OTTAWA – A speed limiter mandate is the pet hobby-horse the Canadian Trucking Alliance has been riding for the last year, but the group and its provincial associations wants politicians to wake up to a whole other bag of possible fuel conservation ideas.

The trucking industry is responding proactively on several fronts in a concerted effort to improve its fuel efficiency and its impact on the environment, says CTA. While the Alliances’s proposal to mandate the use of speed limiters on all trucks has captured much of the attention,  CTA is also pursuing various other, perhaps less controversial, measures such as liberalizing current truck weight laws which are a deterrent to investment in anti-idling devices, wide-base single tires, and new smog-free truck engines.
 
“Industry wants to get this technology into more wide-spread use, and governments also want us to become more fuel efficient and reduce GHG and smog emissions,” says Alliance CEO David Bradley. “Given the fuel crisis and the environmental imperative, the provincial weights and dimensions rules should be sufficiently flexible as to accommodate those carriers that are attempting to do the right thing.”

Single tires like Michelin’s X-One save fuel. So relaxing
restrictions on them is a no-brainer, says CTA

CTA is therefore calling upon the National Task Force on Vehicle Weights & Dimensions to allow weight parity between wide-base single tires and duals. Wide-base singles are a new generation of tires that have better rolling resistance than duals and therefore better fuel consumption. They also offer superior traction and stability.

As TodaysTrucking.com first reported, Quebec carriers can now interchange wide-base tires or dual tires under the same load standards in Canada under a permit program. The 1,000 kg per-axle load penalty the province enforced on single tires has been eliminated.

Ontario allowed single tire usage on 53-ft trailers up to 8,000 kg and axle this past January. According to CTA, Ontario officials are considering the possibility of harmonizing the allowable weights on wide-based tires with Quebec, meaning Ontario truckers would too be allowed spec singles without penalty under certain conditions. The province will soon run single tires through testing models to gauge the impact on pavement surfaces.

Other jurisdictions, namely New Brunswick and B.C., are also considering increasing the allowable weight for these tires.

CTA also is urging the Task force to allow a 400-lb GVW tolerance for anti-idling devices such as APUs, which can cut a truck’s payload by as much as 500 lbs. CTA points to U.S. energy bill (HR6), which includes a 400-pound vehicle weight exemption for trucking companies operating such devices. The bill, signed into law this year, calls for the truck operator to prove to the regulating agency that the idling reduction technology is fully functional at all times and that the 400 pound gross weight increase is not used for any purpose other than for idling reduction equipment.

Finally, adds CTA, the government should recognize the weight implications of diesel particulate filters (DPFs) on 2007 low-emission truck engines by approving at least a 300 lb weight tolerance. it’s only fair, says CTA, to excuse DPFs from the weight sum since they eliminate the emission of particulate matter by collecting particles of carbon soot in diesel exhaust.