All Articles

There ia reasonable argument to suggest the trucking industry is too competitive to be able to actually reach the zero emission goals which the government has set out for our industry into the future.

The whole trucking world is extremely competitive. In an fiercely competitive environment like this, one of the issues is the constant and ongoing rounds of cost cutting and downward pressure on rates.

These mean that most businesses in the trucking industry will go for the low cost option first, simply because the profit margin on any work they’re doing is not high enough to enable the kind of investment decisions on new equipment required to actually make the long term and costly transition across to zero carbon possible.

Most decisions made within a trucking industry are informed by the fact that many operations within the trucking industry work on extremely tight margins, the return on capital which is normal in road transport would not be acceptable in most other industries.

As a result, there is a lot of short-termism going on and very little, very long term thinking happening in the boardrooms and the offices of people running trucking fleets. 

Quite often anyone managing a trucking fleet decision making will be a matter of lurching from one short term crisis to the next. Needing to solve problems this week, today, in the next two hours. In that sort of environment it is not easy to start concentrating on something in the far distance, as far away as 2050.

What this means is that we are not going to be able to move very effectively in the right direction, in the direction which the powers that be want the trucking industry to move.

There is a solution to this issue, but that would involve government intervention. Because of the short term nature of our industry, it is going to need government action to actually make effective changes in the way that trucking industry operates in order to achieve zero carbon. 

How the government chooses to incentivise the industry can be its own choice. The most effective avenue would be to give tax breaks on low carbon investment or use the tax system to penalise non zero carbon investment. 

The whole industry is also going to need the government to actually demonstrate that there will be sufficient resources for a future trucking industry, in terms of charging infrastructure available in order to charge the number of trucks required. Plus, we will also need the guarantee of a reliable and stable, and not too expensive, supply of hydrogen also available and supplied through an infrastructure which the trucking industry could practically use.

Otherwise, we could try and make road transport a less competitive industry?

 

For more stories like ‘Trucking is Too Competitive’ – see below

 

In the major design changes needed to create the 2023 Truck of the Year Australasia, an important aspect was including a global platform in the K220 from Kenworth.

“Our trademark over the years has been about what we do in Australia and it’s all about Australia, but the reality is the trucks are getting more capable, but with that capability comes more complexity and how we interact with global suppliers and the resources and investment to do that is large,” says Brad May, Paccar Australia Chief Engineer. “As an engineering function we walk hand in hand with both Paccar in North America and DAF in Europe. From a global perspective, Paccar is focused on doing things right, investing in the right way, and not having its different divisions pulling in different directions. 

“We are very proud of what we do here as far as creating configurations and specifics that relate to the trucks for this market. We’re equally proud to say that we are very much keyed into a major global player, and that brings benefits.”

Paccar, as a whole, has a core electronic architecture, which has been developed globally. Paccar, in Australia, goes through a process of adaptation for the needs of the market here. The basic architecture is very similar in a Kenworth in the US and the DAF in Europe.

Ross Cureton, Director of Product Planning – PACCAR Australia.

“For example, the active steps on our K220, we rolled the functionality required to control that into the electrical architecture rather than having a standalone separate module,” says Ross Cureton, Director of Product Planning – PACCAR Australia. “That’s something that doesn’t feature on any Paccar product anywhere in the world.

“Software particularly is not something you do in a bubble in Australia. It’s always connected to Paccar US or to DAF, or to Cummins or other major supplier teams. When I started leading projects here, an electrical system was probably 20 per cent of the project. Now it’s verging on 70 or more per cent.

“You can pile a bunch of tech into a truck, but it has to be what the customer needs and values to do their job. You can put the foundation electrical architecture, but that doesn’t mean you just pile every toy and trinket you can think of into the truck and that’s where we spend a lot of time thinking and considering those things very closely.”

It’s clear from the Kenworth product the company does not use gadgets as a marketing lever. New features and functionality are incorporated if they really help people do their job. As the truck industry evolves we see systems moving from being a luxury or a curiosity to being an imperative. One of the aspects of architecture may be something no-one is asking for at the beginning. However, in a few years’ time the function becomes something truck customers begin to ask for.

