If you have been employed at larger companies, it’s more than likely you have been in a training class on writing mission statements. Everything has a purpose. Companies, projects, people, etc. all need to set goals and have a vision.
There are some key elements to a mission statement. It should define your purpose, reinforce your core values, have some element of measurement, be concise and clear, define stakeholders and, to varying degrees, it should be challenging. Or more simply, the five Ws plus H—who, what, when, where, why and how.
In April 2009, a visionary group of some 40 manufacturers, industry consultants, non-profit advocacy groups, government regulators and researcher met to figure out what trucking needed to be more efficient. The event was classified as a Transformational Trucking Charette hosted by RMI. Copilot defines charette as, “A meeting in which all stakeholders in a project attempt to resolve conflicts and map solutions.”
That august group determined that a significant challenge to fleet improvement was a lack of credible, unbiased, technical information about trucking efficiency. The trucking industry was flooded with misinformation, half-truths, hype, and valid research in volume, so much so that fleets couldn’t easily sort the $h1t from Shinola. Someone described the situation in the trucking industry as disconnected, entangled, costly, entrenched, and conservative.
If you have trouble remembering trucking in 2009, RMI published a short overview citing many of the stakeholders, including even one of my trucking aerodynamics white papers from when I was at Peterbilt.
What came out of the charette was a recognition that an entity needed to be formed with the express purpose of providing concise, credible, unbiased data on trucking technologies. In 2009, event videos were still fairly rare, but someone had the foresight to capture Don Baldwin’s summary of the need for and objectives of that entity that became the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE).
RMI summarized the goal as “To establish a trustworthy ‘brand’ and to offer credible technology standards and metrics.” The work [of NACFE] is to “leverage studies from testing agencies and laboratories…collect marketing and user data and share it with technology developers to guide the innovation of more efficient systems and accelerate broader market adoption.”
Another attendee stated, “[NACFE needed to be] centered on credible, quantified information on truck technology. A non-profit council could be established to deliver publicly accessible technology data in order to stimulate the adoption of efficient vehicles and vehicle components."
A key element of the 2009 charette and subsequent meetings was that NACFE should have a goal of doubling freight efficiency.
In my prior life at an OEM, I was actively engaged with the SuperTruck team, which had a requirement to establish baseline Model Year 2009 performance and specifications against which the SuperTruck prototype would be measured. That baseline was to be measured from a real, aerodynamic sleeper truck configured as major fleets in 2009 were ordering them. An accurately represented commercial route nearly 500 miles long was developed and precise measurements were done looking at performance over a driver’s single shift, a 24-hour period and a week of real-world operation so that it represented actual operations complete with overnighting.
All of the 2009 DOE SuperTruck OEM teams made similar efforts to establish baseline MY2009 vehicles. The conclusion was that MPGs in the range of 6 to 6.5 were typical. Less aerodynamic trucks also were also investigated, and, as expected, had lower fuel economy.
In 2017, NACFE’s Run On Less demonstration showed that recent OEM tractors driven well by good drivers could achieve more than 10 MPG in commercial long-haul Class 8 operations. In 2025, NACFE’s Run On Less – Messy Middle showed that modern Class 8 diesel trucks could get 10 to 12 MPG in real-world commercial operations.
If I’m not mistaken, 2 X 6 = 12. That is double what was typical in 2009 when NACFE was formed.
The last 16 years have seen tremendous growth in the capability of diesel trucks. Numbers that were considered unachievable prior to 2009 have repeatedly been met and exceeded. In 2009, a truck exceeding 11 MPG would have been accused of hauling ping pong balls downhill, and that would probably have been an accurate assessment. But in 2025, real diesel trucks are achieving these fuel economy numbers with real commercial loads.
There is no argument that timing is everything. Certainly, the visionaries at the charette had the fortune of capitalizing on the start of massive technology changes. How much of those changes have been influenced by NACFE is open to debate, but clearly the mission outlined by that 2009 charette has been accomplished.
Or has it.
The clever wordsmithing and salesmanship in that 2009 NACFE mission conveniently left out the baseline to which doubling should be measured. The baseline also omitted stating that the number was limited to diesel.
Now 16 years later, NACFE Run On Less – Messy Middle has demonstrated four powertrain technologies in Class 8 long-haul freight — hydrogen fuel cell, battery electric, advanced diesel, and natural gas. The NACFE team is busy analyzing the data and working on multiple reports. NACFE has provided the dataset to the public and even invited third parties to bring their own analyses of the data to a workshop.
Spoiler alert, all four powertrains did exceptionally well.
Yes, the trucking industry now has examples of 12 MPG diesel freight trucks, but even some electric trucks are exceeding 17 MPGde (diesel equivalent). We all know miles per gallon, but not everyone knows mi/kWh (miles per kilowatt-hour) or in the case of gaseous fuels, mi/kg (miles per kilogram) of hydrogen or natural gas.
The true mission of NACFE and the trucking industry is to constantly improve freight efficiency. This is what every fleet wants. Fleets want to carry freight at a lower cost and make more money. Some of the more forward thinking fleets also recognize that using less fuel inherently means lowering emissions.
It’s a trifecta.
There is no end to the need for NACFE’s mission — doubling freight efficiency starts anew every day.
