Fleet Future

It has been, to put it mildly, an absolutely wild year for the US economy, and by extension, the trucking industry. So what can fleets expect from the market the rest of this year, and what’s on the horizon for 2022? I spoke Don Ake, vice president of commercial vehicles for FTR, to find out how they're seeing the market.

There is a lot of excitement in the air about electrification, but also a lot of questions. And this was the subject of a recent Thermo King webinar, hosted by Paul Kroes, the company’s market insights leader for North America.

Paul took some time to discuss some of the biggest issues in electrification, from infrastructure and regulation to vehicle and battery development to when it will all make sense from an ROI perspective. And of course with this being Thermo King, special attention was paid to the refrigeration side of things.

Joining me on today’s podcast is Coy Jones, senior marketing manager for on road with Michelin to talk about the company's new truck tires, the technology used in making them, and why it’s so important to get the right tire for the right application.

Joining me on today’s episode of the Fleet Future podcast is Alex Osaki, product marketing manager for Here Technologies, which is a supplier of telematics, including routing and mapping technology, to the trucking industry. Alex and I had a great conversation about routing and mapping technology, the struggles of adopting telematics, and how telematics will play into electrification.

The growth of both the last mile delivery market and the ascendancy of electric trucks have rarely been out of the news for the past year. With that in mind, joining me in this episode of the Fleet Future podcast is Travis Hunt, business development manager for Ford Commercial Solutions. Our conversation focused on telematics, from how telematics can help electric vehicles succeed, to Ford’s recent announcement in March that it will be expanding Ford Telematics to serve all makes and models, not just Ford.

Electric trucks are here. At this point, every major OEM either has trucks available for order or in development, but if you are interested in adding some of these models to your fleet, there is a lot of preparation that needs to be done ahead of time. Joining me on this episode to discuss this topic is Dave Downs of CalAmp, a telematics provider.

Fleet Equipment Editor Jason Morgan and Managing Editor Alex Crissey go over the biggest trucking news of the past month, including:

- The ongoing microchip shortage and its potential impacts on trucking
- The newly available electric trucks from Freightliner
- Driving new heavy-duty trucks from Peterbilt and Kenworth, as well as new medium-duty models from both OEMs
- How fleets can prepare their shops for the arrival of an electric truck

The electric future has arrived, with several major OEMs making battery electric trucks available now, some that will be available soon, and even a growing push toward hydrogen fuel cell power.

So what will the role of suppliers be in this electric future? To answer that question, I talked with Jeremy Frenznick, senior director of CV engineering at Dana. Dana is providing e-axles and/or power systems for electric trucks from Peterbilt, Kenworth and Hyliion.

Precise data: it’s one of the most important keys to running a good business, in the fleet world or elsewhere. After all, how will you know where to start improving your business if you don’t have a real sense of where the business is now?

This was the theme of a recent talk by Jacob Findlay, founder and CEO of Fullbay, a provider of shop management software, at this year’s Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week.

Jacob joins me on this week’s podcast to go over some of the main points of his HDAW talk, as well as a new report that Fullbay released with TMC called the State of Heavy Duty Repair.

For this episode of Fleet Future I talked with Robb Janak, director of new technologies at Jacobs Vehicle Systems, about CARB and EPA emissions regulations and the technology Jacobs is developing to meet them.