In 2004, John Drake of Duplainville Transport took a calculated risk with four of his Peterbilts. That’s when Drake, fleet manager for Duplainville, agreed to test four Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ’07 spec’ engines from Caterpillar in his fleet.
At the time, neither Drake nor anyone else knew what sorts of performance and reliability issues might come up when the new engines—with their higher underhood temperatures, hotter exhausts, and diesel particulate filters (DPF)—started putting miles the road. Now that he’s had time to evaluate the four engines in revenue-producing service, what’s Drake’s verdict? Full speed ahead!
TAKING THE TEST
Duplainville Transport is the shipping subsidiary of Sussex, WI-based commercial printer Quad/Graphics, operating 90 company trucks and a similar number of owner-operator units. With printing plants in Wisconsin, New York, West Virginia, Georgia and Oklahoma, the company racks up a lot of miles in both hot and cold climates, on daily and weekly long and short-haul runs, making it an ideal test fleet for engine manufacturer Caterpillar. Specifically, Cat wanted to test its clean gas induction (CGI) technology, which recirculates non-combustible exhaust gas after it has passed through the aftertreatment system, and puts it back into the combustion chamber.
That test was successful enough that Drake and Cat converted the four test trucks to full production engines last March, and those trucks have been operating successfully for over half a year now.
PRODUCTION MODE
“We’re really out of the test environment now and into the full production mode with the DPFs and new engines,” Drake says. “We were basically doing injector tests, that’s what the four engines were set up for. The CRS (Cat Regenerative System), the device after the turbo, is different, we’ve got the full DPFs on now, all the emissions devices; we didn’t have that on the first go-around.
“We had some wiring issues after Cat swung the engines and put on all the aftertreatment,” he explains. “Then the trucks had to go to Peterbilt to be retrofitted with ’07 upgrades: new radiators, engine mounts, they had a whole retrofit kit. It actually took 50 hours to put the retrofit kit in, to make sure that the chassis was up to ’07 engine spec’s.
“Since March, we’ve had no issues whatsoever with them,” he says. Even a fuel economy penalty of a tenth of a mile per gallon on the ’07 Cats has not concerned Drake, because he feels that most of the blame for that lies with the ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel (ULSD). “With ultra-low sulphur diesel fuel, our whole fleet dropped a tenth of a mile,” he says.
A year ago, Drake stated that he wasn’t going to worry about fuel economy numbers until the four test trucks had passed the 80,000-mile break-in period, and they are just now nearing that mark. Does that cause Drake any anxiety?
“The trucks aren’t quite broken in, but I watch them,” he says. “I take a look at them every couple of weeks, and see how they’re doing. I haven’t really been talking to the drivers, because they haven’t been calling about anything, so no news is good news.”
AVAILABILITY & QUALITY
When the engine test started in 2005, Drake’s biggest concern was finding ready sources of ULSD for the four trucks being monitored. Today, availability isn’t an issue, says Drake, but quality is.
“It may vary from fleet to fleet, but what we’re finding is that the quality of the fuel is different on the East Coast or the South versus what we’re getting in the Midwest,” he explains. “We’re getting worse, and they’re getting better; it’s a quality issue.”
Drake tells of a time one of his trucks fueled up with ULSD at a truck stop in New Jersey, and burned 150 gallons of fuel in only 500 miles—that’s about 3.3 miles per gallon. Clearly unacceptable. “The fuel that he had put into the tanks was pretty much muddy brown, which means there was probably quite a bit of water in it,” Drake says.
“We’ve seen this quality difference in different parts of the country. We even see that in our bulk tank,” he continues. “We get pretty good fuel for the most part, but every once in a while we get a load that’s not up to snuff. That’s always been a problem, but it seems to me that the ULSD magnifies the problem.”
Although he’s not a big fan of fuel additives, Drake confesses that he may have to make some adjustments to his thinking. Accordingly, he is currently testing some fuel treatments in the hopes of addressing the ULSD quality problem. The biodiesel option, meanwhile, is off the table, because Drake feels biodiesel is “not quite there.”
CJ-4 COMES THROUGH
What is quite there is the new blend of CJ-4 engine oil. Not only has it met all performance expectations, Drake says, but he has been able to maintain the fleet’s 30,000-mile oil drain intervals without any difficulties.
