FOUNDATION FOCUS RTAP OFFERING GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA TRANSPORTATION REGULATIONS

by Noah Lopez for the California Cattlemen’s Foundation

The Rancher Technical Assistance Program (RTAP) team, Jack Rice and myself, receive a wide array of calls. In the two years since the California Cattle Council first funded this project through the California Cattlemen’s Foundation, we have explored all kinds of issues. Often we have to dive deep into the nuances of regulatory requirements, grapple with understanding funding opportunities and assistance programs, and research various environmental, business and other questions to answer questions.

This means that we are on the constant lookout for useful resources regarding these issues; compiling and collecting things like helpful websites, FAQs, and fact sheets. One such resource we have repeatedly relied on is CCA’s “California Livestock Transportation Regulations” fact sheet. This fact sheet is a source of wellorganized information and was always the first file opened when a producer reached out with a transportation regulation question.

The fact sheet, published in 2016, provided a comprehensive overview of state and federal regulations, covering everything from permitting and licensing to weigh stations and air quality. However, as the last seven years have brought new regulations and changes to old regulations, RTAP and the CCA team decided it was time for an update. We reviewed each section, examining the relevant code and making changes where necessary. It may come as no surprise that the area with the most change was the “air quality” section, given California’s focus on reducing vehicle emissions.

The air quality section now includes a detailed overview of the California Air Resources Board’s Truck and Bus regulation. This regulation, first adopted in 2008, regulates diesel vehicles with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) over 14,000 pounds. It requires that, beginning in 2023, such vehicles must have engines with model years of 2010 or newer. Non-compliant vehicles will be denied registration from the DMV. While exclusions exist for some vehicles, such as most pickups used exclusively for non-commercial activity, the regulation certainly impacts cattle producers with heavy duty diesel trucks manufactured prior to 2010. A low-use vehicle exemption is also available for vehicles which operate fewer than 1,000 miles and 100 hours per calendar year, though many producers have reported the limitations of this exemption are too restrictive to be worth pursuing.

After this addition and more, the resulting new document ended up being three pages longer than the old one. The increase in length speaks to the staggering amount of regulatory requirements that California ranchers face in the area of transportation alone. To better reflect the length of the new document, we decided to restructure it as a guidebook and renamed it “A Rancher’s Guide to California Livestock Transportation Regulations.”

The guidebook can be found online at www. calcattlemenfoundation.org/rtap. If you would like a FREE hard copy, contact the RTAP team and we will send you a copy in the mail. While the guide is extensive, there are bound to be issues and questions it does not address. Please feel free to reach out to the RTAP team with any questions. We can be reached at rtap@wrstrat.com or at (916) 409-6902.