The more people are exposed to EVs the more they like them. As more talk radio junkie truck drivers start loving EV trucks, they will start to ask themselves "What else are these rightwing talkers lying to me about?".
Gary LaBush remembers the first time he sat behind the wheel of an electric Ford e-transit delivery truck at the Frito-Lay distribution center in Queens. Like most first-time EV truck drivers, LaBush wondered if the vehicle was actually on. “I was like, ‘What’s going on?’” he recalled. “There was no noise — and no fumes.”
Now, LaBush trains other drivers on how to operate a fleet of 40 delivery trucks at the Frito-Lay facility. The 49-year-old, who has worked at the company for over two decades, said he would struggle if he had to return to gas. “I wouldn’t want to do it,” he said. “After being in this — it’s just night and day.”
LaBush belongs to a small but growing group of commercial medium-to-heavy-duty truck drivers who use electric trucks. These drivers — many of whom operate local or regional routes that don’t require hundreds of miles on the road in a day — generally welcome the transition to electric, praising their new trucks’ handling, acceleration, smoothness and quiet operation.
But some companies and trucking associations worry this shift, spurred in part by a California law mandating a switch to electric or emissions-free trucks by 2042, is happening too fast. While electric trucks might work well in some cases, they argue, the upfront costs of the vehicles and their charging infrastructure are often too heavy a lift.
For the United States to meet its climate goals, virtually all trucks must be zero-emissions by 2050. While trucks are only 4 percent of the vehicles on the road, they make up almost a quarter of the country’s transportation emissions.
On most of America’s roads, electric trucks are an anomaly. According to an Environmental Defense Fund analysis of the nation’s 12.2 million truck fleet, there are almost 13,000 electric trucks — which can be defined as Class 2B to Class 8 vehicles, or anything from a step-up van to a large tractor-trailer — on the road today. Around 10,000 of those trucks were just put on the road in 2023, up from 2,000 the year before.
For truckers driving EVs, there’s no going back
Gary LaBush remembers the first time he sat behind the wheel of an electric Ford e-transit delivery truck at the Frito-Lay distribution center in Queens. Like most first-time EV truck drivers, LaBush wondered if the vehicle was actually on. “I was like, ‘What’s going on?’” he recalled. “There was no noise — and no fumes.”
Now, LaBush trains other drivers on how to operate a fleet of 40 delivery trucks at the Frito-Lay facility. The 49-year-old, who has worked at the company for over two decades, said he would struggle if he had to return to gas. “I wouldn’t want to do it,” he said. “After being in this — it’s just night and day.”
LaBush belongs to a small but growing group of commercial medium-to-heavy-duty truck drivers who use electric trucks. These drivers — many of whom operate local or regional routes that don’t require hundreds of miles on the road in a day — generally welcome the transition to electric, praising their new trucks’ handling, acceleration, smoothness and quiet operation.
But some companies and trucking associations worry this shift, spurred in part by a California law mandating a switch to electric or emissions-free trucks by 2042, is happening too fast. While electric trucks might work well in some cases, they argue, the upfront costs of the vehicles and their charging infrastructure are often too heavy a lift.
For the United States to meet its climate goals, virtually all trucks must be zero-emissions by 2050. While trucks are only 4 percent of the vehicles on the road, they make up almost a quarter of the country’s transportation emissions.
On most of America’s roads, electric trucks are an anomaly. According to an Environmental Defense Fund analysis of the nation’s 12.2 million truck fleet, there are almost 13,000 electric trucks — which can be defined as Class 2B to Class 8 vehicles, or anything from a step-up van to a large tractor-trailer — on the road today. Around 10,000 of those trucks were just put on the road in 2023, up from 2,000 the year before.
