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Exhaust Gas Recirculation. Learn the term, if you don’t know it already, because of all the new emissions technologies being discussed, EGR looms closest.

California, where the whole emissions thing started, is at it again. And not just for new trucks of the future, but for trucks and buses already on the road. They could eventually get — gasp! — particulate traps, the expensive, heavy and bulky devices first feared in the early 1990s, when exhaust emissions rules seemed impossible to meet.

California, where the whole emissions thing started, is at it again. But this time, the state wants to retrofit older trucks and buses with particulate traps.

Exhaust Gas Recirculation. Learn the term, if you don’t know it already, because of all the new emissions technologies being discussed, EGR looms closest.

Fleet managers and owner-operators know “winterizing” isn’t what it used to be. Where it once meant installing special fluids and equipment, that’s pretty much passé if they’ve spec’d the vehicle properly and maintained it year-round.

Many truckers can recall, as youngsters, the advice of their mothers to button up before heading outside into the cold weather. Such precautions are still warranted even though the youngsters are now adults, according to a fleet manager at Sather Trucking.

While it's the time of year to begin winterizing the fleet, some carriers are also taking steps to winterize their drivers as well.

Fleet managers and owner-operators know “winterizing” isn’t what it used to be. Where it once meant installing special fluids and equipment, that’s pretty much passé if they’ve spec’d the vehicle properly and maintained it year-round.

Cheating the wind to save fuel — more properly known as the science of aerodynamics — seems to have caught on with the cabs of today’s highway tractors. Streamlined power units, looking as if they’ve just emerged from aircraft wind tunnels, ease their way down the road and through the air, while behind them, vans and refrigerated trailers appear to have been riveted together in a box factory.

Cheating the wind to save fuel — more properly known as the science of aerodynamics — seems to have caught on with the cabs of today’s highway tractors. But truckers and fleet managers have been slow to warm up to aerodynamic trailers.