to May 1, 2014.

You can get more information about what’s needed to comply with the regulation by logging onto the CARB website.