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26 • September 15-30, 2019 Perspective THETRUCKER.COM MAKE A LIVING AND ENJOY THE LIVING PART Penske is hiring safe, professional truck drivers to haul freight for some of the world’s leading brands. • Return home daily • Choose from a variety of shifts and customers • Receive outstanding benefits • Join an internationally renowned team 855-235-7367 gopenske.com/drivers Apply using job number 1003259 Penske is an Equal Opportunity Employer. b Daimler from page 25 b the Innovation Fleet are operated within the South Coast AQMD jurisdiction. “We are excited to be a part of this groundbreaking project that will directly impact local Southern California communities, especially those disproportionately impacted by air pollution,” said Wayne Nastri, South Coast AQMD’s executive officer. “We hope to see large-scale deployments of similar zero-emission trucks that will have significant environmental and health benefits across the entire state.” Penske and NFI are the first to deploy batteryelectric commercial vehicles from Freightliner to their operations. Penske Truck Leasing will run eCascadias in daily delivery operations within California’s Inland Empire, while NFI will employ eCascadias in drayage operations at both the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. “We’re pleased to continue our collaboration with Freightliner and be among the first companies putting the eCascadia to work,” said Brian Hard, president and CEO of Penske Truck Leasing. “Our first eCascadia will be used by our subsidiary Penske Logistics to make multiple, daily store deliveries on a dedicated route. Our in-house maintenance technicians are trained and well prepared, and our recent investments in charging infrastructure in the South Coast Air Basin will play an important role as we operate these cutting-edge vehicles on their delivery routes.” “NFI’s partnership with Daimler is a testament to our commitment to social responsibility, supporting the California ports and driving innovation within our industry,” said Sid Brown, CEO of NFI. “As the premier drayage provider in Southern California, we are excited to be one of the first to deploy the eCascadia into our operations, accompanied by the installation of electric charging stations. We look forward to continuing to invest in new technology and equipment to operate more efficiently, and to do our part in creating cleaner communities.” Nielsen said the Freightliner eCascadia is built on the proven foundation of the Cascadia, the best-selling Class 8 on the market. It was first revealed in June 2018 along with the medium-duty eM2. The planned start of series production for both models is late 2021. In preparation for their introduction, Freightliner has established multiple avenues for co-creating with customers. Freightliner’s Electric Vehicle Council, a collective of 38 customer companies, works to address the total e-mobility ecosystem. Freightliner’s Innovation Fleet provides customers with the opportunity to fully test the eM2 and the eCascadia in real-world use. In total, Penske and NFI will receive 30 battery electric trucks. The Freightliner eCascadia and eM2 are part of Daimler Trucks’ global electrified truck initiative, joining the company’s Thomas Built Buses all-electric Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley school bus, the FUSO eCanter, and the Mercedes-Benz eActros and eCitaro. To date, there are more than 100 electrified trucks and buses from Daimler Trucks & Buses on the road globally. 8 T s b OOIDA from page 25 b billion in gross revenue, DOT must more fully consider the practical implications that eliminating the human driver from the FMCSRs might have on the economy.” Spencer said OOIDA understands necessary changes must be made to the FMCSRs to accommodate AVs, including training, licensing, and inspection standards, but that many of the proposals within the ANPRM are hypothetical in nature. “In this sense, OOIDA questions why the agency has chosen to focus on regulations that may or may not be necessary depending how the technology performs,” Spencer wrote. “Most of the questions laid out in the ANPRM are based on assumptions, many of which are nothing more than marketing ploys from ADS developers, rather than actual safety performance. Currently, it is difficult to fully understand what role AVs will have on the trucking industry. Without more concrete data about how AVs will function and their impact on the industry, our feedback on the ANPRM is generally speculative. As the practical impacts of the technology evolve, so too will our recommendations.” 8 ALL THINGS TRUCKING News • Gear • Reviews • Demos • Rig Report • How-to’s • Trade Shows @truckbossshow
Features September 15-30, 2019 • 27 Tire exec: Advanced truck technology starts where the rubber meets the road THE TRUCKER NEWS SERVICES FINDLAY, Ohio — Today’s commercial truck tires are rolling pieces of sophistication. They are the vessels that carry the payload on a tractor and trailer, so the importance of their construction and foundation — the casing — can’t be understated. “Other than tires for the aerospace industry, commercial truck tires have arguably the toughest job in the tire business,” said Phil Mosier, Cooper Tire’s manager of commercial tire development. “It’s why we dedicate so much engineering time to ensure our tires perform safely and productively. From a productivity standpoint, since tires are the second-highest operating cost after fuel, miles to removal and fuel economy — balanced by a competitive price — is what can keep truckers making money.” So, what makes tires so high tech? On the surface they’re black and round and look pretty much the same. “Commercial truck tire manufacturers all primarily use natural rubber for heat resistance and durability,” Mosier said. “As a comparison, the automotive tires you drive on generally consist of more synthetic rubber than natural rubber. And, truck tires all use carbon black to some degree as a primary ingredient in the chemistry of the tire. But that’s where the similarities end.” According to Mosier, some commercial tire brands are well known and have been around for generations, proving their performance on North American roads. Others are less