There’s a new menace on America’s roads, but it’s not speed cameras, drunk drivers or ‘Lycra-lout’ cyclists. Meet ‘rolling coal’, a motorsport trend that revolves around tricking out large diesel pickup trucks to intentionally belch out giant plumes of black smoke that visibly pollutes the air for entertainment or for protest.
Rolling coal has been the subject of much controversy in the US for some time now, and earlier this week Colorado became the latest state to ban its practice after two previously failed attempts to curb the activity of rampant coal rollers.
Depending on who you ask, rolling coal ranges from a juvenile prank to a health hazard, a stand against government restrictions and invasive environmentalism to a gung-ho display of American freedom or just pure ‘pollution porn’ for self-declared rednecks.
Coal rollers are nothing new, and the trend originates from the truck-pull competitions often held at county fairs and rural speedways in the American South, where two trucks face off to see which one can drag a weighted sled the farthest.
To increase power output and speed, diesel truck-pull drivers will often modify their pickups to dump excess fuel into the engine and remove restrictive particulate filters, which has the side-effect of making the trucks emit huge clouds of jet-black soot.
Similar to how the exhaust of a high-powered drag car will shoot flames, the coal rollers’ black smoke serves as an impressive visible exhibition of the vehicle’s power and performance, and many other pickup enthusiasts attempt to recreate the same effect on their own trucks.
Enthusiasts spend anywhere between $500 and $5,000 modifying their trucks to roll coal, with the most common addition usually a pair of ‘stacks’ – gigantic chimney pipes attached to the truck bed, which spout plumes of smoke metres into the air.
Other common modifications include tweaks to the truck’s electronic systems, which allow it to pump more fuel into the engine and limit air intake for the darkest-possible smoke output, along with ‘smoke switches’ which can be turned on and off.
Installing a smoke switch in the truck allows it to run normally until the switch is pressed, after which the engine will deliberately starve itself of air and emit the clouds, allowing coal rolling enthusiasts to sneak up on unsuspecting targets and smother them in acrid soot.
Somewhere along the line, coal rolling turned from a relatively niche subculture to a major flashpoint in America’s unceasing culture wars with millions of YouTube videos, Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook posts dedicated to the intentional antagonisation of anyone the coal roller deems to be a liberal, environmentalist or just plain soft.
In 2014, Washington Post reporter David Weigel wrote that rolling coal had morphed from a redneck gimmick to a particularly visible form of far-right political protest, with the motivation deemed to be “roughly the same one that gets people buying guns and ammo after mass shootings”.
It’s hard to find a coal roller who supported the Obama administration, with many truck owners specifically modifying their vehicle to protest against the tighter EPA restrictions introduced by Obama, which they say could hamper the livelihoods of agricultural workers who rely on their diesel trucks for work, and the tax credits allowed to the drivers of hybrid and electric cars.
Others are less lucid about their motivations, and do it simply because they don’t like the Democrats, with one seller of stack kits telling Slate: “I run into a lot of people that really don’t like Obama at all.”
“’If he’s into the environment, if he’s into this or that, we’re not.’ I hear a lot of that,” the seller said. “’To get a single stack on my truck, that’s my way of giving them the finger. You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you.’”
The most frequent targets for coal rollers include pedestrians, joggers and cyclists, along with Japanese and Korean cars. However, the biggest victims of the coal rolling enthusiast’s vitriolic jets of toxic fog are the owners of hybrids like the Toyota Prius, with bumper stickers declaring ‘Prius Repellent’ often seen proudly plastered on the back of a coal rolling truck.
“If someone makes you mad, you can just roll coal, and it makes you feel better sometimes,” one South Carolina coal roller told Vocativ, with “nature nuffies” the ultimate source of fury. “The feeling around here is that everyone who drives a small car is a liberal. I rolled coal on a Prius once just because they were tailing me.”
Official tallies of how many coal-rolling vehicles are on America’s roads are naturally hard to come by, but reports state that the number of complaints made over diesel smoke has steadily risen in the past few years.
The California Air Resources Board alone receives more than a thousand complaints related to coal rolling every month, with many other states even worse and officials have started to take action.
It’s no secret that diesel fumes are widely regarded to be bad for your health, with fumes and particulate matter from diesel vehicles linked to a wide range of health problems, from everything to asthma to cancer and an increased risk of strokes and heart disease.
The European Union’s environmental watchdog has claimed that diesel fumes are responsible for as many as 500,000 premature deaths in Europe each and every year, while the World Health Organisation categorises diesel exhaust fumes in the same deadly category as asbestos, arsenic and mustard gas.
Although it’s true that the cumulative impact of diesel vehicles around the world is far less polluting and dangerous to the health of the environment than the output of industrial factories, deforestation or the estimated three billion coal cooking stoves used worldwide, the fact that coal rollers delight in projecting fumes directly into the faces and airways of their victims makes the practice extremely dangerous.
In 2014, the EPA stated that rolling coal is a violation of the Clean Air Act and that its practice is illegal, while a year later New Jersey became the first state to explicitly ban truck drivers from coal rolling with a $5,000 fine imposed on anyone found guilty.
Colorado became the latest state to outlaw it this year after significant resistance with fines of $100 issued to coal rollers, while similar legislation to ban the practice has been proposed in Illinois and Maryland.
Still, the do-it-before-liberals-ban-it impulse is a strong one, and for many diesel truck drivers the threat of being on the wrong side of the law won’t prove to be a deterrent, but will serve only to legitimise their rebellious convictions.
As for others, some of them simply enjoy getting a kick out of it. As one former coal roller told Slate: “I know a lot of these guys thrive on how much coal they can roll when they’re in town next to hybrid cars.
“It’s just a testosterone thing. It’s manhood. It’s who can blow the most smoke, whose is blacker. The blacker it is, the more fuel you have in your injectors. It was kind of fun.”
