The towing business hooked Ruben Ayala at an early age.

“It’s just been a part of my life ever since I was a little kid,” said Ayala, whose 40-year towing career started at age 16 — “which you couldn’t do these days.”

But the owner of Tippy’s Towing Service in Riverside worries that California’s quest to phase out gas-powered vehicles will leave businesses like his stranded along the road to progress.

That’s why Ayala applauded the U.S. Senate’s May 22 vote to block California’s ability to pursue more stringent air-quality goals than the federal government. These include a rule phasing out gas-powered vehicles like tow trucks in favor of ones with clean engines.

Repealing California’s waivers, which are needed to impose those rules, “is a lifeline for the towing industry and for everyone in the transportation industry,” Ayala said via text.

“I wish the state of California would have taken action to correct some of the poor policies, but they didn’t seem willing to budge. I am excited that the federal government has provided some relief!”

A spokesperson for the Safe Roads Coalition, a tow industry group financed by a tow truck manufacturer, also supports the Senate’s vote, which came after the House of Representatives voted to block the waivers in April.

“There will come a time when electric engines replace combustion engines,” coalition spokesperson Marko Mlikotin said via email. “Unfortunately, California has not figured out how to do it without putting jobs and public safety at risk.”

Air-quality advocates and California elected leaders denounced the Senate’s vote.

“We won’t stand by as Trump Republicans make America smoggy again — undoing work that goes back to the days of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — all while ceding our economic future to China,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a news release.

Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign, said via email: “Senate Republicans just voted to break the law and increase asthma, lung cancer and cardiac deaths.”

For decades, California, which routinely ranks among the worst states in the nation for air quality, has received waivers from the federal Clean Air Act to pursue aggressive measures targeting air pollution from gas-powered vehicles.

Fossil fuel emissions include greenhouse gases responsible for climate change. And diesel exhaust from trucks has been linked to cancer, heart disease and asthma.

During the Biden administration, the state got three waivers, including one allowing California to implement its Advanced Clean Trucks rule that set gradually higher targets, between 2024 and 2035, for the percentage of trucks running on clean engines.

Using a law that allows Congress to review federal regulations, the Republican-controlled Senate, in a party-line vote, blocked that waiver, as well as a state regulation targeting nitrogen oxides — a key smog ingredient — in truck emissions and a mandate that would have required all new model cars in California to be zero-emission by 2035.

The waivers’ critics argued California’s mandates are impractical and the wrong way to encourage electric vehicles.

The waivers “go far beyond the scope Congress contemplated in the Clean Air Act,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, said in a news release.

“ … Under California’s electric vehicle mandate, automakers around the country would be forced to close down a substantial part of their traditional vehicle production, with serious consequences” to the economy, jobs and tax revenue, Thune added.

Waiver defenders, who warned warned the Senate’s votes would undo decades of pollution-fighting progress, argue the Senate acted illegally by overstepping its authority and ignoring findings by the Senate parliamentarian and the U.S. Government Accountability Office that the Senate couldn’t override the waivers.

On May 22, Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the state would sue, seeking to keep the waivers.

Incorporated in 1967, Tippy’s is a family-owned business with 14 employees and more than a dozen vehicles. Besides commercial work, the company responds to calls from law enforcement and colleges and universities to remove vehicles.

According to Ayala, one of the biggest obstacles to following California’s clean-truck rules is that electric-powered tow trucks simply don’t exist.

What’s more, the number of gas-powered tow trucks available for purchase is limited, making it hard for companies like Tippy’s to replace aging or broken vehicles, Ayala said.

“In the very near future, they won’t have any inventory left of those trucks,” Ayala said by phone before the Senate’s votes. “And because the electric technology doesn’t exist, (when) I’m ready to upgrade to the next truck or phase out an older truck, a new truck won’t be available for me to buy.”

The clean trucks rule “was specifically designed to allow for a gradual and flexible increase in the use of zero-emission vehicles … within California while continuing to ensure that diesel-powered trucks remain available,” Lynzie Lowe, a spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board, said via email.

The air board, which enforces California’s air-quality rules, is not enforcing the portion of the clean trucks rule that would have applied to private tow truck operators, Lowe added.

Businesses can apply for an exemption if a commercially available, zero-emission vehicle option does not exist, Lowe said, noting the air board “has not yet identified a commercially available wrecker-style zero-emission tow truck — the type many associate with a hook on the back.”

Other problems need to be addressed before electric tow trucks can be deployed, Ayala said.

“If I roll out to an emergency situation, I don’t know how long that situation’s going to take me to clear up,” he said. “It could be 30 minutes. It could be four hours.”

“If I’ve got an electric truck that’s got three hours’ worth of power … but the job requires four hours, then what do we do? (Do) we need to go back and charge it for four hours and then come back? Or do I have to spend $200,000 to have a backup truck just sitting there waiting because it has a charged battery? And then how do we charge them?”

Ayala fears what might happen if California doesn’t change its clean-truck mandate.

If that’s the case, “you’re going to see an incredible amount of businesses fold and you’re going to see all these poor families devastated by not having a job and the ability to care for their families, to say nothing of when you call for a tow truck that’s not showing up basically because they’re just not as many,” he said.

Fewer tow trucks to clear roadways of crashed and disabled vehicles will turn an hourlong backup “into a four-hour backup or a six-hour backup,” Ayala said, adding the delays to emergency vehicles in that scenario imperil public safety.

While the clean-truck rules are meant to improve air quality, “if you’ve got cars idling for three hours on a backup” because a tow truck isn’t available, “that’s where you’re going to be doing more (pollution) because they have all those trucks and cars sitting idle,” Ayala said.

“(They) are going to give out so much junk in the air, if you made any headway at all, it’s going to eliminate that.”

Ayala said he’s not opposed to fighting pollution.

“We’re not only business owners, but we have family members here as well,” he said. “We care just just as much about the quality of life in the state as everyone else.”

Instead, California should ease up on clean-truck mandates until the technology and infrastructure catches up, Ayala said.

“The dedication of my entire family is what’s made us successful,” he said. “If you talked to me 10 years ago, I would have never said ‘I’m going to close my business down not because of lack of effort, but because the state just won’t allow me to continue.’”

“They just have made it impossible for me to stay in business. That’s sad to me.”

The air board “understands the concerns from tow truck operators and is committed to working with all industries to support a fair and effective clean transportation transition,” Lowe said, noting changes made to the clean-trucks rule in response to truck manufacturer feedback.

Lowe added the air board “also plans to propose further flexibility this summer to ensure continued feasibility and support for businesses across sectors, including towing.”