known, with limited distribution. “And, like with any product, you have varying degrees of quality and expectations,” he said. “In the tire world you have up to four tiers of quality and pricing. And for the most part you get what you pay for.” Mosier said that the lower the tier, typically, the lower the performance — fewer miles to removal, for example. A Tier 4 tire might show up sporadically in the U.S. market, for example, then disappear. And there are a lot of players. There are more than 250 different brands of drive tires listed on the SmartWay website, with the vast majority in the lowest tier. “The buyers of these tires are looking for rubber to put on the road — not high mileage, retreadability or other metrics,” Mosier said. “When you move up to Tier 3, Tier 2 and Tier 1 tires, you find incremental quality improvements and better casings. These tires give you longer miles to removal, better fuel economy, and many are engineered for multiple retreads. And for drivers who don’t retread, it translates to more money back when they sell their casings. One way to sum up the quality variant is to look at the tire manufacturer’s warranty. The better it is, the higher the quality. A tire manufacturer knows better than anyone else how its tires will perform because they, like us, track performance data.” When comparing a passenger tire versus commercial truck tire, Mosier said each has its own performance challenges for engineers. “With a passenger tire, consumers are Courtesy: COOPER TIRE Phil Mosier, standing, says it’s an exciting time to be a tire designer. “We have so much technology and research at our fingertips. We have chemists with PhDs who uncover new ways to perfect compounding, and we have new ways to design and test our tires to ensure top performance.” looking for handling, low road noise and mileage in the 30,000- to 80,000-mile range,” he said. “With commercial truck tires, it’s those attributes: fuel economy plus casing integrity. Some truckers, with diligent tire maintenance practices, get more than 400,000 miles on drive tires.” According to Mosier, long haul and regional operations each pose different challenges, and that’s why wear (miles to removal) can vary greatly. See Tires on p28 m Even as we continue to hear the sky is falling, let’s remember what keeps us grounded Klint Lowry klint.lowry@thetrucker.com Lane Departures I write about trucking, but I am not a truck driver. I have never been a truck driver. And even though I respect the adage “never say never,” I can say with reasonable certainty that I never will be a truck driver. I wouldn’t last six months as a trucker. It’s just a matter of compatibility, of not being suited for the business. Wrong temperament, wrong skill set — wrong everything. Oh well. I won’t shed any tears if you won’t. Watching the industry from arm’s length often leaves me shaking my head. Collectively, in so many ways, this industry can be its own worst enemy. Trucking culture often operates, for better or worse, like family or a group of longtime friends. Even when they’re screwing up royally, or just annoying one another, you also see the good inside. And that’s what happened a couple of days before I wrote this, and it involves the press, and an irresistible opportunity to diss on my own kind. By the time you see this, it will be old news that truckload carrier HVH Transportation shut down without notice in late August. And then a day later, a smaller carrier, Ready Transportation, shuttered its operation. Of course, the trucking media was all over it, us included. That’s the way the media works. We all keep an eye on one another to make sure the other guy didn’t get a popular story that we missed. That’s why everybody seems to cover the same stuff. It isn’t some vast political or ideological conspiracy; it’s more of a monkey see, monkey do situation. It wasn’t the fact that HVH shut down that made this a hot story, it was the way that it shut down. It was sudden, employees weren’t given any notice. Drivers’ gas cards were shut off and they were stranded all over the country. It fit perfectly into drivers’ resentments of company owners as heartless, greedy and often incompetent, with the employees having to suffer the consequences. And then, when Ready Transportation shut down a day later, it fed into the wider scale plotline that’s been getting all kinds of traction lately — the premise that the economy, and trucking along with it, are on the brink of recession. Or the recession has already started. Or it’ll start next year. It depends on which story you read. A couple articles suggested that maybe the recession is already over. Perish the thought. The fact that these two carriers shut down was played up as Exhibits A and B that calamitous times are upon us. Gosh, how many carriers does this make this year? A couple of outlets decided to look it up. Their published findings varied from nine total to six hundred and something carriers that have closed in 2019. Either way, that’s out of 892,078 for-hire carriers, and almost twice that if you include private carriers. It was just a year, even six months ago, that trucking executives were patting themselves on the back and practically lighting Cuban cigars with $100 bills. Now everyone seems certain, even eager to pronounce that the sky is falling. Could things have changed that much that quickly? Avery Vise, vice president of trucking at FTR Transportation Intelligence, has one of the sharpest minds out there devoted to trucking concerns. He shared with us a few facts and figures and his interpretations. Vise indicated that the media does seem to be leading this Chicken Little chorus, and hyping trucking company closures is part of the tune. “The transition from an extraordinary market like 2017-2018 to today usually reveals which carriers made poor choices during a time when those carriers could still be profitable despite those choices,” Vise said. Without question, there are some signs of stress on the industry, he added, but “market conditions have not deteriorated to the point where reasonably well-run companies should be at risk.” “Carriers always are going out of business without many people paying much at- See Lane on p28 m
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