Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
The UPS Inc. of 2023 may be a very different company from the one that exists today. By then, brown drones may fill the skies. Package cars may operate with the driver in the passenger seat. Sunday deliveries may become routine. Local deliveries might be handled by citizen drivers using their personal vehicles instead of by professionals in the ubiquitous UPS vans. UPS robots could be walking parcels from one urban location to another. Deliveries may be made in 30 to 45 minutes after an order is received. Amazon.com Inc. may no longer be a big UPS customer, but rather a full-fledged competitor.
If all that sounds far-fetched, consider that in 2013, "A.I." was known as a Steven Spielberg film. Robots and drones were lab experiments. Sunday was a day of rest, not delivery routes. All vehicles had people driving them. Lockers were designed to hold clothes or books, not parcels. The "last mile" was a phrase associated more with death row than with packages. Amazon was a force in selling stuff, not shipping it.
The parcel industry has undergone profound changes in the past five years, and the next five are likely to be just as transformative. It is against this backdrop that UPS and the Teamsters union will hammer out collective bargaining agreements for the carrier's small-package and less-than-truckload (LTL) operations to replace the five-year pacts that expire July 31. At stake are the livelihoods of 268,000 employees, relationships with 1.5million regular customers, and the direction of the $100 billion U.S. parcel market, and, by extension, the nation's commerce.
As of mid-May, when this story was written, tentative agreements had been reached on the fringe non-economic issues that typically get dispensed with early on during negotiations. Ahead lies the bargaining over bread-and-butter stuff like wages and benefits, as well as the operational flexibility that UPS needs from the union in order to implement new services or expand existing ones. Neither UPS nor the Teamsters would comment on the status of negotiations.
With the talks heating up, one huge question looms: How far will UPS push the envelope to compete in a new world of parcel delivery, and how far will the Teamsters be willing to bend? In decades past, UPS has been able to convince the Teamsters that new services would mean more packages and more union jobs. That might be a harder sell this time around. UPS views autonomous vehicles, drones, and robotics as the necessary tools of 21st century logistics. The Teamsters, on the other hand, perceive such changes as threats to their jobs.
The union sees a crowded field of newcomers—many with different ideas about logistics than those who've come before them—vying to take packages from UPS and, by extension, food off Teamster tables. It has seen the growth of e-commerce—expected to reach 17 to 20 percent of U.S. retail sales by 2022 from about 12 percent today—further shift UPS's business mix from the higher-margin business-to-business traffic that the company has long dominated to the business-to-consumer segment that is more competitive and not nearly so profitable. The Teamsters have watched as more final-mile deliveries have been siphoned to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), whose universal service network is used by UPS to deliver parcels to remote locales where it would be cost-prohibitive for the company to send its trucks and drivers.
The Teamsters have tried unsuccessfully to negotiate the demise of the service, known at UPS as "SurePost," and it will likely continue to push for its closure. UPS, for its part, has developed a low-cost pricing matrix for ultra-short-haul deliveries designed to divert parcels from the Postal Service to its own network. But it is believed the company is not moving fast enough to implement the initiative.
SLEEPLESS ABOUT SEATTLE
Then there is Amazon. A relative non-factor in logistics in 2013, the Seattle-based e-tailer has since spent billions of dollars on planes, tractor-trailers, hubs, and fulfillment and distribution centers. From starting out just shipping orders placed on its website, Amazon has expanded into third-party fulfillment, which today accounts for about 45 percent of the company's total revenue. Through its new "Shipping with Amazon" service, it is now trying to lure non-customer merchants into its fulfillment network by offering low-cost deliveries.
Amazon remains a heavy UPS user because it can't manage its burgeoning volumes on its own. However, every merchant that signs up for Amazon's fulfillment services means one less business that directly uses UPS. It will be that much easier for Amazon to convert companies already using its fulfillment operations to its shipping services as it relentlessly builds scale.
Amazon also offers Sunday deliveries in conjunction with the Postal Service, something that didn't exist five years ago. Its significance, even if it is nothing more than the proverbial "another arrow in the quiver," is not lost on UPS or the Teamsters. UPS delivers on Saturdays through its air and ground operations, the latter starting in early 2017 in response to the changes in ordering and delivery demands wrought by e-commerce. However, it has never delivered on Sundays.
