Diesel Brothers Tampered With Truck Emissions Systems, Fined $851,000

I had never heard of “The Diesel Brothers,” and it’s obvious I am not missing much. I mean, why would someone want to put diesel emissions in their pants? Or imitate the idea of farting out diesel gasses to the point where you get this stuff near your butt? I get it — fart jokes are funny. But this isn’t. The idea of a fart so noxious that it pollutes the air can be seen as a joke and can be funny, but taking it this far isn’t just bad for the environment, it’s bad for the guy in the photo.

What’s in that stuff that he has pressed against the back of his pants? The four main pollutants that are gushing out of that pipe are carbon monoxide (yeah, the stuff that kills you if you breathe too much of it in a closed room), hydrocarbons, particulate matter, and nitrogen oxides. This toxic mix contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and can lead to premature death. Sure, everyone breathes it in by being outside when a car drives by, but this doesn’t mean it’s okay to dismantle the systems that keep much of the pollution out of the air.

Thousands of people die every year as a result of breathing particulate pollution alone. Particulate pollution is made during the incomplete combustion of diesel fuel. Its makeup is a mixup of hundreds of chemical elements smaller than one strand of human hair — like sulfates, ammonium, nitrates, carcinogenic compounds, arsenic.

The Diesel Brothers are the star of a show on the Discovery Channel. But part of that is they produce and sell modified diesel pickup trucks that polluted the environment in Utah. In a court ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby found that all of those involved with the television program were guilty of violating the Clean Air Act and Utah State Law.

In addition to the $851,451 fine noted above, the Diesel Brothers also have to pay $1.2 million in court fees and, of course, halt their pollution promotion.

Through their marketplace, DieselSellerz, they provided a platform for customers to buy and sell their diesel pickups — many modified in the same way the Diesel Brothers had done to their own trucks. Many modified their diesel vehicles so they could “roll coal,” which means blast a bunch of pollution out into the air while driving. “What do you do when you see a dorky Prius driver? Watch the #BuiltDiesel smoke out a Prius,” was one of the videos on their website. [Editor’s note: What the heck is a show like this doing on the Discovery Channel?]

Although Sparks, one of the Diesel Brothers, claims that he fired the guy who wrote that description, the video and the description are still up. This encourages coal rolling and the assumption that people who drive smaller vehicles are weak and deserve punishment by having a smoke in their faces. Promoting the idea that being cool is bullying other people for driving a relatively efficient and green vehicle is not only wrong, but it’s also dangerous. You could cause a wreck by rolling coal in the faces of others. While walking one day, I witnessed a diesel truck rolling coal on a person driving behind them, and guess what? That stuff was blown right in my face. I have asthma, by the way.

People who do this don’t care about those harmed by their actions. If they did, the wouldn’t do stupid things like putting a diesel pipe against the back their pants so they could “fart” black smoke. Perhaps they are unable to understand their own stupidity, and this is why they do this.