The North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) has released its in-depth report on Run on Less Regional, a fuel-economy demonstration meant to show the value of fuel-saving technologies in Class 8 regional haul applications.
After careful analysis of key data from the three-week event, the NACFE team has shared five conclusions:
1) High efficiency requires a commitment from both fleet leadership and drivers.
The 10 fleets in Run on Less Regional averaged 8.3 MPG with the nine diesels at 8.7 MPG.
2) Data and connectivity can help further optimize fuel economy.
Many technologies exist to improve the efficiency for these regional routes. Understanding each in depth will help in making choices to save fuel, money and emissions.
3) It all depends on the duty cycle.
Specifically, NACFE has identified seven duty cycles for regional haul: shuttle, dedicated, dedicated fast turn, hub and spoke, city, diminishing load and milk runs.
“Regional haul is not homogenous,” says Mike Roeth, executive director of NACFE. “You’ve got to get to this kind of level of detail before you can really design, sell, or buy technology that will help.”
4) Regional haul is attractive to drivers.
The expansion of regional haul will help attract and retain drivers as drivers get home on a more regular basis.
5) Regional haul is ideal for electric trucks.
“Ultimately, whether this is in ten years or twenty years, we do see most if not all of these regional haul trucks being replaced by electric trucks or fuel cell trucks,” Roeth shares. But, he cautions, this is dependent on the fleet having access to charging infrastructure for these electric trucks so that they can sustain the range for multiple runs a day. “The numbers are great for electric trucks if they have charging available or they have time to charge in between these short runs.”
The 10 trucks from participating fleets—C&S Wholesale Grocers, Hirschbach, Hogan Transportation, J.B. Hunt, Meijer, PepsiCo, Ploger Transportation, Schneider, Southeastern Freight Lines, and UPS—drove 58,000 miles, recorded 237 deliveries while achieving a cumulative 8.3 MPG. This is a 38% improvement over the average Class 8 regional haul operations, which NACFE estimates to be 6.0 MPG.
If all regional haul fleets were to operate at this fuel efficiency, the industry would save more than $9 billion in fuel over the course of a year and 30.6 million tons of CO2, NACFE reports. You can read more details on the Run on Less Regional from the original news here; and you can find additional details on the Run on Less website.
