Within the next month, we should finally get details on federal regulations intended to push heavy-truck fuel economy to much higher levels over the next 10 to 15 years. Known generally as Phase II of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions requirements, official publication of the rules will undoubtedly set off a new round of argument and debate over the costs for any new technology needed to meet them and the projected payback for fleets paying the bills.
Lost in all this talk about future regulation and advanced technologies is appreciation for just how well fleets are doing with the tools available to them today. Would it surprise you to hear that 14 fleets are currently saving $9,000 a tractor per year by choosing from a broad array of available fuel-saving technologies and practices? That their ROI on the chosen technologies is just 30 months? That fuel savings for those fleets last year totaled $477 million?
Those numbers are among the highlights of the “2015 Annual Fleet Fuel Study” just released by the North American Council on Freight Efficiency (NACFE), an industry research group created to document real-world fleet experiences and to share best practices. The group’s fourth such study since 2003, it looked at data covering 53,000 tractors and 160,000 trailers operated by 14 well-known fleets, including UPS, Schneider National, Ryder, Frito-Lay, CR England, Prime, Con-way Truckload, and Werner Enterprises.
The group has identified 68 technologies that offer fuel savings potential for Class 8 day cab and sleeper tractors. These are current, widely available items, not prototypes or pre-production units. They range from aerodynamic components to setting engine parameters. Some, like tire pressure and idle reduction systems, are fairly common, while others, like automatic engine stop/start, are closer to the leading edge. No fleet in the study has adopted them all, but rather each has put together packages that make the most sense for their particular operations.
Obviously, fuel economy varies widely between the 14, but in aggregate their tractors averaged 7 mpg in 2014. NACFE’s analysis calculates that had the fleets continued “business as usual” (that is, not adopted any of the fuel-saving technologies), that average would have been 6.1 mpg. That translates into $9,000 a year per tractor, according to NACFE, a whopping $4,600 more than the savings reported by fleets in the 2011 study. And as a sign of just how rapidly things are improving, 2015 model trucks in the study are returning averages as high as 8.5 mpg.
In addition to quantifying fleet savings from adoption of fuel-efficient technologies, the NACFE study also identified three related trends it sees as significant in efforts to extract maximum efficiency from heavy trucks.
First, it believes this year will be the tipping point for broad adoption in OTR tractors of “electronically controlled” transmissions, that is, automated manual transmissions or torque converter fully automatics with advanced electronic controls. Second is expansion of advanced aerodynamic devices once seen only on sleepers to day cabs and CNG-powered tractors. And the third is wide recognition that electronically controlled engine parameters can be modified by fleets or their dealers for better fuel economy.
Clearly, the industry has much more fuel-efficient trucks in its future as we move down the road to Phase II GHG, but don’t let that promise blind you to the present opportunities. The immediate rewards are just too high to ignore.
You can find a full copy of the NACFE report at www.nacfe.org/projects.
