Commercial trucks and trailers will be substantially more technical and more productive, according to the speakers at the Heavy Duty Dialogue session tasked with visualizing the changes that will occur over the next decade.
An array of new products and technologies will be implemented to better serve a nation whose cities and freight patterns will look substantially different than they do today.
The technologies generally are available now, with acceptance of those technologies expected to increase. According to Clem Driscoll, CJ Driscoll & Associates:
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Trailer monitoring grew by 20% in 2008. This is down from a peak of 30% to 40% between 2005 and 2007. The installed base is approximately 580,000 units.
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The reefer monitoring market is relatively strong and commands a higher price, Driscoll said, but the next big niche may be systems that monitor driver behavior.
“We believe that vehicle diagnostics and driver behavior management will become standard,” Driscoll said. “Driver behavior that can be monitored includes speeding, braking too hard, and accelerating too fast.”
Driscoll said that a big challenge is to convert engine diagnostics into information that can be used to prevent future problems — to detect flaws before they can create a breakdown.
Driscoll expects that over the next 10 years, all major fleets will monitor driver behavior to reduce accident risks. He also expects fleets to buy systems to detect accidents and to evaluate their severity, technology that identifies lane departures. He also sees increased popularity for that monitor containers and high-value assets. They will use GPS, RFID, and intrusion detection technologies.
“Increasingly, fleet operators will want to monitor everything that affects fuel consumption,” Driscoll said, “MPG, RPM, engine performance. Additionally, technology will drive increased productivity, and the truck will become a mobile office incorporating scanner, printer, and Internet.”
Harnessing information
Sandeep Kar, a consultant with Frost & Sullivan, also sees a big role for telematics — and an opportunity to make it bigger.
“The big problem with today's systems is that they produce too much data and too little information,” Kar said. “They need to focus on what the customer is seeking. When we ask fleet managers if they wanted to pay $6 a month for some back-office information or $12 for prognostic information, they were willing to pay twice the price for information that helps them reduce downtime. Prognostics is an industry that is not yet mature, but there is tremendous interest in it and willingness to pay for it.
“It is clear that any technology — whether it is powertrain, telematics, safety — it will be enthusiastically adopted if it can be shown that it will reduce operating expenses.”
Frost & Sullivan believes that telematics will become a $6.5 billion market by 2015.
The old, gray truck driver
Kar sees another factor emerging that fleets increasingly will value — ergonomics.
“We see a day coming in which health, wellness, and well being will also emerge as a product differentiator,” he said. “The average age of a truck driver is now in the upper 40s. This is an age milestone at which people begin to think about health, well being and wellness.
Next Page: Transformed cities, transportation
“Moreover, a truck driver spends more than eight hours a day in a truck cabin, which is not the most ergonomic or comfortable environment. Regulations are expected on the horizon that will introduce this type of thinking in North America and Europe. Already driver eyelid monitoring, psychological monitoring and physiological monitoring technologies are being developed to improve vehicle safety.
Transformed cities, transportation
Trucks and trailers will operate under radically different traffic patterns in the future if the predictions of Sandeep Kar prove accurate.
The world's major cities are undergoing major changes in traffic patterns, the Frost and Sullivan consultant explained, and commercial vehicles will change with them. Pointing to cities such as Toronto and London, Kar said that increasingly cities will have highly congested cores surrounded by middle and outer belts. The city centers will have high-income residents living in the city centers, along with financial centers and high-end retail chains. The second belt around the city will be the home of middle-income families, most offices, manufacturing centers, and retail centers. An outer belt will contain lower income families, lower end shopping centers, and warehouse and distribution hubs.
The changing landscape will mean changing roles in distribution. Hybrid trucks and electric commercial vehicle in particular are expected to play a greater role in getting goods to the inner belts, while intermodal and long-haul trucks will enable the use of hub-and-spoke logistics and will connect the different cities.
In the developing world, Kar believes 26 megacities, such as the amalgamation of Johannesburg and Pretoria in South Africa. The result of such growth will be increased pressure on government to enforce regulations and to control movements of goods and people. People will live close to their places of employment.
Kar said that truck manufacturers in Japan and India are already adding these types of trucks to their model lineups.
Going global
As others have done, Kar underscored the difference in growth rates between North America and other commercial truck markets. During the next decade, annual truck production in North America will fluctuate between 400,000 and 600,000 units, Kar said. Meanwhile, the global market will grow from 2.2 million units in 1997 to 4.7 million medium and heavy-duty trucks by 2020. China and India will be the largest contributors to this expansion.
What kind of trucks will these be? Kar predicts that the global truck market will polarize over the next decade, with growth coming at both the light and heavy ends of the GVW spectrum.
Technology has the solution to many of trucking's problems, Kar said, but he cautioned that we now have too many advanced technologies are chasing too few consumer dollars.
What fleets think
In 2009, Frost & Sullivan surveyed the fleet managers of the top 100 public and private for-hire carriers in the United States. A key result of that survey was that fleet managers consider hybrid trucks to be a solution, but one that need further development. They consider hybrids to improve efficiencies and reduce maintenance, idling, and emissions, they are not yet perceived as offering attractive life-cycle costs — particularly when diesel-electric hybrids need to have their batteries replaced every five years.
There is a driving demand for green, fuel-efficient trucks. After CNG, LNG, biodiesel, and others have been tried, but hybrids appear to be the solution for the short and mid-term. There are many advantages to hybrids, the most compelling of which is the pressure on existing energy infrastructure. They do not rely on a different fueling infrastructure or a new type of fuel. Major truck manufacturers now offer commercially produced Class 6 and 7 hybrid trucks.
Frost & Sullivan predicts that by 2015, there will be 39,400 Class 6-8 hybrid trucks will be produced in North America. This will represent about 8% of all trucks manufactured that year. By 2015, the mix of those trucks will be 72% diesel electric and 28% will be hydraulic hybrids. We estimate that by 2020, 15% of North American production will be hybrids.
Kar does not expect pure electric trucks to be a significant part of the medium and heavy truck market. He does expect them to earn a share of the lighter end of the market, especially trucks with payload ratings of 1.5 to 4 tons and that operate close to home so that they can be recharged overnight. A major hurdle for electric vehicles is the lack of a viable charging infrastructure. Only a few states have a system in place for charging electric commercial vehicles. That is expected to increase by 2015.
“Our research indicates that about 2,000 electric vehicles will be manufactured here this year, including light and medium trucks, buses, and vans,” Kar said. “By 2016, electric commercial vehicle production will rise to about 19,000 units, a compound growth rate of 38%.”
“Does your business have a strategy to benefit from this trend?” Kar asked.