I was talking to Ron Lynds, used truck sales manager for Nova Truck Sales in Truro, Nova Scotia. I’ve never met the man, but I can tell that he’s a real character after a few minutes on the phone. Ron wholesales a lot of trucks, most of them go to wholesalers in Toronto, but a quarter of them get sold in Truro and end up tramping around the province and maybe Maine, New Brunswick and Quebec, hauling fish, lumber and containers.

We were talking about trade-in values when the subject of emissions deletions came up. “If you’re going to take in a used truck make sure you plug it in,” he told me. “I got stuck with a Peterbilt a few months back–we didn’t realize it and everything had been deleted.”

Lynds is appalled how widespread the tampering is and went into a bit of a rant. “They’re up to 2016 right now,” he said. “One thing I don’t understand is that when I sell a truck, I’ve got to make sure it’s working. You talk to the government about this and they don’t seem to know anything about it. I won’t take in a deleted truck.

“It costs from $12,000-15,000 to get the emissions systems working again. Dealers won’t take in these trucks and people will be stuck with them. I think people are going to go out of business if the government doesn’t do something, and they don’t seem to care.”

Lynds ended our discussion by suggesting this would be a good issue for Truck News to tackle. I mentioned that TN ran a series of pieces on the subject back in 2103. It didn’t seem to have much affect, except that the story still draws comments online. A couple or years ago, I guess, someone from the Ontario Ministry of Environment contacted me and asked me a few questions. He seemed to be up on the practice. Anyway that was the last I heard from any official, and like Lynds says, the practice is bigger than ever.