TRAILERS, TRAILERS EVERYWHERE

February 16, 2011 Vol. 7, No. 4

Well, my few days in Tampa for the annual TMC gathering have come and gone, and useful days they were even if the weather was mostly crap. Every time I turned around it seemed there was someone I wanted to speak with, someone I could learn from. Time well spent.

A friend of mine on the tech side of things said it's his favorite event of the year, and it may well be mine too (aside from the Truck Rodeo at Notre Dame du Nord). His reason? There's an awful lot of trucking intelligence assembled in one place, a concentration of smart people who really are worth listening to for the most part. I couldn't agree more.

I actually managed to come home with a sunburn despite there being only one sunny day because I got caught outside one afternoon by a happy series of chance conversations with people I hadn't known before but profited from meeting.

Simply, there was a good spirit in the air, unlike the last couple of years when the mood was somewhere between dreadful and downright depressing. Not so in 2011, and in fact attendance apparently hit a record, indicating that the people of trucking are looking forward with fresh eyes, back in the hunt for progress and good ideas.

First-time attendees hit a record of 175, and overall numbers amounted to 2716. That includes 80 Canadians on both supplier and fleet sides, which strikes me as not enough. Also not enough in my mind is that 423 fleet members were in attendance. That's about exactly half of the total TMC fleet membership of 854 -- out of 2558 -- which implies that this is a supplier-run organization. I guess it is, and that's not a bad thing at all, but I'd love to see a bigger number of actual truck users taking advantage of what the Technology & Maintenance Council can offer.

THIS YEAR'S MAIN TECHNICAL SESSIONS were less than stirring, I thought, one of them covering the usefulness of TMC's Recommended Practices Manual and how folks can make better use of the RP system. The manual is literally bible-like and the RP system is brilliant, but doesn't everyone already know that? The other major session was on OSHA compliance. Important but... well, a bit tedious. With respect.

The meat of the thing was in the smaller Study Group sessions and I attended an especially useful one under the 'S.11 Energy Conservation' banner. It concerned truckstop electrification and efforts to move beyond the somewhat clumsy things we've seen in the recent past. Specifically, speakers were talking about a project to 'electrify' U.S. truckstops led by Cascade Sierra Solutions, a non-profit enterprise based in Oregon.

It seems there will be 50 truckstops offering 120-volt power (or more) to trucks through electric pods or pedestals in systems supplied by Shorepower Technologies. It's the result of a US$22-million federal grant through the U.S. Dept. of Energy first announced in 2009, which allows for rebates to truck owners who buy vehicles with plug-in capability to handle hotel loads electrically. Seems to be a slow roll-out on this one.

I should note that the private sector in one way or another is also funding this, to the tune of almost $30 million.

Normally these Electrified Parking Spaces, or EPS (what's the plural?) offer 120-volt/60-cycle/20-amp power but more power -- like 480 volts -- will be made available to run reefers some time soon.

Cascade's Jon Gustafson stressed the cost of idling a diesel engine vs. the cost of using an EPS, the latter being US$1.00 an hour. With diesel costing 3 or 4 times that much, the electric option would seem to be a bargain and could save several thousand bucks a year. With environmental gains to boot.

Shorepower chief Jeff Kim got a little more specific, saying that 11 off-duty hours in an EPS would cost $11 vs. $31 for idling. Pay options include using a 1-800 number, an on-site kiosk, or an Internet log-in.

Skip Yeakel of Volvo Trucks also spoke on the panel, noting that the idea of electrifying a truck is as old as the hills. He cited the good old block heater as evidence, saying that going beyond that to offer a shorepower option is not a big leap. Volvo seems to be on the forefront of this electrification effort.

A point I didn't have the heart to make with these electric enthusiasts was this: there aren't anywhere near enough truck-parking spaces on the continent as things stand, electrified or otherwise. In spite of harsh hours-of-service laws demanding that drivers shut down for 10 or 11 hours straight every day. This huge gap causes untold stress and hardship

THERE WERE INNOVATIONS APLENTY on display at the compact trade show accompanying the TMC annual meeting. I've written about some of them in the individual items below -- the Fontaine/Volvo frame-integrated fifth wheel, the EZ Claw air hose protector, the very cool mounting system for Laydon's new "economy" trailer skirt, and Ancra's "load maximizer" trailer decking, among others.

And what do you notice there? Trailer stuff, that's what.

That's not me being selective, that reflects a new and welcome interest in what happens behind the tractor. For decades and decades, all of us -- those of us in the press included -- have focused our collective gaze on the sexy bits of the things that make money for you guys. The trucks and tractors themselves, the engines, the gearboxes, the sleepers. Finally we're looking out back where there's good money to be made by not being spent.

Frankly, I went to Tampa loaded for editorial bear. Specifically I planned to hear a lot about 2010 engines and ask a zillion questions and listen to people waxing poetic about this or that motor. Or maybe bitching about them. I certainly pursued that line but trailers actually dominated a lot of conversations. And I didn't realize it until I started putting this newsletter together.

