Fuel saving trailers
When a fleet joins the SmartWay Transport Partnership, it makes a commitment to work toward improved environmental and fuel efficient operations. The results generally include a decrease in exhaust emissions, an improvement in shipping opportunities from SmartWay Shipper Partners and a substantial operational cost savings due to a decrease in fuel consumption. The first steps
Technology & drain intervals
Advances in filter and lubricant technology continue to allow fleet managers to safely extend oil drain intervals
Medium-duty vehicle fuel savings
While SmartWay engineers move toward expanding the program’s certified truck models beyond long-haul designs, component suppliers continue to develop new products that offer fleets opportunities to save fuel. Some of these products have already been considered by EPA SmartWay to be sufficiently effective to be included in its list of verified fuel saving products even
Not your daddy’s brakes
Technology advances allow for shorter stopping distances and the
development of stability and collision avoidance systems, but there is
a need for good maintenance.
New fuel economy tests coming
When fleets join EPA’s SmartWay Partnership, they voice their intention to limit exhaust emissions and report regularly on their activities in this regard, but it’s definitely not a one-way street. SmartWay, in turn, is obligated to assist partners in achieving emission and fuel usage reduction goals. To do this, EPA, working with OEM partners, has
Help from a nonprofit
Cascade Sierra Solutions (CSS) is a non-profit organization that works with both public and private partners. It is also a three-year Affiliate Member of the SmartWay Partnership but is somewhat different than most other non-profit SmartWay affiliates, which are “Trade and professional associations; membership; nongovernmental organizations; academic institutions and governmental agencies who educate their constituents
A significant shipper
It’s easy to see how SmartWay participation can directly affect a fleet’s bottom line and, therefore, attract the interest of top management. A decrease in exhaust emissions means the fleet is saving fuel and that bumps up profitability. An easy sell! But what’s in participation for shippers? If they’re purely shippers, they can’t save on
Axle and suspension updates
New product offerings are being introduced in response to fleet requests for lighter, more durable products
SmartWay 2.0
Last month in this column I described the current SmartWay scoring system and indicated that it is being replaced by one based on fleet performance instead of operational strategies. The new program, called SmartWay 2.0, will be collecting information from all modes of transport- ation instead of data predominantly from the trucking industry. Matt Paine
Keeping score
Since the program was launched in 2004, a fleet joining the SmartWay Partnership has agreed to several things. Among these have been to regularly report vehicle-related data on its fleet operations and allow the score resulting from a proprietary SmartWay calculation to be posted on the SmartWay website. These scores indicate the relative fuel efficiency
Partners urge participation
As a young man, Royal Jones drove a lot—specifically race cars and heavy trucks. He learned early on that moving vehicle needs to overcome three factors: wind, rolling resistance and mechanical drag. When you reduce these, you’re able to get a race car to go faster or a truck to get better fuel economy when
Going through the hoops
Wabash National has announced that its DuraPlate Products Group’s newly launched AeroSkirt was approved by SmartWay