Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Climate Change and Environmental Issues "Greener" Trucking - Or Something Else ?

---No need. I am already keenly aware of this.
That doesn't change the fact that newer technology is emerging.
It also doesn't change the odd feeling I get whenever I wonder about the fact that some industries have accepted the inevitable current that moves developments forward, some embrace it and some remain strangely hostile to change of any kind.


And the bottom line is, it does not matter if those costs get passed along to the consumer due to improvements in technology or due to wildly fluctuating fuel prices, or due to the march of technology through the marketplace.

Or....? DOES IT MATTER?

Hmmmmmm....turns out it does matter a great deal and here's why:

Those fuel prices don't "fluctuate" so much as they are really just getting higher and higher and higher all the time.

Truckers moving into better technology is a whole lot different than truckers getting soaked for higher fuel prices.

In the former, the cost of the higher priced fuel gets passed on to the consumer, forever!

In the latter, the technology eventually becomes cheaper as it gradually gains traction in the marketplace. It's no different than those five thousand dollar DVD burners which eventually turn into $29.95 DVD burners.

Yes, the very first DVD burners DID cost five grand, and yes they can now be had as cheap as $29.95.

And someone actually BOUGHT those original five thousand dollar gems, they were the ones who could afford to become early adopters. Someone ALWAYS becomes the first kid on their block.
A lot of them get burned pretty bad, too.

The very first BetaMax VCR could only record ONE hour, and it cost $3500 bucks. Shortly after, Sony released Beta II machines, which also cost a couple of grand but they could record TWO hours.

So the folks who all rushed out and bought the very first Beta VCR's got burned and burned good. 3500 smackers was a lotta money in 1970's money.

And when the price of the burners and the blank discs went down enough, more people could get in the game and offer services at affordable rates.

This ain't no different Mechie ole chum. Someone WILL rush out and buy that very first hi tech wheelmotor equipped, diesel electric truck with the air assisted motor takeoff and braking technology...or something like it.

And then eventually some company like Zytec will introduce modular bolt on assemblies which almost any truck will be able to incorporate and eventually a whole lotta truckers will decide that they like getting fifteen or even twenty miles per gallon.

NOTE: Zytec is already doing just that, only they haven't quite yet moved into the commercial long haul trucking industry...YET.

They're still experimenting with commercial delivery customers, like UPS. Hmmmmm, that oughta generate some market pressure!

The point I am making is directly germaine to what you're hinting at Mech.

The point I am making is that it's coming, whether the indie wildcatters like it or not, it's coming and the big commercial outfits which can afford to jump on first are going to do just that, and there is nothing that will change that, just like there is nothing I CAN DO to change the fact that a couple of uppity large outfits will be able to afford to move into the new and exciting ALEXA CAMERA a whole lot sooner than I will be able to, and it kills me that I'll just have to rent one when the client pay grade warrants it. I won't be taking that sweet Alexa home for my very own for a while yet.

It's not fair but that's life in the Big Chitty.
And I will just have to make do with a cheaper imitation of the Alexa for now, the really nifty Sony NEX-FS100U instead.

I should actually feel sorry for the poor manufacturers who now have to sell those DVD burners for $29.95 in order to compete.
I bet they'd love to keep getting five grand each.

It is ebb and flow, it is tidal gravity, to quote Arthur Jensen.

The one I am using right now, to read Capitol Hill Blue?
Oh hell no. This is cobbled together from the remnants of an old Dell SC420 server that a friend gave to me, and some parts I had lying around. It cost me the price of the newer RAM, hard drives and a craptastic video card plus the time spent modding the slot so it would accept said video card.

The one I use to edit video however...that one only gets turned on if I am getting paid, for the most part.
That's my main tool, my "axe" and I haven't really thought about how much I have tied up in it down the last dime but I suspect I probably have at least 25 thousand invested and it's getting obsolete by the second right now.

It's a multi processor server, it has a very large hi speed RAID array with fiber channel, gobs of RAM, two blazing video display cards, a MOTU audio video analog/digital IO unit, another Kona I/O, and GOD KNOWS how much in software.

