Nearly 75% of Trucking Companies Haven’t Added ‘Green’ Trucks to Fleets Despite Federal Grants: Report

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks into the cabin of an electric utility truck during a visit to Impulsion, the International Summit on Electric and Smart Transportation, in Montreal on March 13, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes)

Nearly 75 percent of transport-trucking companies haven’t replaced any of the trucks in their fleets with lower-emission substitutes over the last three years despite an available federal grant that would cover up to 50 percent of the cost for doing so, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

Most companies said the biggest barrier was the overall cost of implementing the retrofits, according to a report by the department.

Last December, Natural Resources launched Stream 1 of the new “Green Freight Program,” which offers to pay up to $250,000 per applicant to cover costs of third-party trucking fleet “energy assessments” and also retrofitting of companies’ truck and trailer equipment, if necessary.

The program is intended to help trucking companies cover about 50 percent of the average cost of refitting diesel truck fleets to improve fuel efficiency and lower emissions.

However, in-house research contracted by the Natural Resources Department found that only 18 percent of trucking companies’ executives who participated in the survey had heard of the funding program, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“Use of government funding programs for fleet retrofits is not widespread,” said the report, titled “Green Freight Program Survey On The Freight Industry.”

It added that only 5 percent of the total 300 survey respondents said their trucking companies had participated in a government-funding program and that an overwhelming majority of respondents said they hadn’t added any green trucks to their fleets over the last three years.

“Nearly three quarters of the companies surveyed, 74 percent, have not implemented any retrofits to the trucks in their fleet in the past three years,” said the report, noting that this was an “important finding.”

“For a number of these companies the cost associated with implementing retrofits is considered as a main barrier,” it said.

Funding

The Natural Resources Department contracted Phoenix Strategic Perspectives Inc. to conduct the research for around $78,500. The report’s findings were based on questionnaires completed by 300 trucking executives across the country.

The department said the findings will “be used to enhance the department’s understanding of inflection points and potential federal funding assistance needs to increase the uptake of zero emission vehicle purchases and retrofits.”

The department also said it was specifically looking to find out how many companies have implemented truck retrofits recently.

The government previously offered the Green Freight Assessment Program (GFAP) between 2018 and 2022 with a total investment of $3.4 million over those fours years.

It said the demand for the funding program during those years was so high that it decided to allocate $200 million over five years in Budget 2022 toward recapitalizing GFAP, which was renamed the Green Freight Program (GFP).

Stream 1 of the new program opened Dec. 12, 2022, and will run until March 2027. The GFP’s second stream is yet to be launched, but Ottawa said it will be introduced at some point in Spring 2023.

Stream 2, titled “Repower and Replace,” will cover 50 percent of the cost necessary for companies to fuel-switch trucks and repower engines on a “large scale.”