TRUCKING EFFICIENCY CONFIDENCE REPORT: Maintenance Executive … · 2017-06-20 · TRUCKING...
Transcript of TRUCKING EFFICIENCY CONFIDENCE REPORT: Maintenance Executive … · 2017-06-20 · TRUCKING...
TRUCKING EFFICIENCY CONFIDENCE REPORT:
MaintenanceExecutive Summary
those barriers and facilitate the
industry’s trust in and adoption of
the most promising fuel efficiency
technologies, the North American
Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE)
partnered with Carbon War Room
(CWR) to form Trucking Efficiency.
The work of Trucking Efficiency
has begun by producing a series of
Confidence Reports, of which this
report on maintenance practices is
the ninth.
The goals of this Confidence
Report are: (a) to give the
industry a foundational
understanding of
the impact that
maintenance
practices can have
on fuel economy; (b)
to provide a review
of key maintenance
areas to focus on
for fuel efficiency;
and (c) to increase
investment into improved
maintenance practices.
The fuel costs faced by the tractor-trailer industry have been swiftly and steadily rising over the past decade. In 2014 diesel fuel costs were $0.58 per mile, costing the industry as much per annum as the costs of drivers’ wages and benefits combined. Despite recent fuel cost decreases, all indications are that fuel price volatility will continue, forcing the industry to find solutions that increase its fuel efficiency in order to stay profitable.
Fortunately, myriad technologies
that can cost-effectively improve the
fuel efficiency of Class 8 trucks are
readily available on the market today.
Unfortunately, multiple barriers have
stymied industry adoption of such
technologies, including a lack of data
about the true performance gains
these technologies offer and a lack
of confidence in the data that does
publicly exist today. To overcome
“There is strong evidence that properly maintained
trucks will enjoy improved fuel economy.”
MIKE ROETH, OPERATION LEAD,TRUCKING EFFICIENCY
TRUCKING EFFICIENCY CONFIDENCE REPORT: MAINTENANCE | 1
MethodologyThis report’s conclusions
were generated through desk
research, conversations at a
variety of trucking industry
events around the country, and
a series of structured interviews
with fleets, component
manufacturers, and truck and
trailer OEMs active in the North
American market.
KEY FINDINGS OF THIS REPORTThe study team reached the following
conclusions regarding the link between
maintenance practices and fuel
economy in the trucking industry today:
· Fleets view maintenance as
important to their operation, but
tend to look at it as a means for
reducing downtime rather than
improving fuel economy.
· There is strong evidence that
properly maintained trucks will
enjoy improved fuel economy.
· While reducing downtime is the
main pathway to payback from
investments in maintenance,
adding information about the
increased fuel economy enjoyed
by well-maintained trucks can
make investments in maintenance
technologies, tools, bay space,
technicians, or software an easier
sell across fleet management.
· There are a variety of sources
available, including the
Technology & Maintenance
Council, where fleets can find
information about the maintenance
needs of various components.
MAINTENANCE AND FUEL ECONOMYThe maintenance of vehicles is
universal to the trucking industry,
making this report unlike other
Confidence Reports, which look
at technologies that either are or
are not adopted by a given fleet.
All fleets currently maintain their
vehicles in order to ensure safe and
reliable performance, avoid costly
breakdowns or vehicle downtime,
and allow their vehicles to reach
maximum useful life or obtain higher
resale values. The industry-standard
best practice for maintaining a fleet
of vehicles is through a structured
preventive maintenance (PM) program.
However, even a vehicle that is
running safely and reliably may still
enjoy substantial fuel economy
savings thanks to additional or more
optimized maintenance.
The report finds that while the
industry today is aware of the
impact of poor maintenance on
fuel economy, it is nevertheless
uncomfortable quantifying what the
link between the two might be,
in order to justify investing
in improvements. This
is understandable, as
it is difficult to speak
in aggregate about
the opportunity
available to the
industry as a whole
from addressing
maintenance for fuel
economy; each fleet
must be individually
assessed to determine
the gains available to them
from making changes to their
specific maintenance practices.
The report furthermore identifies
the separate components or vehicle
systems that are known to impact
fuel economy and looks at the role
of maintenance in keeping those
components/systems operating at
peak condition.
