All posts in Fleets

from Environmental Leader

When it comes to offering contributed articles, I follow some of the oldest writing advice around: write what you know. And, with 30 years in the business, it’s safe to say that I know a little about the automotive and trucking industry.

Today, fuel prices are at an all-time high and are trending up; the accelerating conversion rate of fleets to natural gas serves as an encouraging sign for the energy market. Not only does fueling cars and trucks with domestic natural gas help reduce US dependence on foreign oil, but the use of natural gas has been shown to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a 23 percent margin. This is great news for the environment. For example, consider an 18-wheeler that uses up to 20,000 gallons of fuel per year. Replacing only 100,000 of these trucks with those powered by natural gas would immediately cut our consumption of diesel fuel up to 2 billion gallons, per year. Likewise, converting just one truck from diesel to natural gas is the equivalent of taking as many as 325 cars off the road in terms of pollution reduction.
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Chevy, GMC Dealerships in Wisconsin to Add Fuel Efficient Trucks to Inventory

Source: PR Newswire

GREEN BAY, Wis., March 9, 2012/PRNewswire-iReach/— General Motors recently announced that it is going to offer bi-fuel models of the 2013 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra trucks. Capable of running on either gasoline or natural gas, the trucks provide cost effective and fuel efficient options while maintaining the power and strength of Chevy and GMC pickups. GOAutoPlus.com is a resource for several GMC and Chevy dealerships in Wisconsin.

Equipped with 6.0-liter V-8 engines, the pickup trucks’ performance will not be compromised. The trucks will be made to run standard on natural gas, but will have the option of running on gasoline if fuel runs out.  The driver is also able to push a button if he or she prefers to use gasoline.

Natural gas lowers the vehicle’s emissions by producing 1/4 less carbon dioxide per mile than gasoline-run vehicles. Readily available, 98 percent of the natural fuel is produced in the United States. Natural gas is also less expensive than gasoline, saving drivers up to $2,000 more a year on fuel costs.

General Motor’s pickup assembly plant in Fort Wayne, IN will produce the bi-fuel trucks. GM’s supplier, IMPCO, will provide the trucks’ gas storage tanks in Union City, IN.  Each bi-fuel truck will be fully covered under the GM warranty and can be serviced at local Chevy or GMC dealers.

The automaker will begin taking pickup truck orders in April of this year. GOAutoPlus.com offers Chevy in Wisconsin and has several new and used cars in Wisconsin.  For more information on the upcoming bi-fuel GMC and Chevy trucks, check out GOAutoPlus.com.

Chevy, GMC Dealerships in Wisconsin to Add Fuel Efficient Trucks to Inventory

Source: PR Newswire

GREEN BAY, Wis., March 9, 2012/PRNewswire-iReach/— General Motors recently announced that it is going to offer bi-fuel models of the 2013 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra trucks. Capable of running on either gasoline or natural gas, the trucks provide cost effective and fuel efficient options while maintaining the power and strength of Chevy and GMC pickups. GOAutoPlus.com is a resource for several GMC and Chevy dealerships in Wisconsin.

Equipped with 6.0-liter V-8 engines, the pickup trucks’ performance will not be compromised. The trucks will be made to run standard on natural gas, but will have the option of running on gasoline if fuel runs out.  The driver is also able to push a button if he or she prefers to use gasoline.

Natural gas lowers the vehicle’s emissions by producing 1/4 less carbon dioxide per mile than gasoline-run vehicles. Readily available, 98 percent of the natural fuel is produced in the United States. Natural gas is also less expensive than gasoline, saving drivers up to $2,000 more a year on fuel costs.

General Motor’s pickup assembly plant in Fort Wayne, IN will produce the bi-fuel trucks. GM’s supplier, IMPCO, will provide the trucks’ gas storage tanks in Union City, IN.  Each bi-fuel truck will be fully covered under the GM warranty and can be serviced at local Chevy or GMC dealers.

The automaker will begin taking pickup truck orders in April of this year. GOAutoPlus.com offers Chevy in Wisconsin and has several new and used cars in Wisconsin.  For more information on the upcoming bi-fuel GMC and Chevy trucks, check out GOAutoPlus.com.

By Derek Singleton
There’s been a steady stream of articles about rising gas prices here on Triple Pundit. Some have looked at what the impacts of higher gas prices will be while others have acknowledged that they aren’t going lower and asked if your business is readyfor the “new normal” of high fuel prices. These articles have pointed out some very important aspects of high fuel prices, and I wanted to build on them by offering a few strategies for coping with the upward trend of gas prices. Here, I’d like to offer some advice to companies that operate fleets and see fuel as a capital expenditure.

Many businesses and fuel procurement offices have assumed that if they could just weather a few rough years, fuel costs would eventually stabilize. That assumption, however, is turning out to be flawed as oil prices are expected to rise by 30 percent in the next three years. Moreover, 2011 set the record for the higher average annual gas price, when adjusted for inflation.

