Comprehensive waste: garbage trucks will not be fined for overweight

Fines for overweight garbage trucks will not be charged for three years, the law on the introduction of a moratorium was adopted in the State Duma in the third reading. Currently, the design of Russian garbage trucks does not allow the transported cargo to be distributed over the vehicle chassis in proportions that would avoid sanctions, the authors of the bill stated. The temporary cancellation of fines, which reach up to 400 thousand rubles, will allow regional solid waste management operators to avoid bankruptcy, and will also give time to change the design of heavy-duty vehicles, experts believe. About whether the moratorium will affect the condition of roads in the regions and how the fleet of garbage trucks will be modernized, see the Izvestia article.

Fine for garbage trucks

On February 25, the State Duma adopted immediately in the second and third readings the law on the movement of heavy vehicles used for the transportation of municipal solid waste (MSW) on highways. He introduces a moratorium on fines for such vehicles. The amount of sanctions, according to the Administrative Code, now amounts to 250-400 thousand rubles.

The authors of the amendments stated that now MSW, in particular branches, construction debris and waste from homes, cannot be placed without exceeding the load on the axle of the car — this is a feature of the design of garbage trucks. And traffic on the roads is now prohibited with an overload of more than 10% of the permissible weight of the car or if the axle load exceeds this indicator. A decrease in the volume of transported waste or the purchase of specialized equipment of a smaller volume will entail a significant increase in the costs of regional MSW operators and an increase in the cost of waste disposal services for the public and legal entities several times, follows from the explanatory note to the document.

"According to the assessment of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Russian Environmental Operator, the amount of funds needed to replace all garbage trucks with two axles is 120 billion rubles at a time, or about 40 billion rubles annually if leasing mechanisms are used," the explanatory note says.

The State Duma Committee on Ecology, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, together with PPK REO and with the assistance of the Ministry of Transport of Russia, conducted a study, which found that in a number of regions, 70% of such vehicles are overloaded on the axle of garbage trucks.

The history of the Tomsk regional operator "Special Automobile Industry of the city of Tomsk" is also indicative. Last year, the governor of the Tomsk region, Vladimir Mazur, allocated 50 million for garbage collection in the city. In August of the same year, at a meeting of the municipal economy committee of the City Duma, Deputy Mayor of Tomsk for Landscaping Nikolai Glebovich announced that these funds would be used to pay off debts to subcontractors of the Special Automobile Enterprise. But the company also suffered significant losses due to constant fines from the automatic vehicle weight and size control point on the Tomsk-Mariinsk road, through which heavy trucks proceed to the landfill. In a month, their amount could be up to 4 million rubles.

Alexander Kogan, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Ecology, explained that the design of such machines includes pressing equipment, and the waste includes both light and heavy fractions, which makes uniform distribution of cargo an almost impossible task due to the objective features of the vehicle itself.

— Since October 2024, automatic weight and size control points have begun fining carriers up to 400 thousand rubles for each violation. Without the moratorium, regional operators could go bankrupt en masse, which would lead to debris piling up on city streets," he said.

Alexander Yakubovsky, a State Duma deputy, member of the Committee on Construction and Housing and one of the authors of the amendments, also noted that it is impossible to avoid fines when using domestic garbage trucks.

— The permissible load on the rear axle is exceeded, which is due to purely constructive solutions of the equipment itself, that is, all two—axle domestic garbage trucks need to be changed, he told Izvestia.

Simultaneously with the adoption of the law, it was discussed on the same day at a meeting of two committees of the Federation Council. So, at a meeting of the Federation Council Committee on Agrarian and Food policy and Environmental Management, it was noted that during the moratorium, the Ministry of Industry and Trade will analyze and submit proposals for the production of garbage trucks that do not violate the law. Izvestia sent a request to the agency asking it to confirm these plans and provide a timeline for the development of proposals.

And Anatoly Artamonov, chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Budget and Financial Markets, former head of the Kaluga Region, said at a meeting of this committee that "in his practice he had never banned the movement of heavy trucks on regional roads, except for transit roads."

— I believe that load capacity limitations do not always coincide with the axle load, he said. — Two KAMAZ trucks will pass, which will carry 5-7 tons, or one heavy truck will pass. Which of them will break the road more? No one has conducted these studies. We need to build good roads so that nothing is forbidden.

What will happen during the moratorium

The moratorium is a compromise between the preservation of roads and the stability of the MSW management sector, noted Alexander Kogan.

— However, its effectiveness depends on whether it will be possible to create a new technique in three years, he said. — If the task is not solved, the problem will develop into a chronic one, and fines will again become a threat to the sphere of MSW management. It is important that this "respite" should be an impetus for systemic changes. The authorities, businesses, and manufacturers will have to prove that three years is enough time to restart the industry.

The deputy confirmed that the Ministry of Industry and Trade, together with the manufacturers of garbage trucks, will develop proposals for the modernization of the fleet.

— New optimal vehicle models for waste transportation should be developed. So that the roads are intact, and vehicles with MSW are not forced to drive half—empty in order to meet the standards of axle load," he said.

During the discussion of the bill at the plenary session in the State Duma, deputy from the LDPR faction Yaroslav Nilov expressed concern that municipal roads would suffer in three years due to non-compliance with the loads on the axles of garbage trucks.

— Now there are cases that ambulances cannot travel everywhere and patients are often dragged on stretchers to the carriage, he added. — It will only worsen the existing situation.

At the same time, the MP acknowledged that the problem with garbage collection is socially sensitive and if left unaddressed, polluted areas will attract stray animals that may flock together, which will pose a danger to the public.

But according to the research that the authors relied on when drafting the law, the vast majority of garbage trucks do not exceed the permissible load if taken in a complex, State Duma Deputy Alexander Yakubovsky told Izvestia.

— In solving this problem, we have given the industry a temporary reprieve of three years, which market participants should spend on upgrading their equipment, he added. — Thus, we will solve the problem of preserving roads and create conditions for updating the MSW technical park, but we will not do it radically, without a man-made collapse in the waste disposal industry.

Despite the fact that such innovations can help in the short term, in the long term they can aggravate the situation, as non-compliance with the axle load will continue to destroy roads, according to automotive expert Yulia Miloslavskaya.

— The problem of overloading exists not only for garbage trucks, but also for other types of equipment engaged in the removal and transportation of various materials, she noted.

According to her, if other forms of public transport are not taken into account in the correction of legislation, this will create an unbalanced situation when only one type of official vehicles receives temporary preferences, without solving the general problem of congestion on the roads.