Commercial truck buyers look to smaller, less powerful equipment

Work truck owners like power. Not flashy power like the ability to go zero to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. Real power. The power to lift utility workers 50ft into the air, the power to haul 10 tons of goods around town, the power to run jackhammers and pneumatic drills on construction sites.

But another P-word may be replacing power as the No. 1 requirement in trucks – precision.

Truck and equipment makers at the Association for the Work Truck Industry (NTEA)’s Work Truck Show 2014 say attitudes are shifting. In the past, the answer to almost every problem was more power. If you needed to carry 10,000 lb of cargo, buy a truck rated for 15,000 lb. Lately, however, those oversized orders have diminished. Work truck fleet operators are looking to downsize to cut vehicle purchase costs, lower fuel bills, and design fleets in which every vehicle is exactly the right size for its task.

“They’re doing more with Class 5 and Class 6 trucks because they don’t want to pay for a Class 7,” says Jeff King, marketing manager for Parker-Hannifin’s Chelsea division, a company that makes power take-offs (PTOs) that divert truck engine power to auxiliary equipment such as hydraulic pumps on refuse haulers. “Everybody is so cost sensitive that they’re going to use the smallest truck possible.”

King says Chelsea is getting more orders from companies hoping to use Ford F-250 and F-350 trucks for tasks that formerly required F-550s. To meet those needs, his company has developed PTOs for Ford’s six-speed truck transmission.
 

Downsizing work trucks

The cost savings from downsizing can be tremendous. Lighter vehicles tend to cost significantly less than larger ones; they use less fuel; and if companies can downsize enough, they won’t need to hire drivers with commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) to operate their fleets. Using non-CDL drivers can offer huge cost savings in wages, King says.

Downsizing isn’t always easy. Fleet operators need to study exactly what they want to do with their trucks before ordering lighter equipment or costs could rise. For example, they could end up sending two small trucks to do what one heavier vehicle could do.

Jonathan Schultz, Guardian product manager for Johnson Refrigerated Truck Bodies, says he’s gotten some specification requests that are simply impossible to fill. If a company wants a lighter-duty truck but still demands heavy insulation along with a high capacity cooling system, the resulting vehicle wouldn’t have any weight capacity left for cargo.

“Sometimes, the specs we get just aren’t achievable,” Schultz says. “We’ve worked with a lot of our customers on really understanding what they need.”

Again, the keyword becomes precision. Fleet managers need to determine how much weight their vehicles really need to carry. Can a plumber get by with five replacement toilets on his truck instead of 10? Or in Schultz’ case, is it worth it for an ice cream distributor to load a few extra tubs of vanilla in hope of picking up extra sales in the field? Will that extra revenue justify a heavier, more expensive vehicle?
 

Every pound counts

Schultz says Johnson is trying to give customers more flexibility by using lighter materials and higher-tech refrigeration equipment – anything to keep truck body and cooling system weight down, leaving more capacity for cargo.

“Lightweight is the key. Everyone wants a smaller chassis, a smaller body, less weight, and better fuel economy,” Schultz says.

With lighter trucks, every pound of equipment is critical, so fleet managers are looking for smaller, lighter truck-mounted tools. Gregory Kokot, president of truck-mounted air-compressor manufacturer Vanair, says his company developed its small Viper Diesel specifically for companies that need a lightweight product. In addition to being more fuel efficient than running a compressor off engine power, he says independently powered units such as the Viper help work crews stay compliant with regulations in states that don’t allow trucks to idle on job sites.

“You don’t want overcapacity in systems anymore,” Kokot says. “People are looking to reduce operating costs, and they don’t want to pay for more power than they need for a job.”

The Viper Diesel offers enough power to run one jackhammer at a time. Crews had been able to run two or three tools using the truck’s engine for power, but fuel use was much higher.

“Most crews are only running one jackhammer at a time anyway, so that’s the right power level for us,” Kokot states.
 

Industry opportunities

The push to maximize the use of lighter, smaller trucks is creating unique opportunities for the companies that make those vehicles. At the show, Mitsubishi Fuso unveiled its FE130 medium-duty truck, a vehicle designed to work as a tow truck or delivery vehicle. With a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 13,200 lb, the FE130 can carry 700 lb more than the FE125 it replaces.

But Mitsubishi Fuso product and applications manager W. Leighton Good says the company didn’t have to upgrade the powertrain or chassis to offer the higher weight rating. It simply had to acknowledge that owners already had the capability to add more weight to the truck.

“The FE125 used about 82% of the weight tolerances of its axles. The FE130 gets up to about 87%,” Good says.

The company remapped the transmission shift points so drivers who choose to carry more weight will get more power in lower gears, but those software changes did not increase the truck’s weight rating.

Good says the higher numbers better reflect what fleet owners want – specific weight ratings that push the capabilities of lighter-weight equipment without exceeding them.

Chelsea’s King says heavier trucks will continue to hold a large portion of the work truck world. For many jobs, more power is still the right choice. But even there, it will be a matter of choosing exactly how much more power. Between fuel costs, federal regulations, and corporate emissions targets, every pound of weight and every drop of fuel has to be justified.

Many of King’s customers use routing and mapping software to minimize fuel usage and idling, cutting costs by getting work crews to jobs as efficiently as possible.

“Anything that burns fuel without generating revenue is under review,” King says. “They’re avoiding left turns if they can.”

Chelsea-Parker
www.parker.com/chelsea

Johnson Refrigerated Truck Bodies
www.johnsontruckbodies.com

Vanair Manufacturing Inc.
www.vanair.com

Mitsubishi Fuso Truck of America Inc.
www.mitfuso.com

About the author: Robert Schoenberger is the editor of TMV and can be reached at 330.523.5381 or rschoenberger@gie.net.