And there's the color correction peripherals, there's just a ton of crap connected to that machine. It looks like a mess of industrial junk but it's a flamethrower.

I also have a cheapo used Macbook...unlike the myth claims, not ALL film and video professionals use a Mac.

I've been an AVID shop forever*, and now that Apple screwed everyone over with the latest "Final Cut Pro X" I am so relieved I didn't invest much in the Apple gear. Because of Apple's higher prices, a comparable system to the one I have would have set me back well over 60 thousand dollars.

*(I also use and LOVE Sony Vegas Pro, in fact I use it maybe more than AVID)

Video gear has dropped in price a ridiculous amount, Mech.
But I still have more invested anyway, even now, than the average over the road trucker.

There's cameras (I currently own FOUR) lights of all kinds and sizes, from a tiny battery operated LED onboard camera light to the monster 5K sitting in my garage, 2K's, 1K's, all the various spots and redheads, broads, scrims, filters, gobos, light stands, reflectors, flags, arms...

Then there's the audio rack and all the audio gear.
Then there's all the craptastic camera support gear, gliders, dolly, track, shoulder rig adapters, and a lot of odds and ends that come in handy.

In 1994 the Northridge Earthquake wiped out my entire small post production facility. Thanks to loopholes, Allstate managed to get away with not covering a lot of it.

I lost well over $350 thousand dollars worth of gear in that quake. I got back about two cents on the dollar.

So if you're asking if I have as much invested in my video gear as a trucker has invested in his rig, the answer is, I actually have MORE, and at one time I had WAY WAY WAY MORE invested.

And if I was able to afford an ALEXA, or something equivalent, I'd have even more invested. Just the bare ALEXA camera body (no lens included) starts at around 60 thousand.

I'm a SMALL FRY in the field, an award winning small fry, but a small fry nonetheless, and I have a lot more invested.

Maybe I should go into trucking instead!

It's probably going to BE the Wal-Marts of the world that start the ball rolling toward higher fuel efficiency in the trucking world. They have the most skin in the game all told.

But that's the way it always works out. It's never been any different in fact.

That's why I don't understand the resistance to change.

If I was resistant to change I'd be out of business.
I can't tell you how many Craigslist ads I run across that have some guy selling off his entire collection of old analog TV gear, and a lot of it might be beautiful stuff too.

They always say something about how everything must go because they're getting out of the business. And a lot of the time the prices are unrealistic, a twelve year old standard definition ENG camcorder with standard def lenses going for almost the price of a brand new HD rig, and if you contact the guy they insist the stuff is state of the art.

No it isn't....it's a BOAT ANCHOR!

They don't listen. And most of em won't part the stuff out either. I'd like to grab that sweet fluid head tripod he has the camera attached to, but he thinks he's gonna sell the whole outfit.

Even the folks who still have a handful of clients asking for delivery in standard definition are shooting and editing in HD and then dubbing it over to standard def now.

It helps a lot and makes the standard def stuff look damn good for what it is.

Sorry but it's no different in any industry Mech, that's the point I am attempting to make here.

And the whole point of Melody's article is flat out unrealistic, starting with the idealized image of the "tall lean, steely eyed" rugged individual commanding his shiny steed.

Yeah yeah yeah, there's a few good looking trucker guys out there I'm sure...in between the three and four hundred pounders who wolf down the greasy fare found at most truck stops.

And then there's a certain number of these:



I'm not implying that most truckers are ignorant backwater hillbillies but I do see a few of em from time to time in my rearview mirror, climbing up my back.

I can just hear them now, cursing about the "goddurn four wheeler" that done got in their way while they wuz jammin gears.

But it's unrealistic to imagine that all of them are that way just like it's unrealistic to imagine that the horrible President Obama is taking aim at the poor put upon independent truck driver with his socialistic liberal talking points.

Like I said, there is no excuse for us still having a trucking industry that averages around five to seven miles per gallon anymore. At any rate, there's no excuse for us to settle for it if the technology is going to hit the streets soon anyway, and pretty soon it's going to become a foregone conclusion.