“We’re using Chevron, and the switch for us was seamless,” he says. “We’re testing, but we haven’t had any issues.”
In fact, Drake is fearlessly plotting a switch to a 50,000-mile oil drain. Because every truck in the fleet is equipped with an APU and a Spinner II centrifuge bypass filter, Drake has already scored some big successes with fuel economy and engine wear, and he’s feeling lucky.
“Between the Spinners and not idling the trucks, at 30,000 miles the oil’s still pretty translucent,” he says. “So, that’s a good sign, and we test every other oil change.
“Actually, we have two trucks we’re testing now at 50,” he admits. “We used two team trucks, because they rack up the miles pretty quickly. We’ll do a couple oil changes and move forward from there.”
Even the much-feared underhood heat issue has become a non-issue to Drake.
“Underhood heat issues? I really haven’t heard anything about it,” he says. “The OEMs did an excellent job of expanding the surface areas of their radiators, and making sure that air moved under the hood. The exhaust temperatures? Yeah, they’re hot, but they’re where they were expected to be, between 1,100 and 1,300 degrees.”
ACTIVE REGENERATION
The only issue remaining is the regeneration cycle of the DPF element. For an over-the-road fleet like Duplainville Transport, DPF regeneration should be transparent: The exhaust should reach a high enough temperature during everyday driving to trigger active regeneration, which oxidizes the accumulated soot and cleans the filter element.
“The only question the drivers had is what to do when the light came on on the dash,” Drake relates. “That’s the only issue that we had going through the conversion.”
The drivers’ questions were answered by training materials provided by the OEMs, and there was no issue.
“Peterbilt and Caterpillar both put out a simple sheet that tells the driver what to do when the light comes on, and what it means,” Drake explains. “We supplied our four guys with it, and as new trucks start coming in in January we’ll train our drivers. But really, theoretically, a driver shouldn’t have to worry about regeneration, because it’s going to be passive regeneration—it’s going to be regenerating while the truck is driving down the road, if everything is working properly.”
If the drivers have little to worry about, the maintenance technicians have even less, according to Drake. Maintenance practices and routines have not been affected in any way, and the only anticipated maintenance event may be years away.
THE CLEANOUT
“All we have to do through our maintenance department is worry about that cleanout,” Drake says, “whenever that period’s going to be. And nobody’s really defined that yet.”
Of course, the EPA did set a standard that a DPF should be able to go a minimum of 150,000 miles before it needs to be removed from the truck so that the ash accumulation can be cleaned out of the filter element, but OEMs quickly claimed that a minimum of 250,000 miles was achievable.
Which will it be for Duplainville Transport?
“We’re going to operate on the 250,000-mile interval, and it’s such an unknown that we just have to wait and see,” Drake explains. “We know we have to do it, we just don’t know when. I was just talking to one of our local vendors yesterday, and they’re not even sure what type of device they’re going to buy, because they’re uncertain about what they have to do.”
Drake is certain of one thing: His company will not be purchasing a DPF cleaning machine. Who does he think will buy them? “The engine dealer, or the truck dealer,” he replies. “It’s not going to be us.”
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
After a year’s hiatus, Drake is ready to start ordering new trucks again, for delivery in January. The time seems right: The 2007 engines have proven themselves, and the truck OEMs are offering him irresistible incentives.
“I think everybody knows that production levels are at an all-time low for Class-8 trucks,” Drake says, “so you can pretty much order them today and have them in 15 or 20 days.
“Today we’re going to pay less for trucks than we paid five years ago,” he goes on. “I don’t know how it works, but that’s the way it is. I’m sure it’s just based on supply and demand: Five years ago, there was a huge demand for trucks because of the pre-buy and all the worries about emissions. Today, because the demand is not there, and OEMs need the business, the price is down. But, that’s our situation; it’s going to be different for other carriers.”
Exactly what Drake will be buying, however, is still uncertain. He had been working with a few OEMs to spec’ his 2008 purchases, then when the spec’s were all but finalized, he threw them out.
Why throw out all that work? Was Drake just out of practice from not having spec’ed a new truck for over a year? No, he simply took a look at some of the 2006 trucks with Cat ACERT engines in his fleet that were consistently getting 7.5 and 7.6 miles per gallon, and he decided he wanted more.
