Want to maximize the productivity of your work truck? A little knowledge can go a long way.
The notion that data rules the road was on tap for a panel session, titled “Get 20 Per Cent More Productivity Out of Your Next Work Truck Purchase,” at the Work Truck Show in Indianapolis March.
“Everybody has an opinion and a point of view, but data is the purest form that doesn’t lie or have
an agenda,” Christopher Lyon, who moderated the session, told Service Truck Magazine in a pre-
Chris Stranand Photography
Chris Lyon, Director of fleet relations with the National Truck Equipment Association, commented, "...Fully understanding drive and duty cycles and what their vehicles are doing can be a huge asset to any fleet manager."
show interview.
Lyon, director of fleet relations with the National Truck Equipment Association, said fleet industry and technology insiders will share real-world examples of how to manage work trucks for maximum efficiency.
Fleet owners and vehicle operators who can assess the performance of their vehicles within the context of their particular environments and parameters are optimally placed to make smart judgment calls about maintenance, upkeep and everyday operation, Lyon said, decrying decisions often made with little or no data or evidence-driven understanding.
Data proves need
“It could be something as simple as power-train optimization,” Lyon said. “If you’ve bought large horsepower engines but haven’t come close to peak horsepower demand — well, now we have the data to prove it.”
All-too-common attitudes when purchases are made are that a particular vehicle is what the owner has always had, or that the operator can’t possibly consider alternative power systems because they need the unit round-the-clock.
Lyon said the panel will include a technology systems provider and also explore examples of how fleets look at data to determine suitable alternatives in areas such as emissions reduction and fuel efficiency.
“There’s the point of view of putting a value on your carbon footprint and understanding what you’re putting out into the world,” Lyon explained. “Using data to understand that can often help fleet managers explain why they’re doing what they’re doing.”
Solid data — putting actual numbers to various aspects of operating a vehicle — can translate a vehicle’s carbon footprint and fuel efficiency into a tangible discussion about cost.
“That’s what pretty much sells a lot of programs,” Lyon said. “Often, users will simply say they need larger vehicles, or they need it because they need it, or they need it because it’s what they’ve always had. With data you can actually quantify what they need. Fully understanding drive and duty cycles and what their vehicles are doing can be a huge asset to any fleet manager.”
Money saved, money earned
Efficiency may have been a relatively easy virtue to sell when fuel prices were higher than they are now. “We seem to be kind of at a stagnant level of relatively low conventional fuel prices,” Lyon observed. However, while fuel prices are now lower than in recent years, the economy is tight and competitive, and money saved anywhere in a fleet’s operation is money earned.
Lyon said the NTEA has worked with Green Truck Association members to provide insights into their trucks’ drive and duty cycles. The GTA, an affiliate division of the NTEA, also provides drive and duty cycle data sets to Fleet DNA, a national database program of the National Renewable Energy Lab, a.k.a. NREL.
“NREL is cataloguing and analyzing individual and groups of vocational trucks,” Lyon said. “These efforts provide vocational fleet XYZ insights into potential fuel-saving approaches and comparisons to what other similar trucks are achieving within that particular vocation.”
The idea is to help fleet owners who might otherwise lack the means or technical staff to deploy alternative technologies. “This beta program provides the data for validation as to whether a project might be feasible,” Lyon explained.
Lyon tells of one large fleet owner the NTEA worked with to help gather data to drive recommendations for rationalizing the purchase of alternative power generation systems for utility man-lift bucket trucks.
“It’s quite a financial commitment,” Lyon explained. “We collected data points on his conventional vehicles and offered our third-party overview of what the data was telling him, and a couple recommendations he could use to support a decision to proceed.”
Analyzing engineering
Eric Mallia, general manager of FleetCarma, a telematics systems provider based in Waterloo,
“Some of the services customers can purchase as part of our telematics systems are to evaluate the suitability of alternative fuel technologies in their fleets. We help people get raw data from a vehicle’s controllers so they can analyze different engineering aspects of the vehicle’s performance rather than just general fleet utilization.”— Eric Mallia, general manager, FleetCarma
Ont., was on the panel’s roster of speakers. He told Service Truck Magazine the business started as a consultancy in 2007 before turning to actual product development three years later.
“Some of the services customers can purchase as part of our telematics systems are to evaluate the suitability of alternative fuel technologies in their fleets,” Mallia said. “We help people get raw data from a vehicle’s controllers so they can analyze different engineering aspects of the vehicle’s performance rather than just general fleet utilization.”
Mallia said FleetCarma’s target market includes engineers and researchers as well as fleet operators such as local utilities.
While FleetCarma’s technology will monitor some work truck auxiliary power loads, the technology specializes in tracking vehicle power-train components, whether on a traditional service truck, bucket truck, cherry picker, or heavy-duty member of a municipality’s fleet such as a street sweeper or snow plow. “We’ve even worked with folks who have long-haul transport trailers,” Mallia said.
Practically speaking, the devices plug into a vehicle’s diagnostics to record information from the engine control module. Data will typically look at RPM, fuel consumption, torque — how much that engine is being worked. “Basic stuff about the engine to understand what’s happening,” Mallia said.
Controllers communicate
FleetCarma systems will flag typical diagnostic trouble codes such as “check engine” but are also designed to monitor controller area network (CAN) signals.
“The controllers on the vehicles talk to each other,” Mallia explained. “Our devices listen to that communication, record that data, and then translate it into something meaningful for a fleet manager.”
This can include time spent idling and the amount of fuel consumed while idling. “For a bucket truck in a utility application, we’d look at that metric and then model if they had an electric power take-off system rather than a conventional system powered by the diesel engine — and what the environmental and economic benefits would be of investing in a system like that.”
While fuel savings are key, there are also potential maintenance benefits. “If you’re running engines less or you get into hybridized applications where there’s regenerative braking benefits, we would quantify that, determine if you might have much less brake wear, and translate that into maintenance savings,” Mallia said.
— Saul Chernos
Saul Chernos is a freelance writer based in Toronto.