The buggy whip went away and so will the old trucks.

Kinda of a neat and tight analogy - until you realize a "DVD burner" or a "Betamax" - isn't a truck required to haul 80K lbs of freight uphill and down at acceptable traffic speeds. Nor are trucks "low material input" devices very responsive to the "economy of scale" in manufacture. Nor are they anywhere as cheap as a couple of grands' worth of electronic goobers intended to amuse some hobbyist/snob either.

Trucks are serious six digit/unit capital investments with a finite life-span and a (increasingly) steep depreciation curve. (The proposed legislation cited makes that curve a cliff - at least to the Owner-Operator Community !) All current generation OTR/heavy haul trucks are "custom-built" in that the purchaser specifies their desired combinations of engine/transmission/rears/suspension, cab and interior appointments from a menu offered by the manufacturer.

Unfortunaltely, unlike the "electronic explosion", they're ain't no "free lunch" in the trucking business ! The amount of energy it takes to drive a given GVW up a specified grade is known. Likewise the "end to end efficiency" of the various engine/transmission/rear drives. Even the diameter/width of the tires figures into these equations. And, most importantly, weight. Every pound of "tare weight" not only detracts from the truck/trailer payload but increases fuel burn.

All of these are Newtonian absolutes. Can't be by-passed, ignored, or legislated out of existence. It takes one horsepower to lift 660 lbs (reckoned in a 1-G field) 1 ft in one second. Discovering a way to "bypass" Newtonian physics we all live with daily would make the discoverer extremely rich - or dead - in short order. >Mech

Well, $25K is "chump change" in the truck lot. (And if the EPA/OA/ATA gets their way it probably won't even be "pitchin' money" !)

As for the rest of your inventory litany, its all Greek to me !

OTOH, a claimed $350K depreciative capital investment against what sort of ROI ? One very real reason I'm not posting from "OTR" is I couldn't make the "cost/return" numbers come out better than 10% on a depreciating "asset". >Mech

Sounds like if a fella wants to be an Independent Trucker he better pretty much be independently wealthy. Anyone who considers $25K "chump change" and needs, say $125K just to make a run from Tucson to Tucumcari to make a Grand or so, less fuel and insurance. Then maybe he better consider gettin' hisself a job driving for someone who can afford the overhead.
Not every cowboy gets to own the ranch.

lt,

You ever worked around trucks - or truckers ? Or air motors ? I have !

All "seems simple"; at least until fantasy meets reality. Your "compressed gas/regeneration" proposition works great so long as you have an "ideal gas". In the world you aren't. Instead of dry 59'F clean air your gadgets are going to have to eat wet, dirty hot/cold air at operating temperatures from -50'F to 125'F. Filters are going to plug, water is going to accumulate along with abrasive dirt. Expansion of that compressed gas in the air motors is going to cause "freezing problems" - not to mention the noise factor.

And all of this gimcrackery adds tare weight and complexity not "absorbed" by installing a smaller (and assumed lighter) main motor !

Same goes for all the other "gee-whiz" truck improvement propositions I've heard proposed over the years. If any had any worthwhile validity the major mfgs would be all over them like flies on a warm turd. They aren't. And not because its some "nefarious plot" either ! These are hard-headed businessmen and engineers with decades of experience in the trucking business. They know what works, and more importantly, won't ! >Mech

Gentlemen:

A lot of what's being bandied about on this thread is more deserving of a thread of its own. Anyone care to start one ? Call it, say, "Improving the Semi-truck" ? What say you ? >Mech

Four pages of discussion about the plight of the poor trucker, but nary a word about all those folks who used to work on the nation's railroads who now are out of work because the trucking industry destroyed their jobs. Not to mention the diversion of funding from railroad infrastructure to roads, highways, traffic enforcement, etc. If we still had a viable rail system, "independent truckers" would be the guy in the panel truck who hauls stuff from the railway depot to the local warehouse or store and gets to spend evenings and weekends at home with her family instead of out there belching carbon emissions all over the country.