The government would give the trucking companies tax breaks for using the trucks. Just watch in 3 years you see a lot more CNG or LNG trucks running around compared to what is out there today. I can see it in the crystal ball.
Natural Gas Trucks?
Discussion in 'Questions To Truckers From The General Public' started by Low-Tech, Apr 23, 2011.
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UPS has some of them in their little brown trucks in some areas. -
You might see this type of fuel used in local trucks but believe me when there's a cheaper way than diesel the oil companies will take it.
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We have to think for alternative solutions to lessen our expenses in some ways, just like using natural gas in our vehicles instead of gasoline.
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Carriers' (thin) profit margins and operating ratios don't leave much room for operational flexibility. Carriers will never make the switch unless they can cost-justify the change.
1. The overall cost of burning NG in their fleets must be less than the current cost of burning diesel. This is more than just the price of the fuel itself, it includes the cost of buying, maintaining, and operating trucks equipped with NG-fired engines.
I read somewhere that NG has less energy content than diesel. This means that more NG would have to be burned (compared to diesel) to accomplish the same amount of work. Companies will not switch to a fuel that will result in poorer fuel economy, unless the cost of the fuel is low enough (relative to the cost of diesel) to offset the increase in the amount of fuel that must be burnt (and thus, purchased, and have fuel tax paid upon) to accomplish the same amount of work.
2. The other obstacle is that carriers must also have confidence that NG fuel is available wherever and whenever they need it - and that requires infrastructure.
The infrastructure will never be built unless the government grants tax breaks to:
- the NG industry (producers, processors, pipeline operators, terminal operators, and travel center operators), to offset the cost of establishing the infrastructure
- OEMs, to help stimulate demand for NG by incentivizing OEMs to build NG-fired engines)
- carriers (again to help stimulate demand for NG, by incentivizing carriers to spec trucks with NG-fired engines / retrofit existing diesel trucks with NG fuel systems)
Without tax breaks to the NG industry, the cost of NG fuel will never be low enough for carriers to be able to cost-justify the changeover. -
My truck gets now 5.5 and can weigh 80klbs, but a pick up truck towing a boat that weighs about 15klbs gets about 7mpg's, hello I think the tractor is doing well on what it was designed to do. -
Hate to tell you this Cheezburger, but CNG powered semi's are on the way. There is a trucking company (Ruan) that is using a small number of these running up and down I-65 in Indiana with tankers. You may not see many of them right now but give it one year and you will start seeing a lot more of them running a dedicated regional run. I actually drove a cng powered dump truck two days ago. Other than the engine sounding slightly different you wouldn't have noticed that it wasn't a diesel.
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So what happens when one of these trucks with NG gets into an accident. Diesel doesn't ignite anywhere near as easily as NG. Recipe for more burned up trucks in the wreck yards.
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