Heavy- and medium-duty trucks, which include tractor-trailers, buses, package delivery vans, and other large trucks, are among the least efficient and most heavily used vehicles on the road. The average combination tractor-trailer, or “big rig,” for example, gets just 6 miles per gallon while driving 120,000 miles annually. According to the American Trucking Associations, more than 3 million heavy-duty trucks move nearly 70 percent of all the freight in the United States, requiring over 37 billion gallons of fuel a year.
Filling up at the pump is the single-largest cost of owning and operating a heavy-duty truck, and those expenses are passed on to consumers through higher shipping rates. The average U.S. household pays $1,100 per year to cover fuel costs for vehicles that deliver items to their doorsteps, according to the Consumer Federation of America. The EPA and NHTSA calculate that fuel savings from the new standards could put $150 a year back into consumers’ pockets while cutting carbon emissions by an amount equal to that of the annual electricity and power use by all U.S. residences.
- 16 percent for heavy-duty pickups and vans.
- 24 percent for vocational vehicles such as buses and garbage and delivery trucks.
- 25 percent for combination tractors.
- 9 percent for trailers, compared with the average 2017 model.
Phyllis Cuttino directs The Pew Charitable Trusts’ clean energy initiative. This story was originally published by The Pew Charitable Trusts.