Rosenau Transport uses rebates to test drive side skirts
Rosenau Transport Ltd. is always looking for ways to reduce its energy consumption and impact on the environment. So it only made sense for the Edmonton-based trucking company to test side skirts on its fleet of 550 trailers.
Rosenau is initially installing 240 pairs of side skirts on its trailers, 60 of them through Trucks of Tomorrow. "This program gives us the ability to do a serious trial, to make sure the results will be what we've been told," says Terry Rhode, Rosenau's systems controller and information technology manager.
Rosenau Transport is installing side skirts on 240 of the trailers in its fleet.
"Trailers can take a lot of abuse in town from curbs, snow piles and ice," he says. "We know the skirts make a difference. The only question is their longevity. Are they going to survive the life of the trailer (which can be upwards of 20 years)?"
The side skirt installation is just the latest in a series of initiatives to reduce Rosenau's energy use and environmental impact. "There's no question the transportation sector contributes a fair amount of emissions," says Rhode. "As stewards of the community, we're trying to be proactive and limit our emissions as much as possible."
Rosenau's intelligent parking lot controller (IPLC) system, for example, provides no electricity to a parked truck's block heater for the first hour or two in winter and then automatically supplies it only as temperature and wind chill conditions dictate. "That two-hour delay definitely makes a huge difference in power consumption," says Rhode.
Sensors in all the company's buildings and loading docks automatically start turning off lights in unoccupied areas after 10 minutes; the lights are the latest in small, energy-efficient fluorescent tubes. As well, building insulation has been beefed up and weather stripping installed on trailer door tracks, rather than on door frames, resulting in less ripping and thus a better, more energy-efficient seal.
The fleets themselves are equipped with GPS systems that help optimize route planning and reduce travel time and fuel consumption. All trucks have highway speed governors and automatic engine shutoffs when idling.
"It's a little savings here and there, but it all adds up," says Rhode. "If we're reducing our overall energy consumption by 10 per cent, it means we're also reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent."
Rhode thinks Rosenau, and other trucking firms, could substantially increase such savings if provincial weight regulations allowed transport trucks to pull two or three trailers on divided highways. "The ability to pull multiple trailers would be more efficient than anything else you could do," he says. "You could reduce your emissions and fuel consumption by 40 to 50 per cent, without a significant investment."