In what some might consider a bend on the union's part, Denis Taylor, who heads the Teamsters' package division (which negotiates the UPS contracts), floated a proposal in early May to create a classification of "hybrid" small-package drivers who would work Sundays through Thursdays, or Tuesdays through Saturdays. The proposal calls for these employees to perform any "recognized part-time work" such as package loading and washing cars, but not to deliver packages full-time. It would also establish a two-tier wage scale, where the hybrids would be paid less because they would not be on a Monday-through-Friday schedule.
Teamster dissident group Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) said that while the hybrids would get 40 hours of work, thus fulfilling a 2013 contractual pledge to combine 40,000 part-time jobs into 20,000 full-time positions, they would not be paid overtime wages normally called for to drive on the weekends. The proposal would create a "caste system" within the package division, TDU said. The group, which loathes mainstream Teamster leadership, called Taylor's offer "the worst giveback" in the history of the union's relationship with UPS, which dates back more than a century.
Taylor also drew the wrath of some members in February when first he demanded that UPS be barred from using autonomous vehicles and drones, and then withdrew the demand. Some said it was highly unusual for the union to reverse course so early in the negotiating cycle.
There is concern that the Teamsters will adopt such a rigid negotiating strategy that they will lose sight of UPS's need to adjust to the parcel industry's new realities. Even those who care little for the company acknowledge that it needs to explore new delivery avenues to stay ahead of current and future trends. "The company thinks ahead of itself," said Ken Paff, TDU's national organizer. "The Teamsters have to think ahead as well."
A HOUSE DIVIDED
With so much at stake, it behooves the Teamsters to present a united front when going up against UPS, which prepares for contract talks much like an athlete training for the Olympics. However, the Teamster leadership is as splintered today as at any time in recent memory. James P. Hoffa, who has been general-president since 1998, came within a whisker of losing the union's November 2016 elections to Fred Zuckerman, the firebrand leader of Louisville's Local 89, which represents more UPS workers than any other local because it's located in the home of its global air hub.
Zuckerman outpolled Hoffa in the U.S. but lost the election because he was soundly beaten in Canada. Perhaps more significant as it relates to the UPS talks, Zuckerman captured the majority of votes cast by the company's workers, a sign of little or waning confidence among many UPSers in the mainstream leadership.
Discontent with Hoffa and the-then package division chief, Ken Hall, had been building as far back as the last contract cycle. Three Teamster locals, including Local 89, repeatedly rejected their local addendums known as "supplements," thus preventing the national contract, which had already been ratified, from being implemented. The dispute dragged on for about nine months until the Washington leadership in April 2014 took the extraordinary step of imposing the national contract on all UPS members. The decision left a bitter taste in many members' mouths, and their angst was reflected 31 months later at the ballot box.
Last September, Hoffa sacked Package Division Chief Sean M. O'Brien just seven months into his tenure and replaced him with Taylor. In explaining the move, Hoffa said the union needed to head in a different leadership direction. In an unusually public display of pique, O'Brien said he wanted to include local representatives who disagreed with Hoffa's strategy in the contract talks but was blocked from doing so because it was "considered treasonous" by the leadership. Hoffa's critics said that O'Brien was removed because he wanted to give Zuckerman a more active role in the negotiations.
In March, Taylor removed Mike Rankin, a member of Local 89, from the negotiating committee at UPS Freight, whose contract covers 12,000 of the 268,000 UPS employees, for purportedly publicly disclosing some of his concerns with the direction of the talks. Then in May, he removed three more members of the negotiating committee, including two from Local 89, for opposing the hybrid employee proposal.
DON'T WORRY, BE BROWN!
UPS customers appear to be reacting to these issues with a collective shrug. They believe negotiations are progressing as smoothly as could be expected and are not looking to shift business to rivals out of fear of labor-related service disruptions. Rob Martinez, president and CEO of Shipware LLC, a parcel consultancy, said none of his UPS customers have diverted traffic to FedEx Corp., UPS's chief competitor, even though some are "crossing their fingers" in the hope that a labor agreement is quickly reached.
A large medical distributor, which Martinez didn't identify, was told by FedEx that if it didn't convert at least 40 percent of its business in the next few weeks, the carrier would not support the company in the event of disruptions at UPS, he said. FedEx has used that tack with other high-volume shippers, invoking memories of the 15-day Teamster strike in 1997 that blindsided many UPS customers and left them scrambling for alternatives, Martinez said.
UPS has assured the medical distributor that talks are going well and are on track for settlement, Martinez said. Besides, the shipper thinks that FedEx's promises to come to the rescue ring hollow and that it couldn't provide remedies if, as Martinez put it, "the shit hit the fan."
