Source: www.howstuffworks.com

In 1977, the movie “Smokey and the Bandit” hit the theaters starring Burt Reynolds behind the wheel of his Pontiac Firebird, and Jerry Reed as a big-rig long-haul truck driver on a mission. The sports car sure has changed a lot since that movie. So has the tractor that Mr. Reed was driving, yet that trailer he was pulling over 30 years ago appears little different from the trailers we see on the highways today.

Sure there have been advancements — dry-van trailers today use more durable materials and are lighter and last longer than their predecessors. But the basic design approach has remained fairly static for a long time. Automobiles and other vehicles have benefited from advances in design to reduce wind resistance and drag. But what about the millions of 53-foot trailers that go up and down our nation’s highways? Where is the design innovation? What’s being done to turn the physics of fuel-hogging wind resistance into an advantage that increases fuel efficiency?

The time to get creative is now — especially with the Obama Administration’s new standards for heavy truck fuel efficiency and emissions coming on stream. Under these regulations, tractor-trailer rigs will have to reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent by the 2018 truck model year. While it remains important to continually advance fuel efficiency through better design of tractors, drive trains and diesel engines, we’re missing a huge opportunity with trailers. Further, we can’t rely on the same methodologies, design approaches and technologies to meet this goal.

Other industries can provide lessons that the trucking industry can apply to increase fuel efficiency, especially with 53-foot trailers, the most prevalent in the industry. For example, in the aerospace industry, new aircraft are generally 20 percent more fuel efficient than the older aircraft they are replacing. At SmartTruck we are applying these same aerospace engineering techniques and experience, with resources from NASA and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratories, to this opportunity.

With help from the massive computing power of Oak Ridge’s Cray XT5 “Jaguar” supercomputing system, we’ve examined and tested new designs and approaches to controlling airflow with tractors and trailers. Using sophisticated aerodynamic modeling, we’ve been able to study the incredibly complex dynamics of air flow around, over and through tractor-trailers. We’ve learned how we can better manipulate airflow to the overall tractor-trailer’s fuel efficiency advantage. Our research has determined that uniquely designed, high-tech “fairings” installed under trailers would, in effect, “use” the airflow experienced by a trailer in motion, to help “move” the truck instead of being a source of resistance. Initial computer-modeled studies and subsequent testing project that this motorsports-inspired “UnderTray” system has the potential to improve tractor-trailer highway fuel efficiency by more than 11 percent.

Through the use of new strategies and taking a broad look at what’s working for other industries, we’re coming up with different solutions — those that focus beyond refinements to the tractor to total vehicle efficiency. To make true advances we need solutions that will yield different results — results we need to move the fuel efficiency needle.

Mitch Greenberg, president of SmartTruck, was formerly head of the EPA’s SmartWay Transport program.  SmartTruck is a privately held start-up company which is applying research, expertise and experience in airflow dynamics from the motorsports and aerospace industries to develop advanced designs and specialized equipment to improve fuel efficiency of heavy-duty tractor-trailers.  Con-way Truckload is working with SmartTruck to bring real-world experience to the research, and is pilot-testing SmartTruck’s UnderTray airflow management system on 300 of its trailers. The pilot test will provide data to validate potential fuel savings projections, and help SmartTruck improve and refine its system designs through actual operating environment feedback.

www.fleetowner.com

If you are looking for news from Washington that will brighten your day, please stop reading now!

Since the 1950s when legislation was enacted to build the Interstate Highway System, Congress has passed, and the President has signed into law, a renewal of the federal commitment to surface transportation infrastructure every few years. While initially dedicated to highways and funded by fuel taxes through the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), federal aid to transit was added to the mix about 30 years ago. This was and is justified by the need to reduce congestion on our roads, particularly in urban areas.

Of course, each renewal of these programs triggered vigorous debates about issues such as raising fuel taxes, equitable distribution of funding among the states and numerous other issues. But the need for a robust federal program to build and maintain a vast national road system was virtually universally recognized. We have had a consensus among those who govern us that interstate commerce, international trade and the right of Americans to have individual mobility over long distances all made such a program essential.

Furthermore, until the end of 2008, the consensus seemed to be strengthening. Two commissions created by Congress in the last surface transportation reauthorization bill focused on the need to find additional funding to expand our highway system and related facilities. While there was disagreement about where to find the money (i.e., higher fuel taxes, or a vehicle miles traveled tax or private investment or some mixture of the three), there was recognition that a projected doubling of freight over the next 20 years would overwhelm our existing system. There was also a consensus that, despite the advertising campaigns of the Class I freight railroads, trucks would have to continue to carry the vast majority of freight.

No more.

