Emissions Retrofit 101
44 Construction Equipment Distribution www.cedmag.com January 2010 Regulatory Compliance Why does my company have to spend money on specialized mufflers when the economy and my business are struggling? This is a question that many equipment owners are asking themselves right now as the air quality regulations become tighter throughout the larger cities in the U.S. AED dealers should be positioning themselves to help their customers navigate the challenges they're facing. Retrofitting equipment is not a complicated process if you understand the terminology and process that is involved. Most people are aware that retrofitting equipment with emissions-reducing mufflers has been going on for nearly a decade in the on-road sector. Less well known is that fact that off-road retrofits have been happening for more than 30 years in industries such as mining and cargo handling. The driver for these off-road retrofits has been occupational health and safety. Indeed, there is evidence that suggests that the health threat of diesel exhaust may be exacerbated where operators of diesel-powered equipment are in close proximity and where emissions may not always dissipate. This is particularly true for workers in the construction industry. In the latter half of the 1990s, California, through the California Air Resources Board (CARB), led the charge, implementing mandates requiring fleet owners to comply with fleet-specific rules in order to operate within the state. These rules may require equipment retirement and replacement, repower and/ or retrofit of equipment. The rest of the country has gradually been retrofitting equipment on a voluntary basis using federal and state funding through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other sources. Retrofitting is the process of install-ing a pollution-reducing device in the exhaust system (typically in a muffler Emissions Retrofit 101 Defining the devices that you and your customers need for regulatory compliance on older machines By dana breWster (continued on page 45) Due to the expense of retrofit, most equipment owners won't do it unless required by law or motivated by public grant incentives. Trouble is, once laws are passed grant funding disappears and owners incur 100 percent of costs to comply. Editor's Note: Industry experts say that Tier 4 interim and final equip-ment launch will go down in history as the most challenging period the construction equipment industry will have ever faced. Yet numerous market-altering issues for distributors are not being widely discussed until now. On the afternoon of Jan. 22, AED Summit in San Antonio presents an industry panel to address the most serious and urgent consider-ations and implications with which dealers must contend the future of their customers and the dealer's own business depend on proactive learning and involvement now. I urge every AED member principal to attend this important industry event and begin engaging in the many layers of consequences and opportunities unfolding from the T-4 transformation. Kim Phelan