After a dismal 2023, the U.S. economy finished 2024 in pretty good shape—inflation was in retreat, transportation fuel costs had fallen, and consumer spending remained strong. As we begin the new year, there’s a lot about the economy to like, says acclaimed economist Jason Schenker. But that’s not to suggest he views the future with unbridled optimism. As the year unfolds, he says he’ll be keeping a wary eye on several geopolitical and supply chain risks that have the potential to spoil the party.
Schenker, who serves as president of Prestige Economics and chairman of The Futurist Institute, is considered one of the best economic minds in the business. Bloomberg News has ranked him the #1 forecaster in the world in 27 categories since 2011. LinkedIn named him an official “Top Voice” in 2024, and almost 1.3 million students have taken his LinkedIn Learning courses on economics, finance, risk management, and leadership.
Schenker is also the author of more than 30 books, including 15 bestsellers on supply chain, finance, energy, and the economy. He has been interviewed several times by this magazine, including a Q&A on the 2024 economic outlook last February, and has been a guest on DCV’s “Logistics Matters” podcast. In addition, he has provided economic and material handling forecasts for the trade association MHI since 2014.
Last month, Schenker spoke with DC Velocity Group Editorial Director David Maloney on the 2025 outlook for the economy in general and the supply chain and material handling sectors in particular.
Q: Jason, you joined us last year at about this time to share your outlook for 2024. And I have to say that your projections were pretty much spot on.
A: That’s very kind of you to say. I had expected we would see payrolls slow but still be positive, and that the unemployment rate would rise. We actually saw all of those things. We also predicted positive GDP [gross domestic product] growth, a slow easing of inflation rates, and a move toward interest rate cuts. And you know, we’ve seen all of those things, too.
2024 was a year that was, in the end, a pretty good year for the economy. GDP looks solid. Jobs gains are still continuing, although they’ve slowed. The unemployment rate has gone up, but it’s still low. So it was still a really positive year.
And, of course, our biggest concerns going into 2024 were around the political and geopolitical risks, making the swift and decisive end to the U.S. presidential election really important for reducing economic uncertainty and the risk of political violence. But that still leaves geopolitical risks, which are likely to hang over our heads in 2025.
Q: As you said, the U.S. economy is in fairly good shape. But as we begin 2025, what’s your outlook for the new year?
A: I think we’re probably going to see GDP grow at a modest pace, although the pace could slow a bit from what we saw in the past year in the U.S. I think we’re going to see interest rates go down. Inflation will probably ease, although I think we could see the inflation rate pop up briefly in the near term. Still, by some time in the second quarter, the year-on-year inflation rates are likely to be quite a bit lower. We also see interest rates easing. So it’s not a horrible outlook, because as interest rates go down, we’re also likely to see more business investment, manufacturing activity, and material handling spending.
Q: Of course, the gorilla in the room—as we speak in December—is the president-elect’s proposed tariffs and their potential impact on supply chains. We’ve heard China, Mexico, and Canada mentioned as possible targets for tariffs. Is this just a negotiating tactic, or are those really serious proposals by the incoming administration?
A: I think there are a couple of things to consider. One of the graduate degrees I did was in negotiation and conflict resolution. In terms of negotiation tactics, president-elect Trump is trying to position himself as a “distributive negotiator,” which means there’s going to be a push for a winner-takes-all kind of outcome.
Now, in reality, that’s not what’s likely to happen, right? But strong posturing may be enough to spur some of the change he’s looking for. In other words, what he actually wants probably isn’t blanket tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican goods. I think his real focus is on halting the trans-shipment of goods from China through Mexico in order to circumvent U.S. tariffs. I believe that’s a top priority for him—along with addressing things like the border crisis and fentanyl imports.
So if you start off a bit blustery and people are unsure of how things are going to go, they may be more willing to collaborate to get to a deal. And I think what we’re really seeing from the incoming administration is posturing that’s designed to spur quick action. But I also think that while politicians say many things, what they actually end up doing is often very different from what they pledged or promised or threatened. What we do know is that with President Trump’s first administration, that kind of posturing and threat-making got results.
Q: So how should supply chain professionals prepare for these proposed tariffs? We know that many companies stepped up their imports in the final months of 2024 to get ahead of new tariffs. Should companies rethink their supply chains and the amount of inventory they carry overall?