“I challenged a couple OEMs we’re working with to give me an eight miles per gallon truck,” he says. “I called them all on Friday and I said, ‘Throw out all the spec’s we’ve working on and bring a truck over next week—I want an eight mile per gallon truck, that’s what this fleet wants.’
“So we started all over again yesterday,” he says. “Eight miles per gallon is attainable; it’s not something that’s way out there that we’ll never reach. We might have to do things a little differently; we might have to run them slower and educate the drivers, but look at the price of crude oil: $85 a barrel yesterday, what’s it going to be today?”
LOOKING AHEAD
And what’s it going to be in 2010? That’s when truck and engine builders will face another round of strict EPA diesel emission restrictions that will stretch the limits of the industry once again. Will Duplainville Transport be ready? Will anyone be?
“2010 is going to be a whole different playing field,” Drake says, admitting that at that point he may have to look at every engine on the market. “The OEMs are starting to align themselves with their own engine product lines. Everybody’s headed in that direction, and for good reason; to try to keep everything under their control.”
“If you’re a truck OEM and you build your own engine, pretty soon you’re going to have your own transmission line, and you’re going to be able to control what that truck does so much better,” he says. “You’ll be able to put it out there and say, ‘We know this truck is going to be able to get 7.5 miles per gallon’—it’s not going to be looking at a spec’ sheet here and a spec’ sheet here and trying to marry all the components together. I think that’s the way the OEMs really want to go, with their own product. Overall, that’s a positive thing for the market.”
And, who knows, maybe new trucks will be even cheaper for a fleet like Duplainville in 2010 than they are today.
Passive-Aggressive
With approximately 2,000 EPA ’07 engines already in its fleet, Phoenix, AZ-based Swift Transportation has had plenty of opportunities to see the good and the bad in the new emissions technology. Most of the news is good, according to VP of procurement and shop operations Michele Calbi, and the bad news has led to some brilliant new training strategies.
“What we found, initially, when we received our EPA ‘07s was that no matter what we said to the driver—yes, we got the nod, ‘I understand’—but then when a passive ‘regen’ happened, they were calling in.”
The drivers were not used to the dash lights coming on, according to Calbi, and they were interpreting it as a ‘check engine’ light. “We found a couple of them had stopped on the side of the road and called it in,” she says, “so we decided that we needed to be a little more proactive about it.”
Calbi’s response was to script and record an audio CD (certified by Swift’s two engine OEMs, Volvo and Cummins) that tells drivers what to expect from their ’07 emissions systems. The green discs hang from the rear view mirrors of the ’07 trucks, where the drivers can’t miss them, and they bear a label that says ‘Please listen to this immediately upon getting into your truck.’ The driver then pops the disc into the truck’s CD deck and listens to the training lesson either before hitting the road or while driving away.
“We have found we’ve really eliminated any of the issues with regard to calls in about passive regeneration,” Calbi says.
But the training doesn’t end there: Those drivers are then required to take a short ’07 emissions system quiz the next time they’re at a Swift terminal.
“They have to take a training test within a particular amount of time, and if they do not certify, they will be stopped,” Calbi explains. “If they are stopped, that means they have to retake the test, or sit down with someone and learn more about the engine in order to pass the test. It’s not so difficult that they can’t pass, but it is enough to get their attention, so they understand, when they move into an EPA ’07, they’re dealing with a different type of exhaust system.
“In our training for our technicians, we need to be out front,” Calbi continues, “because when they come in we may need to change some parameters or do some other things with the trucks. We want to make sure that the technicians fully understand that there’s going to be some hot spots on the truck that weren’t there before, and some other opportunities with regard to the DPF and the engine operation.”
Calbi has also taken the unique measure of designing bolder ULSD warning stickers for fuel tanks, to ensure that drivers are always filling up with the proper fuel. “Otherwise, you know the outcome,” she says. “They’ll be stopping all the time with passive ‘regening,’ and they’ll be using what I consider non-revenue-generating fuel.”
As with Duplainville Transport’s John Drake, the only thing Calbi is unsure of is when and how the DPFs will be cleaned…
“The only unique service need that we’re going to encounter is when we have to replace or clean the DPF, but that may be after our trucks are sold or traded in,” she says. “So we may not have to experience a whole lot of DPF changing. We tend to keep our day cabs longer than we keep our sleepers, so we will see some.
