Dropping equipment weight can boost revenue, increase utilization, save fuel or just offset heavier components. How do you weigh the benefits?

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Ron Szapacs, maintenance specialist for power vehicles with Air Products, has done the math: According to his calculations, North American Class 8 tractor-trailers will have gained about 2,000 pounds from before the advent of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s phased emissions regulations in 2003 through introduction of the 2010 engines. Estimates for 2010 tractors equipped with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) emissions technology vary, but it would appear that 350 to 400 pounds of that 2,000 pounds is coming next year.

Bruce Stockton, Con-Way Truckload’s vice president of maintenance and asset management, says his company has been testing a tractor retrofitted with SCR components. “It’s got a 30-gallon DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) tank, and we’re getting improved fuel economy out of the vehicle,” Stockton says. “But it did gain 1,000 pounds in component weight compared to its weight before it was retrofitted.”

For bulk applications, weight always has been a priority as every pound you take off the empty truck is a potential pound of revenue. But even dry and refrigerated van fleet owners who are paid on a per-mile basis rather than per pound may see value in saving weight.

Carrying more freight per load – especially in a dense lane – might give carriers a competitive edge in attracting and retaining customers. That is the approach Springfield, Mo.-based O&S Trucking has taken with an initiative called the MegaTruck, which is a low-weight tractor-trailer spec the company is beginning to offer selected customers based on volume and freight lane density.

Many van carriers see little advantage to investing in higher payloads since the logical consequence is fewer loads. That’s an outdated mindset, says Rick Johnson, chief operating officer for O&S Trucking. If you don’t compete on value – as with the MegaTruck initiative – you will just be competing on price anyway and, therefore, give up margin. (For more on O&S Trucking’s MegaTruck initiative, see “Innovators,” page 39.)

Competitive necessity is the value proposition at Napa, Calif.-based Biagi Bros., which operates more than 300 tractors and more than 700 trailers. Many Biagi Bros. customers are pushing for ever-heavier loads, says Gregg Stumbaugh, corporate equipment director.
“It’s all predicated by the demands of our customers,” Stumbaugh says. “They want to maximize the amount of product coming out of the brewery or winery.”

Some shippers insist on 50,000-pound loads and are pushing for 51,000 pounds, Stumbaugh says. So far, Biagi Bros. has been able to get the job done focusing almost exclusively on the tractor by using short, setback- axle daycabs with single exhausts, single fuel tanks and 13-liter engines, he says. Stumbaugh also is testing a few tractors with wide-base single tires. But the weight-loss challenge, which began before the 2002 round of emissions regulations, continues and soon will move to the trailers.