A: Well, there are a couple of things I’d say to this point. The first is, if we look at the MHI BAI [the Material Handling Industry Business Activity Index by Prestige Economics], which is a monthly economic indicator Prestige Economics produces in conjunction with MHI, it shows that inventories have actually fallen a lot in the last couple of years. So even though we see the values of inventories going up, especially in some of the government data, what we actually see in the survey data—which is based on responses from leading material handling and supply chain executives—is that they’ve been running down their WIP (work-in-progress) inventory. They are also running down their backlog to get shipments out the door.
So in terms of how the industry should be thinking about inventory, I think there are some important factors to keep in mind. One is that the U.S. and China very much seem to be on a collision course. For all the huffing and puffing and bluster around tariffs being imposed on a whole host of countries—whether it’s Canada, Mexico, or any of our global allies and key trade partners in Europe and Asia—the situation with China is very different. I think that’s where the hammer is most likely to come down.
I would contend that being exposed to China in your supply chain is going to be risky business going forward, because of a high potential for a kinetic conflict with China over Taiwan at some point in the near to medium term.
Q: The post-election polls revealed that a lot of Americans voted with their wallets. They felt prices were too high, and that led them to vote the way they did. Do you think prices will drop under the new administration, as many hope?
A: Nope.
So here’s the thing, there’s price and there’s inflation. If you’re expecting prices to go down, that’s deflation, and that almost never happens. By the way, no one wants that—deflation is actually worse than inflation.
So let me lay it out. In the Q3 2024 U.S. GDP report, consumption—people buying stuff—accounted for a full 68.9% of U.S. GDP. Well, that’s really good news—jobs are plentiful, wages are at record highs, and the stock market and home prices are at record highs. So everybody’s out there spending, which is great. With inflation, the dollars you have today will be worth less in the future, which means you’re actually a bit incentivized to spend them now.
However, you don’t want rampant inflation, because that makes it very difficult for businesses to plan, and there are also massive social impacts. That’s what happened in 2024 when grocery prices went through the roof, right? But a little inflation is OK, because it incentivizes you to spend now and not hoard your money.
But now let’s flip it on its head. Let’s say prices all go down. Well, if you know that you’re going to be able to buy more stuff with your dollars in the future—because your dollars will be worth more tomorrow than they are today—you will want to hoard your money and not spend now. But that’s really bad if 68.9% of your GDP is from people buying stuff. You could then get a massive contraction in GDP.
Now, do I think inflation rates are going to go down? Yeah. And so, here’s the rub. This is where the American public had some real challenges with communications going into the election. Because while prices are still going up, they’re rising at a slower pace than before. You’re telling the American public that inflation’s going down—but wait a minute, my grocery bill is still really high, and it keeps going up. And because prices aren’t going down, they feel they’re being lied to.
This has a lot to do with the fact that math is hard, and half of Americans read at or below the eighth-grade level. And now you need to explain calculus to them for them to understand the difference between prices and inflation?
So are prices going to drop? I don’t think so. We just want the prices to stop going up at a crazy pace. And I think that is going to happen.
Q: Let’s talk a bit about the material handling and supply chain sectors. What’s your outlook for these markets in 2025?
A: I think the outlook for 2025 is pretty good for material handling and supply chain—and for material handling equipment manufacturers. If interest rates go down, that’s going to incentivize people to spend. Plus, it seems very likely that we’ll see corporate tax cuts again. Low sustained corporate tax rates, falling interest rates, record-high equity markets, and record-high home prices—all that stuff’s really good for spending.
I think material handling equipment manufacturers have been burning off a backlog for the last two years, as have almost all manufacturers—something that’s reflected in the ISM [Institute for Supply Management] Manufacturing Index. But now as interest rates go down, I think there’s a chance you’re going to see a pop in new orders. And then with a low tax rate, you’ve got all the incentive in the world to spend, right? All those things are really positive for growth. So I think we probably have a good year ahead of us. I am optimistic about 2025 and also 2026.
Q: Well, that would be welcome. I know that people have held onto their cash and taken a wait-and-see attitude for the last couple of years. So, hopefully, we’re beyond that, and people are ready to spend.
A: Well, that’s right. A lot of businesses respond to these types of incentives, right? This is why the Fed raises interest rates—to cool demand. Demand had been so hot with folks out there spending like crazy. And when demand exceeds supply, prices rise.
Raising interest rates dampens demand, and when you dampen demand, the prices ease off. This is how the Fed manages inflation with interest rates. But now, hopefully, as inflation eases and interest rates fall, you’re going to get more activity on the business investment side. So that’s pretty exciting.
Q: Let’s talk about supply chain investments. Do you see any particular areas where companies will be looking to spend money this year?
