'Smart Trucks' generate big fuel savings

The freight industry is closely evaluating the benefits of ‘Smart Trucks’ which have made major inroads in terms of fuel efficiency, emission reduction and road safety in the mining and forestry industries. A number of new units are currently being manufactured and the idea is to extend their application beyond mining and forestry. The traditional approach of regulating heavy vehicles is very prescriptive, says Paul Nordengen of the CSIR. It’s about enforcing regulations that primarily limit the mass and dimensions of vehicles. “But while these regulations are easy to understand and enforce, the disadvantage is that the prescriptive approach does not always safeguard the dynamic performance of heavy vehicles adequately while travelling on the road,” says Nordengen. Road safety is a big issue in South Africa. A recent OECD study revealed that in South Africa fatalities associated with truck travel were about 10 times higher than Switzerland and five times higher than other OECD countries. “Accidents involving trucks result in huge traffic back-ups and contribute significantly to rising logistics costs," he said. “The Performance-Based Standards (PBS) approach, the basis of 'Smart Trucks,' looks at how a vehicle performs dynamically on the road when it does certain manoeuvres,” says Nordengen. “Rather than simply looking at the truck in terms of axle load and dimensions, you look at how different types of combinations will perform when they do lane change manoeuvres, and you set a performance limit and say the roll-over threshold of a truck must be a certain value,” he explained. The work being done in South Africa is based on research in the US and initiatives in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. “In South Africa it’s being run as a demonstration project,” said Nordengen. “We’re monitoring safety performance, road wear and fuel efficiency, and the stats from last year show 14% savings comparing the base line vehicle with the PBS vehicles, primarily in the timber and mining industries. Emissions are another important aspect, but from a South African point of view the safety improvement on the roads is a key issue,” he said. One of the prerequisites of being part of the PBS scheme is accreditation to the selfregulatory Road Transport Management System. “We have regular workshops and will be holding our 32nd in Nelspruit next month where we talk about the RTMS and the Smart Truck project.” And the objective is not only to establish how to operate PBS vehicles, but from those designs to reflect back on the general fleet in South Africa, said Nordengen. “We found, for example, that in the forestry industry PBS designs and vehicles led to innovative designs which the trailer manufacturers then put back into the general fleet. We are looking at trying to improve the safety performance not only of the PBS vehicles, which are probably only applicable to 15% of the total vehicle fleet. We can learn by improving the understanding of heavy vehicle dynamics how we can make our trucks safer on the road and reduce the risk of crashes.” To date 63 Smart Trucks exist with a further 47 vehicles in the manufacturing or commissioning phases. And the results of PBS designs have been very encouraging in terms of reduced number of trips, said Nordengen. Last year, with 60 of the vehicles operating, more than 59 000 trips were saved. “They are restricted in terms of the routes they can take,” said Nordengen. “The PBS approach in Canada and Australia was to produce higher production vehicles. This means that some of them are longer and heavier and run bigger payloads and that’s where you get the trip reduction. They all have vehicle tracking and can only operate on approved routes, which makes them ideal for a dedicated type of operation because the routes have to be approved by the road authorities.” INSERT & CAPTION The PBS approach looks at how a vehicle performs dynamically on the road when it does certain manoeuvres. – Paul Nordengen