Hey, I posted a little while ago about a business projects I was working on for one of my classes and didn't get any responses cause i think my post was a bit long so heres the key points, and if anyone could just take a second and answer these that would be really awesome cause this is stuff I really need to know for my mach business plan. As the great Ace Ventura would so boldly say: alrighty then!!
1.) how much would you be willing to spend on a truck to improve the fuel economy by 10%, 15%, and 20%?
2.) Do you think a "green" or eco-friendly image for your trucking business would allow you to charge more for your services? If not why?
3.) would you be willing to switch to biodiesel or straight vegetable oil if you could get it for less than a dollar a gallon? (that question is a little more for short range trucking like a city distributor because the fuel is hard to come by on the highway)
4.) well this isn't really a question but anything you can add along these lines would be really helpful....THANKS ALOT !!!!


so it still turned out a bit long...sry

This is all dependant on how much offset I would see in cost from the fuel savings over the life of the truck.

Not really. Companies are interested in the bottom line. They want to keep costs as cheap as possible and will go with the company that can provide them this. Going "green", at this time, is not economical enough (read: cheap)

Definately, bottom line perfomance again (what keeps the profits up). But I haven't seen biodiesel sold any cheaper than traditional.

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The answer to number 1 depends on the tradeoffs to be made as part of the mileage improvements. While improvements in fuel mileage would pay off over the life of the vehicle, you have to remember that they are not free, and at some point you have to pick up the extra up front costs of purchase. I am looking at a magazine article in a truck collectors magazine, and it has an article about a semi tractor that a company purchased new in 1971. A state of the art heavy duty truck at that time cost them $20,300. In the following 36 years, the price of that same comparable piece of machinery has risen five fold. You have to have a tremendous amount of borrowing power to purchase one, and doing anything that adds to the initial up front cost either prevents you from borrowing the money, or having to pay extra costs for the privlege of borrowing such a large sum. And, your risk is higher of losing a very large investment in an accident.

So the higher initial costs, pulls the (probably) degraded performance, make it real questionable whether or not there would be an acceptable payback period for improved technology that provides higher fuel mileage, regardless of the percentage of improvement. And remember, the entire question is hypothetical, since the technologies to make this increased fuel mileage happen don't exist. If they existed and worked, the industry would be using them.

As for number 2, no, I know of no customer that is going to value a "green" fleet to haul their product, or at the very minimum I know of no one who will pay you any extra money for having such a fleet. There are companies that claim to be "green' and Walmart is famous for it, but they have gained their reputation at other peoples expense. They demand no idling on their property, regardless of weather conditions, and expect the drivers waiting on their deliveries to contribute to Walmarts green reputation. A driver who is held up for 5-6 hours at a distribution center, sitting in the midday July sun and being informed that he is not allowed to run his air conditioner because Walmart has a green image of itself may contribute to Walmarts corporate policies, but it's a pretty poor way to run a business.

As for number 3, return to number one. If there is a cheaper suitable fuel, we would be burning it. I could not afford to take the risk of burning home made fuels in a vehicle that I paid 100,000 dollars for and on which I depend for my living. That's a risk I would be unwilling to commit to, since it is me that has to pay the 15-20,000 dollar rebuild cost of an engine that gets damaged by bad fuels. Some of the money I pay when I buy fuel goes to cover the cost of repairs if my engine is damaged by bad fuels. If the motor blows up, and the cause was bad fuel, I can go back to Pilot or wherever I bought the fuel, and have recourse from my purchase. If I am burning McDonald's waste grease from the Fryolater, I have no recourse.

it's nice to envision all these perfect changes to the world, where the trucks all get great mileage, make no noise, and go about their business without having any impact on the environment. But all improvements cost money, and often they are not changes for the good. Right now, trucks produce 99% less smoke and pollutants than they did 30 years ago. making the next 1 percent in improvements is an incredibly costly process. In many places here in the states, a trucks exhaust actually has less particulate matter emitted than is in the air that it is ingesting for combustion. That means that the truck is actually running as an air purifier. At some point, there is less to be gained that the effort we expend to make the gain. We are pretty close to that "zero point" right now.

thanks for the feedback! now i get to stay up all night doing a marketing analysis and target market analysis...WOO HOO haha. If anyone else feels like adding any extra related info that would be great, anyway, thanks again!

heres a question thats not even really related to the project so much, I'm just curious...if alot of other services and products in the US are switching to be more eco-friendly, how could public awareness and demand of more eco-friendly practices in the trucking industry become more common so that trucking businesses could make more for being "green?" I understand that trucking has come a long way and has reduced emissions by huge amounts among other things, but current trends in several other markets show that the public demand for green services is increasing dramatically. I think demand for products such as those sold in organic grocery stores or other business such as this could profit from saying their products have been shipped with a trucking company that meets certain eco-friendly trucking standards and the trucking company could profit for providing these services.....