Read the complete article at Triple Pundit

A company looking to purchase an electric-powered delivery truck today will likely experience some sticker shock: Such a vehicle costs nearly $150,000, compared to about $50,000 for the same kind of truck with a standard internal-combustion engine.

But before long — perhaps surprisingly — it’s a purchase that should pay for itself. That’s the conclusion of a new MIT study showing that electric vehicles are not just environmentally friendly, but also have the potential to improve the bottom line for many kinds of businesses.

The study, conducted by researchers at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL), finds that electric vehicles can cost 9 to 12 percent less to operate than trucks powered by diesel engines, when used to make deliveries on an everyday basis in big cities.

“There has to be a good business case if there is going to be more adoption of electric vehicles,” says Jarrod Goentzel, director of the Renewable Energy Delivery Project at CTL and one of four co-authors of the new study. “We think it’s already a viable economic model, and as battery costs continue to drop, the case will only get better.”

Another of the paper’s co-authors, Clayton Siegert, a 2009 graduate of the CTL’s master’s of engineering in logistics program and a member of the Renewable Energy Delivery Project, presented the results in January at the IEEE Power and Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference, in Washington. The paper will be published in a volume of the conference’s proceedings. It originated in a thesis project by two researchers who received the master’s of engineering in logistics from CTL in 2011, Andre De Los Rios and Kristen Nordstrom.

Electric vehicles: A staple of the truck fleet?

The CTL study was conducted using data collected by the international office supplier Staples, as well as ISO New England, the nonprofit firm that runs New England’s electric power grid. Using that data, the researchers modeled the costs for a fleet of 250 delivery trucks, and examined alternate scenarios in which the whole fleet used one of three kinds of motors: purely electric engines, hybrid gas-electric engines and conventional diesel engines.

Based on the Staples data, the researchers modeled what would happen if the trucks in the fleet were driven 70 miles a day for 253 work days per year, with diesel gasoline costing $4 per gallon. Trucks with internal-combustion engines averaged 10.14 miles per gallon, compared to 11.56 miles per gallon for hybrid trucks, while the electric-only trucks averaged 0.8 kilowatt-hours per mile. Staples currently has 53 all-electric trucks, manufactured by Missouri-based Smith Electric Vehicles, in use in several American cities.

The study added one new component to the projections often made by industry fleet managers: The researchers looked at what would happen if the fleets of trucks were part of a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) system in which their batteries could be plugged into the electricity grid for 12 hours overnight, as an additional resource for providing reliable electricity to consumers. In such a setup, truck owners would be paid by utility firms for the power services they provide. V2G systems are currently being tested by multiple utility companies.

After running the numbers for various scenarios in which trucks are parked at slightly different times overnight, the MIT team found that businesses could earn roughly $900 to $1,400 per truck per year in V2G revenues in current energy markets, representing a reduction of 7 to 11 percent in vehicle operating costs. Firms would also save money on fuel, and on maintenance, because electric trucks induce less wear and tear on brakes.

All told, the operational cost per mile — the basic metric all fleet managers use — would drop from 75 cents per mile to 68 cents per mile when V2G-enabled electric trucks are substituted for internal-combustion trucks. Moreover, as Goentzel notes, “almost all these costs scale down to the individual vehicle.” Firms do not need fleets as big as 250 trucks to realize savings.

Michael Payette, director of fleet equipment at Staples, suggests that the MIT analysis corresponds with his firm’s results so far — although “it is still early in our post-deployment analysis,” he notes. In reviewing the performance of electric trucks, Payette adds, there have been “no real surprises from a reliability perspective, but I was surprised by the drivers’ acceptance, to the point where they do not ever want to drive a diesel [truck] again.”

In cities, ‘almost any truck you see is a candidate’

As Goentzel acknowledges, one limitation of the concept is that it only applies to urban truck fleets; electric vehicles do not have the range to make many kinds of rural or interstate deliveries. On the other hand, he notes, opportunities abound to use midsize electric trucks in cities.

“If you’re in an urban environment, almost any truck you see is a candidate,” Goentzel says. “If there’s a commercial truck in a city, it’s likely to be part of a fleet, whether it’s a service vehicle for a cable company, an electric utility truck, a mail package-delivery truck or part of a government fleet.”

And if the V2G concept is brought to market, commercial fleets would likely be among the first vehicles to be used, partly for logistical reasons: They would provide power resources that could be connected to the grid at regular times in the same locations.

“The initial opportunities for V2G are likely to be for fleets, because they can be managed and controlled,” Goentzel says. Knowing that, say, Staples would have 250 trucks plugged into the grid at certain overnight hours would help utilities smooth out the flow of electricity to consumers. That delivery would be harder to manage, he notes, if it depended on individual consumers plugging their autos into the grid at more random times. “There is some work to be done before the average person is able to plug in their car and get paid by the grid,” Goentzel acknowledges.

