How are people getting away with selling deleted trucks

There is a shop by me that will do any pickup. Everyone knows they delete but somehow, they never get caught. Money exchanging hands? Probably

 

11 Michigan men charged in major U.S. diesel engine tampering case

 

I don’t think anyone cares, I still see old beat down Columbia and Century freightliners coming in and out of CA.

 

Heres the thing. The EPA cant be everywhere at once. There are going to be people on both sides that get nailed. But for every one that gets nailed 5 or 6 squeek through. EPA knows this, sellers know this, buyers know this. So many clueless people put deleted in there to attract clueless morons who want a "new" truck but without emissions and hope they are the 5 or 6 rather then the 1.

Second the EPA also knows they can turn a higher profit leaving some of these delete places open and using them as honeypots. Hell id not be shocked to find out many of these sellers work FOR the EPA or flat out ARE the EPA and the EPA get paid on both sides.

There is also the loophole of buying a deleted truck for pennys on the dollar, undeleteing it and flipping it. Not hard for a shop to buy a deleted but otherwise good condition rig for say $10,000, put $10,000 worth of emissions parts on it or even far less if you salvage them off a wrecked low mile unit, recertify it. Then throw a rebuild at the motor and resell the unit for 40 to 60k depending on miles and make a good 20-30K profit after labor.

Honestly i wont knock anyone for deleteing a rig, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. But if you do so imo you either just need to accept its now scrap, needs to be repaired and resold likely for a loss, or will be yours forever and you may as well use one of the still legal routes to repower it. A loophole that is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Most people arent dumb enough to pour 60-100K and weeks to months of paperwork into a rig just to get a pre emissions engine and a clean title. Not when we still have more then enough old iron floating around that can be had far cheaper then a repower.

 

Freind has a 2013? 389. It was sent to a neighboring state for some specialty work, came back with a pallet of parts wrapped in plastic wrap. Last I heard that company got their contents of a bra in the wringer. Not because of him but someone else throwed them under the bus….

 

I know several small companies and o/o who have deleted 2012 13 older models.Personally I don’t think the epa has the man power to go around randomly checking trucks to c if they have and working emissions.There are no emissions checks like a car done annually.but of course it’s illegal.Selling it is the biggest issue I find it hard to believe a truck lot is selling any deleted trucks a customer can come back on them and win for them selling a truck with altered emissions

 

you are right but here is what will happen.

The first thing that will happen is the feds will force the states to do the job and the states won't hesitate to do it.

Then the EPA will go to the FMCSA and tell them that the annual inspections will have to include emissions components with no proof of tampering and if there is then there will be no sign-off on the inspection.

To reinforce this, if a mechanic signs off on the inspection and there is a delete, the mechanic will be on the hook for tampering with the emissions, even if there is no proof that they did it - the EPA/FMCSA will point to the fact that he/she signed off on it and is a responsible party.

I also think eventually they will do a few other things, one is the older non-emission trucks will be illegal and you can't even register them for commercial use. People think I'm pulling this out of my ***** but look at the patterns of our government.

The other thing is to have a national database for inspections, this way everything is tied to the VIN and there is no way around it. If there is a delete, the truck is flagged in the DB and off the road until it is 'repaired' and certified.

The last thing that they may do is they may increase the fines and allow forfeiture of the trucks on the spot.

These crazies in our country over the environment have gotten out of hand.

 

What is the cost to reinstall all of the emissions components on a deleted truck ?

 

"How do people get away with selling deleted trucks?" Easy. They didn't get caught.

Unless you're in California, or certain states in the northeast, it's pretty easy to get away with it.

 

When I was looking daily at Truckpaper I was surprised to see how many legitimate dealers had deleted trucks for sale. I don't mean some okie boy with 1-3 trucks for sale. These were Freightliner and Peterbilt dealers. At least they say it's deleted in the add so you don't waist anytime calling. BTW...No offense to okies...