Here's a bombshell for you. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) wants to ban the sale of internal combustion powered lift trucks rated at 8,000 pounds or less on January 1, 2005. That's right. Electric or bust in California.

But it doesn't stop there. CARB also wants to begin to put an end to non-electric rentals just five years later. Take the two moves together, and it's all over for internal combustion (IC) trucks not just in California but perhaps the country.

If that sounds like a leap of logic to you, think about this. The current CARB standards for emissions from IC trucks were the basis for the Environmental Protection Agency's nationwide standards set to take effect soon. And at this point, there's no reason to think that the same pattern is unlikely to repeat itself.

So, here we are barely 18 months from the deadline, and CARB has decided to turn industry, not just the lift truck industry, on its head. Furthermore, in one swoop, CARB has gone from regulating emissions to regulating technology. And that's one giant leap.

Rather than allowing lift truck companies to determine how to best balance the need for a cleaner environment and truck performance, CARB has decided unilaterally that it not only knows what's best but when it must happen.

Unfortunately, the Board doesn't have a very good track record here. In 1990, the Board issued a mandate that required the largest automakers to make 10% of their cars emissions free. So far, the mandate has been re-written four times. A fifth rewrite is expected following a pending court challenge.

Or as Reg Modlin, director of environmental and energy planning for Chrysler, told the Boston Globe last month, "they're [CARB] is not very good at picking technologies. They tried it with battery electric vehicles, and it didn't work."

As you can well imagine, the CARB proposal has less than inspired the confidence of the Industrial Truck Association (ITA) and the Propane Vehicle Council. Both oppose the move vigorously. The ITA and its members oppose it even though the mandate works to the advantage of certain of the organization's members.

As proposed, CARB's electrification program is a bad idea. It makes fleets of lift trucks obsolete long before their time. It goes far beyond CARB's charter to improve air quality by mandating acceptable technologies rather than determining target emission levels. And worst of all, it wrecks havoc among all users of IC trucks, and unnecessarily raises the cost of doing business.

At press time, the Board was about to hold another meeting, the fifth or sixth on this topic. Maybe, just maybe, CARB will come to its senses.