One example of this is the digital dash, which is in the K220. The driver or operator can choose to have the traditional dials and instrumentation on that screen, which was previously shown on the analogue version. However, it has the capability to display contextual information, which can’t be shown in an analogue way, which the operator may decide they need in five years’ time.

Brad May, Paccar Australia Chief Engineer

“Just because you can doesn’t mean to say you should,” says Brad. “You have to think about what problem you’re solving and what opportunity are you creating. Looking at the Australian market, at things like driver availability and the need to help them improve their performance, it’s been a great asset if you can have a driver interface that helps customers deal with that.”

The real meat of the design process took place during the long hard shutdowns that Melbourne suffered during the pandemic. Engineers used to rubbing shoulders each day and bouncing ideas around the office had to try and replicate that teamwork via online discussions with just a computer screen to talk to.

Luckily the teams have been working together for years and the relationships with the vital component suppliers are also long term. This enabled the collaborative environment needed in a situation like this to develop on the K220 project.

“Some of the things we found in our discussions with customers sharpened our focus, so when we talk about the new cab suspension we’ve developed for the truck, that was something that evolved during the development of the truck,” says Ross. “So we included it and it’s  locally manufactured and designed by us to suit our roads and our requirements, with input from customers and tested by us as well.”

That cab suspension is in a ‘controlled’ release at the moment, in certain applications. It’s getting some experience in the real world.

 

For more stories like ‘Including a Global Platform in the K220’ – see below

 

For a fleet that hauls up to 300,000 cartons of bananas a week out of north Queensland and has a monthly fuel bill of $3.5 million, powering into the future is obviously high on the agenda of Blenners Transport.

The transport industry has had a difficult few years, but has remained buoyant with demand for its services increasing. Now the need to combat climate change means the trucking industry will be with new technology.

Les Blennerhassett, head of the Tully-based family company he started in 1988 with wife Judy, realises that while diesel will dominate for a long time yet, he must also look closely at next generation power options.

Higher productivity vehicles such as 38-pallet B-doubles, achieved under PBS (Performance Based Standards) guidelines, are another priority for a company with massive involvement in the banana industry in north Queensland.

Blenners currently operates 185 Kenworths, around 100 of which are linehaul B-double and road train units with Cummins X15 Euro 5 power – a specification providing the high utilisation needed to move the tidal wave of bananas from north Queensland to Australia-wide markets.

More than 200 Cummins engines

The strong relationship with Cummins has seen more than 200 red engines specified by Blenners in Kenworths since 2008. 

Twenty-two road trains alone are dedicated to banana haulage across the country to Perth, WA. Overall, Blenners moves around 60 per cent of north Queensland bananas to the capital cities – a task that is carried out 52 weeks of the year since bananas are not seasonal. 

Bananas aren’t the only high volume fruit transported by Blenners from north Queensland. “We had to diversify our customer base in 2006 after Cyclone Larry destroyed most of the banana crop. We went from doing 110 loads a week to four loads,” Les Blennerhassett recalls.

Blenners this year transported more than 100 pallets of seedless lemons a day out of the Mareeba region on the Atherton Tablelands during the peak period, while thousands of pallets of mangoes and avocados will be moved during their peak.

With a monthly fuel bill totalling $3.5 million, any measure to improve fuel consumption just a fraction is looked at closely by the Blenners team.

The entirely new next generation 15-litre Cummins X15D, unveiled at the 2023 Brisbane Truck Show, will be the next major engine step for the fleet. Reports from field trials of a fuel consumption improvement of up to eight per cent over the current best from X15, obviously has huge appeal.

While the diesel truck engine still has a long life ahead of it, especially in Australia’s challenging operating environment, studying alternative powertrain technologies and their impact on carbon reduction is of interest to Les Blennerhassett.

 

For more stories like ‘Powering into the Future’ – see below