Truckers Want Federal Standard for Clean-Burning Fuel.

After years of paying higher prices for cleaner fuel mandated by the state, truckers in L.A. and across California are pressing federal regulators to adopt a national fuel standard to help even the competitive playing field.

Local truckers say the price difference between regular diesel and the fuel they must buy under 1993 regulations adopted by the California Air Resources Board are putting them at a disadvantage nationally.

"A lot of our customers are back East, and they just don't understand why our fuel costs are so much higher," said Joe Nievez, owner of Qwikway Trucking Co., which operates 30 trucks out of a Vernon terminal. "You end up eating (the fuel cost premium)."

Nievez's views are emblematic of a rift that has grown between California truckers and truckers based elsewhere in the country.

And that's a rift that could grow worse now that the state air board is considering a proposal to force truckers to buy even cleaner, low-sulphur fuel by 2006.

That proposed mandate will be necessary, state regulators say, to meet federal Clean Air Act deadlines for cutting air pollution. However, California-based truckers see it as another blow to their attempts to compete with out-of-state trucking firms.

The solution, according to the state trucking industry, is for the federal Environmental Protection Agency to follow through with its own proposal requiring truckers nationwide to buy low-sulphur, fuel in 2006. That proposal for a national standard is under fierce attack by the American Trucking Association. But it is being just as fiercely supported by the California Trucking Association.

"We used to fight the California Air Resources Board, but we have a new strategy: embrace the rules and export them (to out-of-state truckers)," said Stephanie Williams, spokeswoman for the California Trucking Association. "The American Trucking Association has all these delaying tactics. To us, delay, delay means we don't get a national standard."

The state air board in 1993 predicted that the new diesel fuel mandated at that time would cost only about a nickel a gallon more than regular diesel fuel. But truckers say fuel shortages can spike that difference to 25 cents or even 50 cents a gallon, giving out-of-state truckers an edge big enough to take away even local intra-state jobs.

"They can fuel at the border at Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and do their business with dirty fuel and leave," said Ron Guss, president of Intermodal West Inc., a Pico Rivera-based company that operates 150 trucks in state. "Our bottom-line costs are the same, but (because of the less-expensive fuel) they can quote cheaper rates than I can quote."

The CTA recently did a study and found that there are nearly 1.1 million out-of-state, class-A big rigs licensed by the Department of Motor Vehicles to operate in the state, dwarfing the 144,000 based here.

"We didn't realize how bad it was," Williams said. "We don't think they should be allowed to come in with dirty fuel. How can California have the kind of air quality it wants?"

State air board officials conceded that out-of-state truckers are indeed a problem, and say that a national standard is probably the only way to resolve the issue.

"It's one of the reasons we want a low-sulphur fuel nationwide," said Rich Varenchik, a spokesman for the state air board. "If everybody does it, then everybody suffers the same expense and everybody get incrementally cleaner air."

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However, the national trucking industry is claiming that the rules are not fair for the industry as a whole, since railroads, the construction industry and other concerns will not be subject to them under the EPA's proposal.

Mike Russell, a spokesman for the American Trucking Association, said he could not comment on the rift between California truckers and the ATA, calling it a "delicate situation." Instead he referred to a written statement issued earlier this year by ATA President and CEO Walter B. McCormick Jr. that asserts the proposed EPA regulations will hurt the industry and national economy.

"The trucking industry will not watch from the sidelines as we are singled out for far more stringent regulation while extreme sources of pollution have yet to do their fair share," the statement reads. "To pile on a rule that could raise the cost of a diesel truck engine by thousands of dollars and drive up the price of diesel fuel by yet another 20 cents a gallon would force many in our industry off the road. The U.S. economy can't afford to pay this high a price."

The proposed EPA rule is part of new regulations that would also require U.S. truckers to install special traps on their engines to catch soot and other dirty emissions. They can only work with the cleaner diesel fuel.

Christine Sansevero, an EPA spokeswoman, said the agency is aware of the opposition from truckers but plans to forge ahead with the new rules.

"We have taken public comment. Our goal has been to finalize (the rule) by the end of the year. I can't promise that is going to happen, but that has been our goal," she said.