Assembly Bill to Override CARB ACF Requirements on Private Contractors and Truckers Fails Before July Recess
Sean Edgar, Environmental Policy and Media Advisor
On July 1, as the California Legislature prepared for recess, a last-ditch effort to exempt privately-owned contractor fleets from the Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) regulation failed. Assembly Bill 1436 (Avila Farias) failed to pass from the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on a 3-3 vote[1]. By virtue of this result, it appears unlikely that the California Legislature will intervene to put any guardrails around CARB’s plan to finalize the State and Local Government (SLG) amendments that first identified the contracting requirement language on April 2, 2026 and strengthened on July 1, 2026. The final Regulation is expected to become an official state regulation effective on or about September 1, 2026. Any privately owned fleet that contracts with public agencies should be prepared for a bumpy ride over the next nine months until the SLG reporting deadline and should brace for discussions with the contracting authorities on ZEV purchase that contractors will be required to make.
What we know about the ACF SLG implementation at this time is:
- All non-federal public agencies/municipalities/special districts must report ALL contractor vehicles >8,500 lbs GVWR of all fuel types into the agency’s CARB TRUCRS account by April 1, 2027. This includes all state agencies (like Caltrans), all 58 counties, 500+ cities and over 4,000 special districts such as water, power and sanitation districts), collectively “agencies.”;
- The agencies are responsible for their contractors to be in compliance with at least one of two compliance pathways;
- The “case-by-case” and “good faith effort” terminology used by CARB in their Guidance Document[2] is extremely concerning given that CARB has spent the past four years developing the Regulation.
- I serve on CARB’s ACF Outreach Committee so expect to be briefed as soon as CARB has additional information. My team has over 15 years of experience reporting into CARB TRUCRS and will be supporting the public agencies and affected contractors that we contract with.
WSTA continues to challenge the ACF SLG Regulation and that effort and an appeal for support can be found on the WSTA website.[3] Should you have any questions on that or the other aspects of this article, please contact Sean@Cleanfleets.net or (916) 718-7050.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1436
[2] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/fact-sheets/ACF-2025-Amendments-Guidance
