You might like this YouTube channel:

https://youtube.com/@edisonmotors

Canadian trucker with a mindset like your friends dad, but also is building trucks that is in my opinion the way forward for the trucking industry. Got to bounce, load to move.

The trucking industry has a very long tail when it comes to equipment. Big trucking companies (100 plus trucks) generally replace their equipment every 3 to 5 years. Smaller companies (10 to 100 trucks) often buy a mix of new and used equipment with an average age somewhere in the 5 to 10 year old range. Then you have the majority of the trucking industry who buy whatever makes financial sense to them at that moment in time and then run it till they can no longer get parts or they hang up the keys. The latter being more common.

As I was writing this a cab over Kenworth drove by the dock I’m currently parked at. They haven’t been made since the late 80’s, I think. Once the tech is available, then a 10 to 20 year time frame makes sense and will see some 90% to 98% of the old trucks replaced.

I can’t believe I saying something nice about CARB, but they don’t usually operate like that. They were given the mandate of making California’s air clean again. They have their lane and they stick to it and fuck all what anyone else thinks of it or the consequences. I have had major bones to pick with them over the years I’ve been driving professionally, but that’s not one of them.

It’s not so much that we don’t want to as much as it is that the equipment needed doesn’t exist and neither does the required infrastructure, which is the bigger problem. Add to that the fact that most truck “companies” in the US have less than 10 truck and they were usually bought used…
That said their is one company I’m watching that does seem to actually understand the problem, but they are mostly focusing on heavy haul and logging trucks. https://www.edisonmotors.ca/ Their trucks are going to be hybrid diesel electric which helps with the infra problem as opposed to Tesla’s all electric solution which requires an entire new infrastucture to be built when there isn’t enough truck parking as is in many places.

If anyone is interested what the owner/operator side of the trucking industry is saying about this, Land Line Now recently did an update piece on this. https://landlinenow.libsyn.com/land-line-now-dec-5-2024 The TL/DL is that the required tech just doesn’t really exist in a usable format to continue operating same as before. Folks in areas affected by CARB should expect significantly higher prices for goods and much slower shipping times, and a lot of small businesses will be forced out of business as a result of the new rules. Upside is that freight rates will likely shoot through the roof, which will be great for anyone that has the compliant equipment to take advantage of it.

The last one that I can think of is probably Gundum Wing, although I watched a lot of Flinstones reruns growing up as well. Almost everything in both of them went way over my head as a kid.

More than a little older than 5 years, but this is probably my favorite “new” Christmas song.

https://youtu.be/qTx-sdR6Yzk

Damn, now I feel old. The first linux distro I installed (and was able to run on my hardware) was their second release, 05.04.