Special Report: The Future of Freight
High diesel prices, evolving lanes likely to affect equipment choices
Experts say that trucks in the future will be larger, cleaner, greener, safer and more technologically advanced than even the most far-fetched concept truck on display today. Integrated aerodynamics will be a way of life. Alternative fuels will be used daily.
Experts agree that these changes are coming. The only disagreement seems to be how fast they will occur.
Micro trucks and alt-fuels
The most immediate factor driving commercial vehicle change is the price of fuel. “Our quest for infinite growth is now starting to clash with the fact that oil is a finite resource,” says Sandeep Kar, global director, commercial vehicle research for Frost & Sullivan, a research group.
“When North America and Europe bounce back and the economy picks up, you can very well imagine what’s going to happen to oil prices,” Kar says.
Continually rising oil prices will affect equipment and vehicle spec’ing in a variety of ways. Kar doesn’t feel that these changes will affect long-haul over-the-road fleets as dramatically as medium- and light-duty truck fleets.
In a world of escalating fuel prices, the advent of larger trucks flies in the face of conventional wisdom. More logical is a migration to medium- and light-duty commercial vehicles for fleets engaged in pickup-and-delivery applications in increasingly compact urban “mega-cities.”
Some fleets currently engaged strictly in long-haul or regional hauls may branch out into urban delivery to meet the needs of their customers because of the development of “ring cities” – urban centers typically arranged in three ringed zones that grow increasingly congested further into them.
In this scenario, mega-trucks would deliver containers to warehouses located in the outer ring. Goods then would be transported to their final destination in the city by increasingly smaller trucks – down to “mini-trucks” that serve crowded downtown areas.