A: I think there are a number of different areas. E-commerce is probably going to hit record levels in 2025—and we may even see e-commerce’s share of total retail sales hit an all-time high. During the Covid lockdowns, in the second quarter of 2020, e-commerce’s share of all retail sales spiked to 16.4%. I think that in one of the quarters this year, we may surpass that and hit a new record percentage. That would be good news for material handling and supply chain.
I also see the labor market remaining bifurcated, with very different outlooks for knowledge workers versus laborers. Knowledge workers may still struggle to find jobs, whereas employers looking to fill physically demanding, in-person jobs will struggle to find workers. That includes jobs in warehousing, transportation, wholesale, and manufacturing, which means we’ll also likely see record levels of demand for automated equipment throughout supply chain, material handling, and warehousing. All of those things will probably mean pretty good opportunities for material handling equipment manufacturers in the year ahead.
The one caveat I do want to leave readers with is to be wary of those geopolitical and supply chain risks that extend globally because, in my mind, that’s really the only thing that could spoil what would otherwise be a pretty big party in 2025.
Congestion on U.S. highways is costing the trucking industry big, according to research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), released today.
The group found that traffic congestion on U.S. highways added $108.8 billion in costs to the trucking industry in 2022, a record high. The information comes from ATRI’s Cost of Congestion study, which is part of the organization’s ongoing highway performance measurement research.
Total hours of congestion fell slightly compared to 2021 due to softening freight market conditions, but the cost of operating a truck increased at a much higher rate, according to the research. As a result, the overall cost of congestion increased by 15% year-over-year—a level equivalent to more than 430,000 commercial truck drivers sitting idle for one work year and an average cost of $7,588 for every registered combination truck.
The analysis also identified metropolitan delays and related impacts, showing that the top 10 most-congested states each experienced added costs of more than $8 billion. That list was led by Texas, at $9.17 billion in added costs; California, at $8.77 billion; and Florida, $8.44 billion. Rounding out the top 10 list were New York, Georgia, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Tennessee. Combined, the top 10 states account for more than half of the trucking industry’s congestion costs nationwide—52%, according to the research.
The metro areas with the highest congestion costs include New York City, $6.68 billion; Miami, $3.2 billion; and Chicago, $3.14 billion.
ATRI’s analysis also found that the trucking industry wasted more than 6.4 billion gallons of diesel fuel in 2022 due to congestion, resulting in additional fuel costs of $32.1 billion.
ATRI used a combination of data sources, including its truck GPS database and Operational Costs study benchmarks, to calculate the impacts of trucking delays on major U.S. roadways.
There’s a photo from 1971 that John Kent, professor of supply chain management at the University of Arkansas, likes to show. It’s of a shaggy-haired 18-year-old named Glenn Cowan grinning at three-time world table tennis champion Zhuang Zedong, while holding a silk tapestry Zhuang had just given him. Cowan was a member of the U.S. table tennis team who participated in the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan. Story has it that one morning, he overslept and missed his bus to the tournament and had to hitch a ride with the Chinese national team and met and connected with Zhuang.
Cowan and Zhuang’s interaction led to an invitation for the U.S. team to visit China. At the time, the two countries were just beginning to emerge from a 20-year period of decidedly frosty relations, strict travel bans, and trade restrictions. The highly publicized trip signaled a willingness on both sides to renew relations and launched the term “pingpong diplomacy.”
Kent, who is a senior fellow at the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, believes the photograph is a good reminder that some 50-odd years ago, the economies of the United States and China were not as tightly interwoven as they are today. At the time, the Nixon administration was looking to form closer political and economic ties between the two countries in hopes of reducing chances of future conflict (and to weaken alliances among Communist countries).
The signals coming out of Washington and Beijing are now, of course, much different than they were in the early 1970s. Instead of advocating for better relations, political rhetoric focuses on the need for the U.S. to “decouple” from China. Both Republicans and Democrats have warned that the U.S. economy is too dependent on goods manufactured in China. They see this dependency as a threat to economic strength, American jobs, supply chain resiliency, and national security.
Supply chain professionals, however, know that extricating ourselves from our reliance on Chinese manufacturing is easier said than done. Many pundits push for a “China + 1” strategy, where companies diversify their manufacturing and sourcing options beyond China. But in reality, that “plus one” is often a Chinese company operating in a different country or a non-Chinese manufacturer that is still heavily dependent on material or subcomponents made in China.