One of the more interesting trailer-oriented moments was actually in a press conference. ATDynamics, makers of the TrailerTail aerodynamic extension for vans, brought Jimmy Ray to a small assemblage of motor noters and he wowed us. Ray is executive vice president of Mesilla Valley Transportation, a mostly refrigerated fleet based in New Mexico, and he's all trucker. A no-nonsense sort of guy who works very hard on the smallest of details in an effort to make more miles per gallon of diesel.

Some 650 of MVT's 3500 trailers have been fitted with TrailerTails and have logged more than eight million miles since last August. The result? A verifiable gain of 5-6% in fuel economy and a saving of $180,000.

ATDynamics has SAE test data showing a 6.6% saving, incidentally.

The average installation time for a TrailerTail is two people in 45 minutes, the company says, and the purchase cost -- including a trailer skirt -- is under $3000.

That was all pretty interesting, but Ray goes beyond that. He sees measurable differences in doing utterly simple things like moving the hanging licence plate from out of the air flow at the trailer rear. He patented spun-aluminum wheel covers. He uses fixed fifth wheels with the tractor-to-trailer gap reduced to 19 in. from 26.

He says that lots of his drivers do better than 10 mpg, sometimes reaching 11. And get this, he gives away a Harley-Davidson motorcycle every three months in an incentive scheme for drivers. Now THAT's a serious incentive.

ONE LAST ITEM... THE OLD TRUCK in the picture I included in my last newsletter's fledgling Name That Truck contest was an Alfa Romeo probably built in Brazil, though it could have been imported from Italy. Surprisingly, two guys got it, though 16 or so were quite wrong, some radically off the mark. Congrats to Andre Perret and another fellow -- sorry -- whose e-mail I lost. How on earth will I send you the huge prize you've won?

AND UPCOMING SHOWS are on my horizon. You should know about them too.

First we have the Green Truck Summit held in conjunction with The Work Truck Show at the Indiana Convention Center in, strangely enough,
Indianapolis, IN. The 'green' event runs on Monday, March 7 and then on the morning of Tuesday, March 8, jointly produced by the National Truck Equipment Association and CALSTART.

If you're looking at 'greening' your vocational fleet, or at keeping up with advances in technology this really is the place to be.

Then it's the NTEA's Work Truck Show covering 500,000 sq ft of exhibit space with a broad array of class 1-8 vocational trucks and equipment, plus more than 40 educational sessions. Topics to be covered include carbon footprint reduction techniques, hybrid-chassis integration, and more. It runs from March 8th through the 10th.

A couple of weeks later it's the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, KY, though I'm sure nobody needs me to say much about that giant affair. It runs from March 31 through April 2.

A week later it's ExpoCam, our own show in Montreal, Quebec. It runs at Place Bonaventure in the heart of the city's downtown core, with lots of parking spaces, two nearby subway stations, and the VIA Rail train station next door.

The dates are April 7, 8, and 9, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, 9:00 a.m. 'til 5:00 p.m. on Saturday.

Two useful seminars will be on the agenda, the first covering CSA 2010, moderated by Normand Bourque of the Quebec Trucking Association. It's on Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Panelists include J. Jacques Alary, president of Jean Jacques Alary Plus Inc. and André Lacasse, director, compliance and recruitment at Groupe Guilbault.

On Friday April 8, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., my colleague Steve Bouchard, editor in chief of Transport Routier magazine, will moderate a session on the challenge of recruiting and retention, in both truck and office. Panelists are Bernard Boutin, president of Groupe Boutin and also president of the Quebec Foundation for training in road transport, plus Tamara Miller, project manager at the Canadian Trucking Human Resource Council.

See you in all those places!

THIS NEWSLETTER IS PUBLISHED every two weeks. It's a heads-up notice about what's going on with trucking technology as well as what you can see at  www.todaystrucking.com where you'll find in-detail coverage of nearly everything   that's new. Plus interesting products that may not have had the 'air play' they deserved within the last few months. Why not subscribe today?

I should remind you that I don’t endorse any of the products I write about in this e-newsletter, nor do I have the resources to test them. What you’re getting is reasonably well educated opinion based on three decades in trucking. And in the case of the individual product items, I’m just presenting simple news from the manufacturer or service provider, with the hyperbole mostly removed and   clarification applied.

If you have comments of whatever sort about Product Watch, or maybe you've tried a gizmo I should know about, please contact me at rolf@newcom.ca.

TRAILER FAIRING

(February 15, 2011) -- Laydon's 'economy' trailer skirt offers fast, simple fitting

LIGHTWEIGHT FIFTH WHEEL

(February 15, 2011) -- Volvo has introduced a lightweight Fontaine fifth-wheel system

AIR HOSE PROTECTION

(February 15, 2011) -- Don't let hoses drag under your sliding trailer tandem

TRAILER DECKING

(February 15, 2011) -- Ancra load-maximizing system means you carry 10 to 30% more cargo

SERVICE-FREE U-JOINTS

(February 15, 2011) -- Dana adds service-free u-joints for Spicer Life driveshafts