SOURCE: MIT News

As the United States transitions away from a primarily petroleum-based transportation industry, a number of different alternative fuel sources—ethanol, biodiesel, electricity and hydrogen—have each shown their own promise. Hoping to expand the pool even further, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have begun to investigate adding one more contender to the list of possible energy sources for light-duty cars and trucks: compressed natural gas (CNG).

Compressed natural gas is composed primarily of methane, which when compressed occupies less than one percent of the volume it occupies at standard pressure. CNG is typically stored in cylindrical tanks that would be carried onboard the vehicles it fuels.

Because the domestic production of natural gas has increased dramatically over the past 10 years, making a large number of the cars and light trucks currently on the road CNG-compatible would help to improve U.S. energy security.

“As a country, we don’t lack for natural gas deposits,” said Argonne mechanical engineer Thomas Wallner. “There are fewer obvious challenges with direct supply than with most other fuels.”

Natural gas currently comes primarily from deep underground rock structures, including shale. Recent improvements with hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a controversial process that some critics claim can hurt the environment, have made it economical for natural gas companies to extract a greater supply of natural gas from unconventional sources.

Like gasoline, both the production and combustion of CNG release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. To be able to make an accurate comparison to gasoline, scientists and engineers will need to look at each stage of the fuel’s production and use, said Argonne environmental scientist Andrew Burnham.

Unlike gasoline, however, CNG markets are relatively insulated from geopolitical shocks, according to Wallner. “The price of CNG has been and will probably continue to be both cheaper and more stable over the long term than gasoline,” Wallner said.

CNG currently costs the equivalent of about $2 per gallon, roughly half that of current gasoline prices, according to Wallner.

In order for CNG to take hold, many more stations will need to offer it as an option, and the infrastructure for delivering and distributing the fuel around the country will have to be built up. There are currently fewer than 1,000 publically available CNG refueling stations in the United States, in comparison to nearly 200,000 gas stations.

Argonne already has the capability to help automotive industry leaders test and analyze CNG vehicles. In particular, Argonne’s Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation Model gives experts the ability to examine the greenhouse gas emissions of various fuels from “well-to-wheels,” involving each stage of production, distribution and combustion. “We have years of expertise working with industry to develop alternative-fuel vehicles as well as the tools necessary for the public to understand the impact of these vehicles on the environment,” said Argonne mechanical engineer Michael Duoba.

Although CNG vehicles emit fewer greenhouse gases than conventional automobiles as fuel is combusted, “upstream” challenges in production and distribution of CNG—particularly methane leakage — make it somewhat less attractive when it comes to preventing climate change.

“There are a lot of points in the life-cycle of the fuel where we still need better data,” Burnham said. “There are technological opportunities for us to capture the leaked natural gas and reduce greenhouse gas impacts.”

For heavy-duty applications, like city buses, CNG might have the potential to cut down emissions of particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, helping municipalities to meet more stringent EPA standards enacted in the past few years, according to Burnham.

In Wallner’s view, CNG vehicles—like plug-ins and diesel-powered automobiles—will serve the transportation needs of some, not all.

“It’s important to see each of these technologies as a part of the solution but not the entire solution,” Wallner said. “The more we invest in their development, the closer we’ll come to a portfolio that makes sense both economically and environmentally.”

From Environmental Leader, January 30, 2012

Freight Wing has introduced the AeroFlex 2012, an EPA SmartWay and CARB-approved trailer side skirt that it says delivers 7.45 percent fuel savings.

The update to its AeroFlex product uses the same EPA SmartWay-verified wedge geometry as the original product while offering lower weight and cost, the result of five years of research and development, Freight Wing says.

Third-party SAE/TMC J1321 testing confirmed that the AeroFlex 2012 (pictured) delivers 7.45 percent fuel savings, and the company says the side skirt saves over 400 gallons of fuel for every 50,000 miles of trailer operation. The new product uses DMP plastic formulated for the demands of trailer aerodynamics and offers a significant decrease in unit weight while increasing road life and durability, Freight Wing says.

The AeroFlex 2012 uses custom-engineered plastic panels and flexible support braces for added durability. A pressure-responsive support rod system keeps the skirt in an aerodynamic position while providing flexibility to absorb side and ground impacts.

A new clamp mounting system is designed to avoid maintenance problems with a simple two-piece design. Optimized installations of the product have seen it completed in under an hour with experienced mechanics, Freight Wing says.

The 76-50188-80 single packed standard unit fits 53? & 48? dry van and reefers. Freight Wing is also selling 76-50188-81 bulk packed standard units and 76-50188-90 28’ pup trailer units, with custom units available for specialty applications.

Last year Utility Trailer Manufacturing Company launched the USS-120A, an aerodynamic side skirt for haulage trucks. The USS-120A is U.S. EPA SmartWay verified as an “advanced side skirt,” meaning it provides a minimum of five percent fuel savings, and can be used with low rolling resistance tires on dry vans to achieve California Air Resources Board compliance, Utility said.