I doubt this is something that could happen anytime soon if at all, but it seems that if people knew it was available and wanted it, they would pay for it. demand is not high enough for such services, but how do you raise the demand?

If you look at your local organic market, or other places practicing "green" sales, you will find tht most of the items move in relatively small quantities. Very rarely are there items that would move in truckload quantities, in the way the deliveries are done to Walmart or other larger places. One of the biggest reasons for the increasse in truckload freight, as opposed to the older days when you dropped a few pallets at a time at locations, is that the larger stores have the ability to consume product in loads equal to what one truck hauls. And in environmental terms, it's better if the truck only makes one stop at one location, vice spending all day drivingand idling as it unloads and waits at various places.

Going green in many ways is not suitable in the economic conditions that we now have. There are few consumers that will pay extra for something grown in a specific fashion, when there is a perfectly acceptable, lower priced substitute on hand.

I could buy the super stylish organic peanut butter, but Jif or Skippy works just as well for me and does the job much cheaper. There is an element of frugality in my makeup that forbids me from buying green solely for the sake of salving my social consciensce.

1) I would be interested in a truck with better fuel economy of coarse. But 10-15% is really a drop in the bucket when these trucks only get 5-6mpg now. There is no set dollar amount that can be tallied. You need to do a good cost analysis. What is the cost of the upgrade (or additional fee) and how much would it save me. (IE- how long would it take to recoup my extra cost in savings)

2) Shippers and Receivers could care less how much MPG your truck gets or what it does to the environment. They just care that you can pull the load on time and for cheap as passable. If I told them to pay more because I have a truck with lower MPG, they would laugh in my face and tell me it should be cheaper to haul then because it uses less fuel.

3) Bio diesel is a great idea. Problem is that it cost more to refine still and is not available throwout the nation easily. But you said to omit that. Another concern is that a lot of Manufactures still void warranties if you run Bio. On top of that there is still big debate on what it does to the reliability of an engine and if it really does get better MPG. If its cheaper then diesel, but its more expensive to run, then what is really cheaper. So, all I am saying is, if it was cheaper to run, safe on engines, excepted by the industry, and it was widely available then the industry would already has switched to it and I along with everyone would consider it.

4) Definitely don't concentrate just on fuels, check out the Frieghtliner Cascadia and International Prostar. They are boasting a massive increase in fuel economy based on aerodynamics. Its turning the industry on its head. Look into anti-idle stuff like APU's also.

Ok, I think everyone has pretty much coveredthings. How about this?

You want cut fuel usage, greenhouse gases, noise polution, high blood pressure, I'm sure there are many more. Give the trucks their own lane in the bigger cities. Just let them roll right on through. No stop-n-go huts (toll booths) ever been to the south side of Chicago trying to to just "pass through"? Want to help? Really help? Keep us rolling and get some big siccors to cut through all this *&(&(&$^## red tape that does no good!

Have a great day, and make a truckers day..... give em room and be polite. Remember, the medical supplies that may oneday need will be delivered by a trucker.

Boom

Hey, I didn't mean this to sound like I'm out there tryin to save the world haha. I was just curious about the possibility of cutting costs and how a green image might be make a trucker a few more cents per mile.

check out GA Tech's new aerodynamic system for trucks

and i know they made that new hybrid pertbilt truck, and I figured it might be the predecessor for something like what Lotus Engineering is designing for cars which is essentially a drop in hybrid unit for cars.

oh and the biodiesel thing...this is a little far out there but a cool concept
Biofuel Systems (a Spanish company) is designing a oil derived from phytoplankton which can grow anywhere in the sea pretty much. Cya foreign dependence on oil which is all about to go to china anyway

I figured a business that organize all these concepts into one shop could offer a lot for the trucking industry. I know none of it ready yet, but when it is you could pump up a trucks efficiency by a decent amount which with a truck that only gets 5-6 mpg saves MORE money for the truckers and their customers in fuel surcharges.

You need to get an Ipass or EZ Pass. I haven't slowed for a booth on the tollways more than a dozen times over the past 5 years. I go past most toll booths at 55 mph or better. As for truck only lanes, do a count of how many trucks are out there sometime, and try to envision all of them jammed into one lane, all accelerating at the pace of the slowest driver and truck out there. Illinois roads can always stand improvement, but truck only lanes are not the answer to the problem, IMHO.