Burrito, hold the gas: Food trucks are the latest thing getting electrified in Colorado

Things you will hear and smell at Hallie Dantzler’s coffee truck: 

A Hal’s Coffee barista offering you a vanilla shot with your latte. Locally roasted coffee beans wafting your way on the steam emanating from the espresso machine. 

Things you will not hear and smell:

Bellowing gasoline generators or acrid petroleum fumes. 

Dantzler dumped two loud, odiferous gasoline generators and adopted $19,000 in clean-running battery packs to run Hal’s Coffee trailer, with the help of an 80% grant from the Regional Air Quality Council. 

Dantzler, who pulls the Hal’s Coffee trailer around Fort Collins and the northern Front Range behind an electric Ford F-150 Lightning, runs down a longer menu of perks she attributes to the battery switchover. No more spending hundreds of dollars a day at the gas station filling up generators and fuel canisters. No longer having to scrub her gasoline-soaked hands in orange Gojo at the end of the day before hugging her burbling toddler. 

And according to RAQC, no more emitting up to 165 pounds of carbon dioxide — the equivalent of burning 83 pounds of coal — in one shift. That’s worth another hug from the toddler.

“So knowing that we’re making the world a little bit better for him, and that he’s just growing up in a safer place, is so nice,” Dantzler said. 

The Denver-based RAQC celebrated food truck conversions Tuesday at an Earth Day event called “Engines Off,” in a parking lot at West Fifth Avenue and Santa Fe Drive. The air advisory council, which makes policy recommendations to state and local governments and channels grant funds, has overseen the conversion of about 30 food trucks. The current grant fund, which launched in 2024, has enough for about 120 conversion projects, spokesman David Sabados said. 

Depending on the food and the equipment needs, replacing gas generators or propane cooking equipment can cost from the low thousands of dollars up to $30,000 per truck. RAQC supplies 80% of the costs for approved trucks, up to a $20,000 cap. 

Switching equipment is part of the fight against climate change-causing greenhouse gases and local ozone emissions. Nine northern Front Range counties are now in “severe” violation of EPA ozone limits. 

Changing out one truck’s fuel is, of course, small compared with more than 120 million tons of carbon emitted annually in the Colorado economy. But local officials are taking on small targets as well as large ones — such as power plants — in the ozone and climate fights. Their argument is that small engines like lawn mowers and generators make up a couple of parts per billion in metro Denver ozone readings that approach 80 parts per billion on a hot summer day. Shaving a point or two here and there could help the Front Range get below the 2015 EPA standard of 70 parts per billion. 

Nodding to converted food trucks from Amore Pizza, HipPOPS and others, Sabados said, “A lot of this, for us, is about proof of concept, showing it can be done. That it can be done anywhere generators are used — food, construction, anything.” 

Daniel Belger’s HipPOPS — flavorful gelato pops dipped in liquid chocolate and rolled in toppings like carmelized pecans — draw a lot of power to keep the gelato case cool. He’s got LED lights all over to make every angle of the operation and its customers look perfect on all-important Instagram. 

Without the fumes from the old gasoline generators, HipPOPS gets booked for more indoor events. Plus, Belger said he can hear the customers nudging each other and whispering, “What did you think of the Oreo pop?” 

“I hear that and tell them, ‘The Oreo is AMAZING,’” Belger laughed. 

Hal’s Coffee has been booked for two graduation parties over the weekend specifically because the partygoers want to hear the DJ, not the food truck. 

At a pre-Earth Day event last weekend, Dantzler said, “I was the only clean truck anywhere around. And people kept coming up to us, ‘I heard you were the quiet truck. I heard you were the green truck.’ ”