The last surface transportation reauthorization bill expired on Sept. 30, 2009. The Obama Administration announced in its earliest days that it opposed any fuel tax increase. Furthermore, the Administration not only hasn’t proposed an alternative source of funding, it hasn’t even sent Congress a request for specific legislation provisions. So the country is limping along with periodic short-term extensions of the old legislation. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee became so frustrated with the Administration that it passed a draft bill, but with no numbers in it!

Worse still, because of the recession and other factors, the HTF has virtually collapsed.  Over the last two years, Congress has transferred more than $70 billion to highway and transit programs from general revenues and deficit financing. The majority of this money was included, on a one-time only basis, in the so-called “stimulus” bill. Fuel taxes dedicated to the HTF can no longer support current highway and transit programs, much less any expansion. The whole concept of users paying into a trust fund that covers federal surface transportation programs is being undermined.

But the Administration and Congress have poured money into another aspect of surface transportation. Using deficit financing, over the last year and a half the federal government has appropriated more than $10 billion into our rail system, for both passenger and freight service (over 80 percent has gone to “high-speed” intercity passenger service). While most of these dollars have not yet been spent, the U.S. Department of Transportation has been vigorously making grant announcements.

Thus, even though Congress hasn’t passed new surface transportation legislation authorizing such a radical policy change, it is well under way.

If you believe that America needs a strong, growing freight transportation infrastructure system as a key element in a healthy economy, and that trucking must continue to play a vital role in that system, then it really is time to let your senators and house members know.  If they don’t hear from you, they aren’t likely to straighten this out. The consequences for us and for our children will be an America ever less able to compete.

Jim Burnley is a partner in the Washington office of Venable LLP, and is widely recognized as one of the nation's foremost authorities on transportation law and policy

Source: www.boston.com

With major league spring training just around the corner, many armchair fantasy baseball fanatics are evaluating their favorite players and starting to draft their rosters. But rather than fantasize about who will have the lowest ERA, hit the most homeruns or have the best on-base percentage, let’s think about a different game: America’s economic recovery in 2010 and beyond. The lineup card for this game plan focuses on creating scoring opportunities early and often with job creation, housing, energy, infrastructure, anti-terrorism, education and health care.

All great baseball teams have excellent scouts and extensive scouting reports that identify the key issues required to defeat the opposition. America is blessed with several visionary “scouts,” among them: Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel III and columnist Thomas Friedman. We also have the advantage of information-packed “scouting reports” from organizations like the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Ernst & Young and the Urban Land Institute. Collectively, these focus on the need to rebuild America’s transportation infrastructure, emphasizing the scope of the project ($750 billion over 5 years) and, most importantly, the millions of direct and indirect jobs that would be created.

Swift and proper execution of this strategy to invest massively in America’s transportation infrastructure in the “early innings” will lay the foundation for a winning game strategy. Job creation, the key that unlocks the plan, will lift incomes which in turn will be used to lift consumption, pay existing mortgages and purchase new homes. This will reduce and eventually eliminate banks’ bad loans and allow them to repair their balance sheets and begin lending to small businesses which will create more jobs.

However, the infrastructure rebuilding must be funded without adding more national debt. And here, in the “middle innings,” we get the key homerun that puts America on the path to certain victory: a 75 cent-per-gallon federal fuel tax increase pegged to the price of oil so when oil goes down the tax goes up and when oil goes up the tax goes down.

This is the turning point in the “game” because it will be used to establish a consistent fixed price for fuel. This will give investors in alternative energy as well as motor vehicles a more stable benchmark for fuel, insulated from OPEC pricing gyrations, against which they can project their profitability which will stimulate investment in nuclear, wind and solar energy and promote competition for fuel efficient motor vehicles. All this activity will create additional jobs.

As investment in improved transportation infrastructure, diversified energy resources and fuel efficient vehicles begins to pay dividends, demand for oil will peak and then decline producing two desirable outcomes: the price of oil will drop which will reduce significantly funds for terrorist activities and the need for cap and trade taxes will be pointless.

This “game plan”, to invest in infrastructure, to create jobs, funded by a fuel tax that will attract investment in alternative energy, will stimulate the economy and rebuild America’s balance sheet so that in the “late innings” the increased tax revenues generated by the stimulated activity will be the “closer” to fixing education and health care.

To transform this “game plan” from fantasy to reality, we need to rise from our comfortable armchairs and demand that our Congressmen lead our country boldly and courageously by putting our country’s needs, not partisan politics, first. With that type of leadership, America will be the “World Series” champion in the 21^st century.

John A. Simourian is Chairman of Needham, Mass.-based Lily Transportation Corp., which opened for business in 1958 and today provides dedicated contract carriage systems and services for customers throughout the United States. John also is a lifelong Red Sox fan and fervently believes that the 2010 season will bring another American League pennant and World Series Championship to the Red Sox Nation.