One of the first deadlines for California fleets to comply with the Advanced Clean Fleets law is coming up – by April 1st, 2024, nearly all* municipal, county and state fleets need to register and submit their first reports to CARB. If you are a state, county or local government fleet – this guide is for you.

If you are a drayage fleet, or a high priority or federal fleet, you should have already reported to CARB.

This is a “quick start” guide to what reporting by April 1st requires. For full, detailed guidance, you can watch the series of webinars on ACF reporting from CARB. We recommend starting here – a 2 hour Q&A session from March that is among the more condensed guides from CARB.

* If your fleet does not own, lease, nor contract to any third party fleets using vehicles over 8,500 lbs, then you may not be subject to ACF, and you may not need to meet the April 1st filing.

1 – Log into TRUCRS portal and update your fleet profile

If you are a public fleet in California, chances are that you’ve filed reports of some sort to CARB via the TRUCRS portal before.

If your fleet has had to comply with common CARB rules in the last decade like Truck & Bus regulations, Airport Shuttle regulations, or Solid Waste & Heavy Crane regulations, you will have used TRUCRS before. Log in here.

Some small agencies may not have used TRUCRS before. Create a TRUCRS account using the guidelines from CARB here.

Before continuing to the next steps, make sure your fleet profile is updated to include every vehicle in your fleet and the updated odometer or hubodometer reading, and the other fields the TRUCRS forms require.

Important: you may have already included vehicles subject to older CARB regulations such as buses or heavy equipment in your TRUCRS profile. However, starting April 1st, many vehicles in your fleet (including smaller cars that aren’t directly subject to the ACF) may need be logged and tracked in TRUCRS. If you continue on the default reporting (Model Year – see more in the next section), then you only need to register vehicles over 8,500 GVWR. However, if you elect to use the Milestone Option (again, see more in the next section), then you also must also register some types of vehicles that fall under 8,500 GVWR.

For large fleets, you can update TRUCRS in bulk using their Large Fleet Upload spreadsheet.

It’s important to note that some new fields of vehicle information have been added to TRUCRS as part of CARB’s new ACF reporting. In the TRUCRS portal where you can add a new vehicle or edit an existing one, you must fill out these new fields:

If you have already begun to replace an ICE vehicle with an EV, or if you have converted an ICE to an EV, then you need to identify the vehicles that have been replaced or converted for them to count towards this year’s compliance schedule. If you are already replacing vehicles under ACF, then we recommend you watch the full series of CARB TRUCRS ACF reporting guideline webinar – this Q&A from March 5th is particularly useful.

2 – Selecting your compliance schedule – Model Year or Milestone

One important step in your reporting is to select one of two compliance pathways that you would like to apply to your fleet. If you don’t select a pathway, your fleet will automatically subscribe to the ZEV Purchase Schedule, also known as the “model year schedule.”

This is an important point. For many fleets the default Model Year Schedule is going to be a more aggressive transition schedule.

The alternative option for your compliance pathway is called the ZEV Milestone Option, which may be more flexible for many types of fleets. You can read more about the details of the two options here.

Note: switching to the ZEV Milestone Option is a one-way door. You cannot return to the Model year Schedule once you opt into the Milestone Option.

To select a pathway, go to your “Company Info” tab in the TRUCRS portal. At the bottom of this page is the “Regulations your fleet is subject to” section. Here, you can opt into the Milestone Option.

3 – Applying for extensions and exemptions

Another important step is to apply for extensions and exemptions. To do this, email TRUCRS@arb.ca.gov and include your TRUCRS ID # in the email correspondence.

4 – Getting your compliance status certificate

After making all your fleet profile updates and adding or editing all your vehicles, you can get your compliance certificate.

Access the “Compliance Status” tab of your account. If you’ve entered all the information correctly, you should see a green note at the bottom of the screen saying “Fleet is in Compliance with Advanced Clean Fleets”.

So long as you see only green messages in this section, you should be able to print your compliance status certificate from that menu.

Reach out to Port Power to discuss your EV transition

Port Power was founded to make going EV as easy as operating diesel.

Whether you are a fleet operator buying your first EV trucks or a city administrator tasked with figuring out your plan, reach out to schedule a consultation with the team at Port Power for help with:

• Getting the full range of options you have to manage this transition
• Having a soup-to-nuts, managed solution for all your fleet charging and operations needs
• Visibility into grant and funding opportunities to help you with this transition

Get in touch with us today: https://portpower.us/contact/