Members of America’s trucking industry say stringent new federal regulations on emissions are mainly unnecessary and could affect the nation’s shaky supply chain.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced last month that it had finalized new rules on restricting tailpipe emissions on large diesel trucks beginning in the model year 2027. The agency, considering two options to address nitrous oxide (NOx), chose the more aggressive one. According to the EPA, the choice was between reducing emissions by 60 percent by 2045 and reducing them by 47 percent.

But according to transportation industry experts, the choice is between realistic goals and extreme mandates that are very expensive, will hurt the trucking industry, and are nearly impossible to reach.

Regulations that make it more difficult to get and keep trucks on the road could have a disproportionate effect on Pennsylvania, which has the nation’s fifth-highest employment level in heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers.

In a filing last spring, Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association President Rebecca Oyler said her organization is in “support of a single national low-NOx rule that is technologically feasible, protects American jobs, and is not disruptive to the nation’s economy or supply chains.” But, she warned, “an approach such as Option 1 that cannot be achieved by all classes of trucks under widely varied business models will cause significant uncertainty amongst fleets and will result in purchasing new trucks before new standards are implemented.”

Former Donald Trump EPA chief of staff Mandy Gunasekara said she supports the EPA’s goal, and she said the Trump administration sought to do the same through its “Cleaner Trucks Initiative.” However, she said the Biden administration is going too far, too fast.

“The idea was to integrate new technologies that exist today and have evolved that could significantly reduce the emissions,” said Gunasekara, a senior policy analyst with the Independent Women’s Forum and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “Now, what’s happened in the Biden administration is they want to crank it up and they want to set standards that are very difficult to meet.”

Jed Mandel, president of the Truck Engine Manufacturers Association, was more direct. “We are fundamentally opposed to Option 1,” Mandel told the trade publication Transportation Topics. “It’s not technologically feasible or cost-effective and truly not needed for the balance of the country.”

Oyler said that even without a new rule, the industry has been bringing down emissions. “This has resulted in significant improvements in air quality and a cleaner environment for us all,” Oyler said. “It would take 60 of today’s clean diesel trucks to equal the emissions of one truck sold in 1988.”

If the cost of new trucks rises, or the supply is limited due to the lack of technology to meet the higher emissions requirement, the unintended consequence could be older, high-emission trucks staying on the roads longer.

“I was recently talking to a mid-sized trucking company person who said the average cost for electric vehicle trucks is around $400,000, depending on the range, and then there’s a host of technical problems,” Gunasekara said.

Todd Spencer, the president of the Owner-Operated Independent Drivers Association, agreed. He added that if small business truckers cannot afford the new, compliant trucks, they will stay with older, less efficient trucks or leave the industry entirely. And it isn’t as though the EPA overlooked these concerns. Spencer said the EPA “largely ignored the warnings and concerns raised by truckers” in this latest rule.

Ellen Voie, president of Women in Trucking, also had concerns about increased regulation on the trucking industry. She said that new incentives for the trucking industry to buy newer, more energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly vehicles would work better than costly mandates.

“This could include credits, refunds or tax rebates to incentivize the adoption of these standards,” Voie said.

Chris Woodward writes about industry and technology for InsideSources.

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