The following ten major components
or systems were most often
mentioned by the fleets and are
therefore discussed in depth in the
report, but this list is not exhaustive.
1. Lubricants/Engine Oil
2. Intake/Exhaust System and Diesel
Particulate Filters
3. Engine Cooling
4. Air Compressors
5. Wheel Alignment
6. Tires
7. Fuel Filter Systems
8. Aerodynamic Devices
9. Electrical Systems
10. Air Conditioning
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
TRUCKING EFFICIENCY CONFIDENCE REPORT: MAINTENANCE | 2
“Even a vehicle that is running safely
and reliably may still enjoy substantial fuel economy
savings thanks to additional or more optimized
maintenance.”DENISE RONDINI, NACFE STUDY
MANAGER AND COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR
BENEFITS OF MAINTENANCEDiscussing the benefits of maintenance
may sound odd, as no one in the
industry believes maintenance is
without a benefit. However, some
fleets still view maintenance as a
cost, making cuts to the maintenance
budget during tough economic times.
This Confidence Report recommends
that, although still uncommon, fleets
should definitely think of maintenance
in terms of the fuel economy benefits
it offers. Adding up all of the potential
reductions in fuel economy covered
under the 10 components described
in the report shows that maintenance
can in fact address 30% to 50% of
fuel consumption. Certainly no truck
will ever have problems with all 10
of these components at once, but
the massive size of that figure is
indicative of just how significant the
opportunity is to use maintenance to
improve fuel efficiency. In short, proper
maintenance saves fuel.
Fleets shared that they have in fact
seen fuel consumption improvements
of 5–10% after the implementation
of rigorous preventive maintenance
practices. Such savings indicate that
the implementation of more effective
maintenance protocols, namely by
increasing staff and/or investing in
maintenance software, facilities, or
other tools, will likely pay for itself in
fuel savings in just a few years.
Additional benefits of proper
maintenance include:
1. Improved Vehicle Reliability and
Reduced Breakdowns
2. Increased Resale Value
3. Enhanced Driver Safety and
Satisfaction
4. Reduced CSA Violations and Fines
CHALLENGES OF MAINTENANCEIn spite of these benefits, fleets
working to implement more effective
maintenance protocols should be aware
of the following three challenges:
1. Scheduling: It can be difficult to
schedule maintenance in a way
that does not negatively impact
fleet productivity; telematics
technologies can help optimize
scheduling.
2. Tracking/Ensuring Compliance:
Fleets using manual methods of
tracking PM service are likely not
getting all their trucks scheduled
for servicing as needed; telematics
can also help address this.
3. Demonstrating Return on
Investment: Getting fleets to factor
fuel economy improvements into
their maintenance investments
is challenging. Moreover, proper
maintenance may address multiple
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
TRUCKING EFFICIENCY CONFIDENCE REPORT: MAINTENANCE | 3
systems at once, so not only
is it impossible to attribute any
fuel economy gains to a specific
maintenance action, it can be
difficult to prove that a change in
maintenance caused any gains at all.
LOOKING FORWARD TO PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCEGiven the increasing sophistication
of today’s commercial vehicles and
the many new technologies, it is likely
that the need for maintenance will
increase. Fleets have already moved
away from reactive maintenance
and repair, and are now focusing on
preventive maintenance to keep their
trucks in top operating condition.
But what fleets really want is to
be able to fix a truck before it
breaks. The next evolution in
maintenance, therefore, will be a
new sort of PM: not preventive but
predictive maintenance. A predictive
maintenance system functions using
telematics devices and an array of
vehicle sensors in order to record and
wirelessly relay vehicle performance
data, including any issues that may
arise, back to the fleet, which in turn
can quickly respond.
A one-size-fits-all approach to
maintenance is incompatible with
predictive maintenance. To be
effective it will require each fleet
to capture and analyze all of the
data being generated by the ECM,
sensors, and telematics devices on
each of its trucks individually. Proper
data analytics will allow fleets to
spot wear and breakdown trends,
and to schedule preemptive repairs.
Technology and connectivity are the
keys to predictive maintenance, but
just as important is the collection and
analysis of the data.
