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Agreement includes major upgrade to public service center for
commercial fleet vehicles that run on natural gas. 

The California Air Resources Board today announced that Ryder
System, Inc., a provider of transportation and supply chain
management solutions, paid $1,000,000 for failure to conduct
testing and maintain complete records of required annual opacity
tests on heavy-duty vehicles in its California fleet in 2008 and
2009.
 
Annual opacity tests, performed to determine whether a truck
produces visible smoke from its exhaust, and related
record-keeping are required under California law. Records
reviewed by ARB enforcement staff indicated that Ryder failed to
conduct tests and maintain records of the tests on vehicles that
were in service for four or more years. This was Ryder’s first
ARB violation in its 53 years of operating in California.
 
The one-million dollar settlement ($1,031,000 precisely) is in
two parts. The first, a $773,000 payment, will go to the
California Air Pollution Control Fund, established to mitigate
various sources of pollution through education and the
advancement and use of cleaner technology. The remaining $258,000
will fund investments to upgrade a maintenance facility to
service trucks that are powered by natural gas. The maintenance
facility, located in West Sacramento, will be open to the public
for use by commercial transportation fleets. 
 
“Strong processes and proper documentation demonstrating
compliance with the State of California’s regulations are
essential to verifying that all businesses are complying with the
law,” said ARB Enforcement Chief James Ryden. “Ryder has a long
history of working collaboratively with our organization to
ensure environmental compliance of its operations in California. 
We appreciate Ryder’s efforts to resolve this issue.  We also
commend their continued leadership in expanding the use of clean
technology vehicles, and, under this settlement, for supporting
increased numbers of lower emission alternative fuel trucks in
California.”

For more information contact Karen Caeser at 626-575-6728.