“I was just at a seminar and asked the suppliers there and the independents, ‘What are you going to do about that? Are you getting machines?’ And I kind of got a, ‘Hmm, I didn’t think about that.’”
Does Calbi have any thoughts on who will be buying DPF cleaning machines? She thinks that engine distributors will be first in line, followed by OEM dealers.
“But it depends on how expensive it is, and how much space it’s going to take up,” she says. “Our intention at this point is not to purchase any equipment. It may change as we learn more: You’re talking maybe 36 months out before we experience anything, and then probably another year after that before we even decide whether it’s necessary for our particular fleet whether we have to purchase any equipment. But we have a high level of service from our distributor, so there’s really no fear factor.”
“So Far, So Good”
Last October, we reported on the ’07 diesel testing being done by Phoenix, AZ-based Knight Transportation. At the time, VP of equipment and maintenance Dave Williams was sanguine about the ’07-spec’ Cummins ISX that had been in one of his trucks since mid-2005. At the time, the truck was running well, and Williams wasn’t anticipating any problems with the unit.
“So far, so good,” he says. And as if to prove it, he goes on to say that Knight now has 500 trucks with ’07 engines on the road, “and we’re adding to that every day.” In other words, the company’s purchase cycle has not been affected in any way.
Williams looks at engine performance on several different levels, including reliability, performance and a spectrum of different cost measurements, and so far he hasn’t been surprised by any of the numbers returned by the ’07 engines. “If you compare it to the 2002 experience, I think this one has been better from a mechanical standpoint,” he claims. “We haven’t had as many electrical bugs and little things that tended to crop up.”
Furthermore, he says, the drivers have noticed no difference in performance or reliability. “From a performance standpoint, the engine is the same engine they’ve been driving since 2002, so they really haven’t seen much difference,” he says.
Like the other maintenance managers we spoke with, the biggest change Williams has seen is some confusion among his drivers as to the meaning of the new DPF regeneration dash lights.
“Some of (the lights) are meant to tell you that regeneration is happening, some of them are meant to tell you that there’s a problem, and there’s one particular light that tells you that the system is just hot, and you shouldn’t go back and touch it,” he says. “Getting drivers to understand which light was which was an initial challenge, but we’ve gotten through that and don’t seem to have any real significant issues.”
Williams has also seen a slight degradation in fuel economy with his new trucks, but like John Drake of Duplainville Transport, he can’t determine whether that’s the fault of the engine itself or the new ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel.
“Maintenance practices have not been affected in any way yet,” Williams continues, although he admits that it may be too early to tell if the much-feared elevated underhood temperatures will become a factor.
“The thing you have to understand about higher underhood temperatures is that those problems don’t manifest themselves early,” he says. “They usually manifest themselves late in an engine’s career. Any time you have heat involved, you’re going to have fatigue in metal, so I wouldn’t say (those fears) have gone away, but it’s certainly not something that’s scaring us from buying the engines. I think it’s just something that we have to keep our eye on.”
While he keeps one eye on the underhood temperatures, Williams will be keeping his other eye on the DPF cleaning regimen. “Certainly, the particulate filter is an issue, and will be an issue, in that we expect in our life cycle to have to clean that filter once,” he says. “But we haven’t gotten to the point where we’ve had to do that yet, so that’s still a little bit fuzzy, but we don’t anticipate any huge issues there.”
Williams says that Knight will typically run a truck somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 miles, and the DPF cleaning cycle is closely correlated to the truck’s duty cycle. “So our duty cycle being over-the-road, long-haul, good fuel economy, we don’t anticipate changing those or cleaning those until somewhere in that 350,000 to 450,000 mile range,” he explains. “Right before we get rid of the truck, we’ll probably have to clean it.”
That doesn’t mean that Knight Transportation will be investing in DPF cleaners anytime soon, however. Williams plans to work with his Cummins distributor for the initial DPF cleanings, pay close attention to how the cleaning technology develops, then decide if the process should be brought in-house.
“I can see us, long term, in some of our larger shops, getting into that business,” he says. “I know, initially, the equipment was fairly expensive and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. We’re hoping for some advances and cost reductions in that technology and equipment.”