For the eighth consecutive year, trucking fleets continue to increase fuel economy

In its 2016 Annual Fleet Fuel Study, the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) found that 17 fleets operating more than 62,000 tractors and 217,000 trailers saw a 3 percent increase in fuel economy in 2015. That, the reports says, saved an accumulative $501 million on fuel, compared to the 2015 national average fuel spend of $1.7 million for over-the-road Class 8 trucks.

These gains were achieved by fleets purchasing a variety of fuel efficiency technologies, says Mike Roeth, NACFE’s executive director.

He notes that as a result of these investments, fleet-wide mpg increased from 6.87 to 7.06 in 2015, “the largest margin of improvement in eight years of consecutive improvements.” The trade cycle for these fleets is a little over five years, meaning that the new trucks are about 16 percent more efficient than the 2010 Model Year trucks they replaced.

The adoption rate of new efficiency technologies – such as electronically controlled transmissions, low-viscosity engine oil and tire pressure inflation – on trailers continued to increase even though diesel fuel prices averaged $2.71 in 2015, the study found.

Organizations

The 17 fleets included in the study achieved this high level of fuel efficiency by adopting a combination of nearly 70 currently available technologies, says David Schaller, NACFE’s industry engagement director. These technologies are reviewed in a series of publicly available Trucking Efficiency Confidence Reports that assess current technologies, discuss challenges and best practices for their adoption and provide figures on performance gains and payback periods.

Trucking Efficiency is a joint effort of NACFE (www.nacfe.org) and Carbon War Room (carbonwarroom.com), which accelerates the adoption of business solutions that reduce carbon emissions at gigaton scale and advance the low-carbon economy.

Roeth also serves as operation lead for Trucking Efficiency.

NACFE is a non-profit organization dedicated to doubling the freight efficiency of North American goods movement. It was created in 2010 to bring solutions to the freight industry which radically increase fuel efficiency, by serving as an independent, unbiased research organization for the transformation of the transportation industry.

Call to action

“Improvements in both the fuel economy and bottom lines of the leading fleets this year provide a compelling call to action for the rest of the industry,” Roeth says. “Investing in efficiency technologies is the new normal, and these fleets are continuing to make investments because they do not want to be caught short when fuel prices go up again.”

Fleets that participated in the study are increasing their adoption of technologies that will likely be required under Greenhouse Gas Phase 2 (GHG2) regulations, yet, “there is clearly a need to increase the confidence in and/or payback of many of these technologies for wider-scale use,” he says. “Manufacturers must improve the availability and payback of these technologies to profitably meet the requirements of the final GHG2 regulations.”

Since 2011, NACFE has conducted its Annual Fleet Fuel Study to report on innovative fleets that have committed to improving fuel efficiency. Fleets that participate in the study share their implementation experiences as well as best practices for using these technologies.

The study provides insights to help other fleets make better-informed business decisions about adding these fuel efficiency technologies and practices in the future, notes Schaller.

Deep dive

The 2016 study contains the results of a deep-dive investigation into the adoption of various products and practices for improving freight efficiency among 17 major North American fleets. Schaller says the findings of this report “should prove invaluable” to efforts both to improve the fuel economy of a fleet and to develop and deliver fuel efficiency products to the marketplace.

The scope of this work encompassed Class 8 tractors (day cabs and sleepers) and trailers in regional and long-haul applications. Fleets providing data for the 2016 study include:

Bison Transport.
CR England.
Cardinal Logistics.
Challenger Motor Freight.
Crete.
Frito Lay.
Maverick.
NFI Industries.
Nussbaum.
Paper Transport.
Prime.
Ryder System.
Schneider.
United Parcel Service.
XPO Logistics.

The primary goal was to study the fleets’ levels of adoption of 69 technologies and practices, and the results those drove in each organization. All of the technologies are currently available, and not prototypes, validation test units or pre-production units.

This study focuses on what was actually purchased and implemented onto a fleet’s trucks and trailers.

Technology adoption benefits

The primary finding of this report is that the 17 fleets studied are increasing their rate of adoption of these technologies, and that they are enjoying improved fuel economy as a results, points out Roeth. The overall adoption rate for the technologies studied has grown from 18 percent in 2003 to 43 percent last year.

The average fleet-wide fuel economy of the trucks in this study averaged 7.06 MPG in 2015, a 3 percent increase over the same fleet in 2014.

The fleets in the 2016 study, on average, sell (turnover) their trucks in 5.25 years. This suggests, he says, that the new trucks put into service in 2015 (2016 Model Year) by these fleets were about 16 percent better than the ones removed – those which had been put into service in 2009 (2010 Model Year).

This is a significant improvement in fuel efficiency, adds Schaller. After discussing this with various companies in the industry, it was determined to be caused by three basic elements: