Thank You Letter To EPA Administrator Zeldin

February 13, 2026

The Honorable Lee Zeldin
Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004

Dear Administrator Zeldin:

On behalf of the 14,000 member companies of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies (NASTC), thank you very much for acting boldly and prudently in recent actions that will have the positive, beneficial effect of restoring appropriate balance between protecting our environment and the commercial activity vital to America’s economy and prosperity.

As you know, NASTC is the industry voice for a distinct segment of the trucking industry not expressly represented by any other trucking association. NASTC is a member-based organization whose motor carrier members range from a single power unit to more than 100 power units, the average being 12 power units. These carriers for the most part operate in the long-haul, over-the road, full-truckload, for-hire sector of interstate trucking. NASTC’s members are small motor carrier businesses, the largest segment of America’s long-haul trucking.

NASTC strongly supports the Trump administration’s broad deregulatory agenda. And we tremendously appreciate and fully back the consequential step of withdrawing EPA’s “endangerment finding.” Designating greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, a threat to public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act has defied sound science and mocked responsible environmental policy. This finding has empowered big-government politicians and eco-extremists to impose on American citizens and essential business sectors green mandates that neither the American public nor market forces have sought (nor under which can compete with foreign competitors).

Moreover, NASTC commends and fully backs your decisions that will rectify the overreaching GHG3 and NOx rules, which have hung over the trucking industry and have inflicted very significant operational and financial hardships on truck drivers and motor carriers, particularly small trucking businesses.

We applaud your initiative and the goal of discontinuation of DEF derates. We applaud that the forthcoming rule to accomplish this most welcome outcome will be evidence-based, relying on data gathered from DEF product makers related to DEF system failures. We applaud your pursuit of details about DEF systems’ warranty claims, failure rates, and repair information for commercial vehicle model years 2016, 2019, and 2023.

NASTC and its member companies were encouraged by last year’s EPA and Small Business Administration guidance that requires manufacturers to provide a software solution replacing the radical derate schedule with one more reasonable: gradual torque reductions over 340 engine hours with a slowest speed of 25 mph. This deregulatory move was a good first step. Eliminating DEF derates entirely will be the optimal final outcome.

NASTC thanks you for and strongly supports the intended withdrawal of the 2022 Heavy-Duty Engine and Vehicle NOx rule, scrapping the derate approach for trucks model year 2027 and newer. We also appreciate that EPA’s final rule disapproves the California Clean Truck Check, relieving out-of-state trucks from certain California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations.

In our correspondence of August 27, 2025, NASTC “urge[d] you to push the envelope as hard as you can to ease and, if achievable, eliminate the derate framework altogether. We urge[d] you to expel CARB from having any regulatory power outside the confines of the state of California and, in cases where federal law is controlling, preempt CARB and state regulators. We urge[d] you to enact a transparency regime at EPA.”

It appears you took NASTC’s requests to heart. We are thrilled with your deregulatory initiatives and greatly appreciate your common-sense, reasonable, beneficial actions. The American trucking sector will be better off for them.

NASTC stands ready to work with you and lend support for achieving as much deregulatory progress as possible. Please let us know how we may be of assistance.

Sincerely,