December 3, 2014 Vol. 11 No. 25

Yesterday was a good day, most of it spent with Ryder Canada and a bunch of their customers at the first of what will be an annual symposium on important trucking matters. I sat on a panel, playing the gearhead role, that examined the quest for fuel economy from several angles. My subject was how to manage the hardware, from spec’ing to maintaining and on to operating it. Guy Broderick, veteran driver and driver trainer at Apps Transport, handled the steering-wheel side of the efficiency challenge. And Alicia Milner, president of the Canadian Natural Gas Vehicle Alliance, offered her insights on the potential cost savings of switching from diesel to gas.

Nicely informal, there were no presentations, rather the three of us answered questions posed by moderator Mike McCarron, ex-owner of MSM Transportation who’s now toiling away for its purchaser, the Wheels Group. He led another panel later in the day on driver recruitment and retention.

There was no need for me to prepare a big presentation, and there wasn’t enough time to get too deeply into any single aspect of the fuel economy adventure anyway, so I had to be succinct in my comments. I spent a couple of days trying to distil my thoughts, looking through my very big directory of files on the subject, going back to the days before emissions mandates. When trucks routinely achieved fuel mileage about the same as we get today but any given load produced twice as much revenue.

Sorry, I digress.

I came away with one clear, over-riding idea: that we think of fuel economy in a one-dimensional way far more often than not. Meaning, we want to get 8 mpg instead of 6.5, so we explore the options from light-weighting to aerodynamics and on to driver incentives. We look at tires and lubes and all manner of such things, every one of them aimed at making our trucks roll down the road while using the least amount of diesel. And we spend a whack of time in the process of finding the right hardware to achieve that goal.

WITH MUCH LESS PRECISION and a much softer focus, we also look at how the maintenance shop operates. There, our aim is to get the truck in and out again lickety-split. It’s about time, and time only.

Likewise, our approach to the operations side is also about time, and of course productivity. Gotta keep those trailers moving, must get across the border with minimal delay. Need to get the most out of drivers before their hours are up.

Time, time, time.

But really, the maintenance shop and the dispatch desk are all about fuel economy. Specifically, they’re about avoiding zero-mpg moments. When that truck is broken down on the side of the road because maintenance hadn’t been done rigorously enough, it’s getting no miles per gallon.

When the paperwork wasn’t managed well and the truck is sitting in secondary at the border while a bunch of phone calls and faxes are whizzing about, it’s getting zero miles per gallon.

When the truck is sitting still in a rush-hour traffic jam because the route and schedule weren’t carefully planned, the fuel tank is being depleted with no work being done.

That’s the second dimension of fuel economy, and I think fleets of all sorts would benefit from including this in their approach to the way fuel is consumed. And the way its use is measured. It’s not about miles travelled, it’s really about work accomplished.

Just something to think about.

SPEAKING OF FUEL, WHAT ABOUT SALTWATER? I’m no tree-hugger but I’m quite convinced that our long-term future cannot rest in fossil fuels. I think electric vehicles can play a sizeable role but not if the juice they need comes via coal-fired power plants, for instance. In that case you just move toxic emissions from one source to another.

But what if the vehicle could produce its own electric power and never need the electricity grid? We talking fuel cells here? Nope, but close.

A Liechtenstein company, nanoFlowCell AG, has produced a Tesla-like car that doesn’t depend on imperfect lithium-ion batteries — or batteries of any sort. Already approved for use on European roads but not yet for sale, the Quant eSportlimousine uses flow-cell technology — with 80% efficiency. It’s like a hydrogen fuel cell but uses a saltwater-based electrolyte to create electrical energy. When that liquid passes through a membrane between a pair of 52-gal tanks it creates energy that’s stored and distributed by super capacitors and used by an electric motor at each wheel. That’s good for a range of 375 miles, and the only limit on that distance is the size of the tanks.

The car can be filled as easily as you now fill a diesel tank, and once discharged, the electrolyte can be re-ionized and used again. It’s a perfect circle.

Power? How about 920 hp and more than 2000 lb ft of torque, with 0 to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds. Nice.

Is it useful in trucks? It’s too early to say but the company does plan to tackle the marine and rail industries, so I’m guessing the answer is yes.

I mention this only as an example of the kind of research and development that we need to be doing to save ourselves from the finite nature and long-term perils of fossil fuels. And it seems to me that anything blocking that effort is not in our collective best interest.

THE HYBRID THRIVES IN FORMULA ONE. The pinnacle of automotive engineering, and easily its most expensive pursuit, is to be seen in the sometimes crazy world of Formula One racing. The 2014 season just concluded and it was no exception to that ‘crazy’ rule. Mercedes-Benz took the title, its drivers finishing one-two, winning 15 of the year’s 18 races. Total dominance like never before.

In most eyes the other newsworthy aspect of the season was the rigidly regulated engine formula, which left the previous 2.4-liter V8 behind in favor of a tiny 1.6-liter V6. Gone was the screaming of 18,000 rpm, in came the oddly low rumble of 12,000 rpm. Fans — and many drivers — hated it. Too quiet, they said.

Yet the new engine is a technological marvel, a turbocharged gas/electric hybrid that will be used again in 2015. F1 engines have actually been hybrids of a sort since 2009 when they added the KERS system — ‘kinetic energy recovery system’ — that harvested braking energy, stored it in batteries, and gave some 82 hp back to the driver at the touch of a button. But only for 6.6 seconds per lap. The new engine essentially doubles that gift of power and makes it available for five times longer.

With 160 horses added to the 600 already made by the little V6, today’s F1 cars easily hit speeds of 300 km/h. Yet they use just over half as much fuel as they did last year. Remarkable by any standard.