CONFIDENCE RATINGIt is difficult to quantify the overall
fuel savings due to maintenance.
There are some areas like tire
inflation or the cleaning of diesel
particulate filters for which there
is plenty of specific evidence as
to how much these measures
can increase fuel economy. For
other components like tires, axle
alignment, oil, and aerodynamic
devices, there is demonstrable
evidence of the fuel economy loss
when those components are
poorly maintained.
This Confidence Rating indicates
that fleets should be willing to
invest in technologies and/or staff
to optimize their maintenance
protocols, and that they should
monitor fuel economy savings in
order to justify those investments.
In particular, fleets should consider
investing in telematics technologies,
which will allow them to transition
from preventive to predictive
maintenance practices. The
benefits of investments in predictive
maintenance are still emerging
as there are many solutions, and
the capabilities for better decision
making with the much larger available
data are not yet mature. It is expected
that the payback and amount of
information available on predictive
maintenance will improve over the
next 12–18 months.
Trucking Efficiency is always seeking
to expand the data or case studies
that we can provide to the industry.
We invite you to share your own
experiences with using maintenance
practices to improve fuel economy.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
FIGURE ES1: CONFIDENCE MATRIX FOR FUEL-ECONOMY-FOCUSED MAINTENANCE
Robust Preventive
Maintenance
Predictive Maintenance
TRUCKING EFFICIENCY CONFIDENCE REPORT: MAINTENANCE | 4
TRUCKING EFFICIENCY Trucking Efficiency is a joint effort between NACFE and Carbon War Room
to double the freight efficiency of North American goods movement by
eliminating barriers associated with information, demand, and supply.
Worldwide, heavy-duty freight trucks emit 1.6 gigatons of CO2 emissions
annually—5.5% of society’s total greenhouse gas emissions—due to the
trucking sector’s dependence on petroleum-based fuels. With fuel prices still
commanding nearly 40% of the cost of trucking, the adoption of efficiency
technologies by all classes of trucks and fleets offers significant cost savings
to the sector while reducing emissions. These technologies are relatively
cheap to implement and widely available on the market today.
Trucking Efficiency provides detailed information on cost-effective efficiency
technologies, including data from across a variety of fleets and best practices
for adoption. This Confidence Report series from Trucking Efficiency aims to
serve as a credible and independent source of information on fuel efficiency
technologies and their applications.
In order to generate confidence on the performance claims of efficiency
technologies, Trucking Efficiency, via these reports, gathers and centralizes
the multitude of existing sources of data about the performance results of
different technology options when employed in a variety of vehicle models
and duty cycles, and makes all of that data openly accessible and more easily
comparable. Furthermore, we assess the credibility of the available data,
and provide an industry-standardized ranking of confidence in performance
results, including ROI and efficiency gains.
www.truckingefficiency.org
Trucking Efficiency welcomes outside views and new partners in our efforts to
help accelerate the uptake of profitable, emission-reducing trucking technologies.
CARBON WAR ROOMCarbon War Room (CWR) was founded
in 2009 as a global nonprofit by
Sir Richard Branson and a group
of likeminded entrepreneurs. It
intervenes in markets to accelerate
the adoption of business solutions that
reduce carbon emissions at gigaton
scale and advance the low-carbon
economy. CWR merged with Rocky
Mountain Institute (RMI) in 2014 and
now operates as an RMI business unit.
The combined organization engages
businesses, communities, institutions,
and entrepreneurs to transform
global energy use to create a clean,
prosperous, and secure future. The
combined organization has offices in
Basalt and Boulder, Colorado; New
York City; Washington, D.C.;
and Beijing.
www.carbonwarroom.com
NACFEThe North American Council
for Freight Efficiency works
to drive the development and
adoption of efficiency-enhancing,
environmentally-beneficial, and
cost-effective technologies,
services, and methodologies in the
North American freight industry by
establishing and communicating
credible and performance-based
benefits. The Council is an effort of
fleets, manufacturers, vehicle builders
and other government and non-
governmental organizations coming
together to improve North American
goods movement.
www.nacfe.org
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
NACFE
W
AR R O O M
CARBON
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