This is the problem when supply chain decisions are made on a global scale without input from supply chain professionals. In an article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Kent argues that, “The discussions on supply chains mainly take place between government officials who typically bring many other competing issues and agendas to the table. Corporate entities—the individuals and companies directly impacted by supply chains—tend to be under-represented in the conversation.”
Kent is a proponent of what he calls “supply chain diplomacy,” where experts from academia and industry from the U.S. and China work collaboratively to create better, more efficient global supply chains. Take, for example, the “Peace Beans” project that Kent is involved with. This project, jointly formed by Zhejiang University and the Bush China Foundation, proposes balancing supply chains by exporting soybeans from Arkansas to tofu producers in China’s Yunnan province, and, in return, importing coffee beans grown in Yunnan to coffee roasters in Arkansas. Kent believes the operation could even use the same transportation equipment.
The benefits of working collaboratively—instead of continuing to build friction in the supply chain through tariffs and adversarial relationships—are numerous, according to Kent and his colleagues. They believe it would be much better if the two major world economies worked together on issues like global inflation, climate change, and artificial intelligence.
And such relations could play a significant role in strengthening world peace, particularly in light of ongoing tensions over Taiwan. Because, as Kent writes, “The 19th-century idea that ‘When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will’ is as true today as ever. Perhaps more so.”
Hyster-Yale Materials Handling today announced its plans to fulfill the domestic manufacturing requirements of the Build America, Buy America (BABA) Act for certain portions of its lineup of forklift trucks and container handling equipment.
That means the Greenville, North Carolina-based company now plans to expand its existing American manufacturing with a targeted set of high-capacity models, including electric options, that align with the needs of infrastructure projects subject to BABA requirements. The company’s plans include determining the optimal production location in the United States, strategically expanding sourcing agreements to meet local material requirements, and further developing electric power options for high-capacity equipment.
As a part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the BABA Act aims to increase the use of American-made materials in federally funded infrastructure projects across the U.S., Hyster-Yale says. It was enacted as part of a broader effort to boost domestic manufacturing and economic growth, and mandates that federal dollars allocated to infrastructure – such as roads, bridges, ports and public transit systems – must prioritize materials produced in the USA, including critical items like steel, iron and various construction materials.
Hyster-Yale’s footprint in the U.S. is spread across 10 locations, including three manufacturing facilities.
“Our leadership is fully invested in meeting the needs of businesses that require BABA-compliant material handling solutions,” Tony Salgado, Hyster-Yale’s chief operating officer, said in a release. “We are working to partner with our key domestic suppliers, as well as identifying how best to leverage our own American manufacturing footprint to deliver a competitive solution for our customers and stakeholders. But beyond mere compliance, and in line with the many areas of our business where we are evolving to better support our customers, our commitment remains steadfast. We are dedicated to delivering industry-leading standards in design, durability and performance — qualities that have become synonymous with our brands worldwide and that our customers have come to rely on and expect.”
In a separate move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also gave its approval for the state to advance its Heavy-Duty Omnibus Rule, which is crafted to significantly reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from new heavy-duty, diesel-powered trucks.
Both rules are intended to deliver health benefits to California citizens affected by vehicle pollution, according to the environmental group Earthjustice. If the state gets federal approval for the final steps to become law, the rules mean that cars on the road in California will largely be zero-emissions a generation from now in the 2050s, accounting for the average vehicle lifespan of vehicles with internal combustion engine (ICE) power sold before that 2035 date.
“This might read like checking a bureaucratic box, but EPA’s approval is a critical step forward in protecting our lungs from pollution and our wallets from the expenses of combustion fuels,” Paul Cort, director of Earthjustice’s Right To Zero campaign, said in a release. “The gradual shift in car sales to zero-emissions models will cut smog and household costs while growing California’s clean energy workforce. Cutting truck pollution will help clear our skies of smog. EPA should now approve the remaining authorization requests from California to allow the state to clean its air and protect its residents.”
However, the truck drivers' industry group Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) pushed back against the federal decision allowing the Omnibus Low-NOx rule to advance. "The Omnibus Low-NOx waiver for California calls into question the policymaking process under the Biden administration's EPA. Purposefully injecting uncertainty into a $588 billion American industry is bad for our economy and makes no meaningful progress towards purported environmental goals," (OOIDA) President Todd Spencer said in a release. "EPA's credibility outside of radical environmental circles would have been better served by working with regulated industries rather than ramming through last-minute special interest favors. We look forward to working with the Trump administration's EPA in good faith towards achievable environmental outcomes.”
Editor's note:This article was revised on December 18 to add reaction from OOIDA.