After 20 weeks and an ACT News-produced Bootcamp webinar series, the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) is ready to once again conduct its Run on Less event, this year focusing on total depot electric charging.
In an effort to help fleets understand the benefits and challenges of adopting battery-electric trucks in larger numbers, NACFE is conducting the Run on Less – Electric DEPOT event from September 11-30. Not only will the NACFE team track the activity of the 21 electric trucks, including a pair of Tesla Semis, it will also determine the total depot electric energy, as well as the total charge needed for all the trucks each day and how much electrical energy would be needed if all trucks at the depot were converted to electric vehicles.
“As trucking works on decarbonizing, fleets are investing in more electric vehicles at their depots which brings with it many benefits but also some challenges, especially around infrastructure and charging,” says Mike Roeth, NACFE’s executive director. “Yet leading fleets are tackling those challenges and are giving us access to their operations so we can share what they are learning with the rest of the industry.”
The Run will feature a variety of trucks covering a full range of duty cycles, including:
- Frito-Lay’s Queens, New York, depot — two Ford E-Transit vans will be tracked operating in urban delivery.
- OK Produce in Fresno, California — a Freightliner eCascadia and an Orange EV will be tracked in local fruit and vegetable deliveries and terminal tractor applications, respectively.
- Penske’s Ontario, California, location — a GM BrightDrop, a Navistar eMV and a Freightliner eCascadia, a light-, medium- and heavy-duty truck, will be followed.
- PepsiCo’s Sacramento, California, depot — two Tesla Semis will be tracked in heavy-load long-haul transport operations.
- Performance Team’s Commerce, California, location — two electric Volvo VNRs will be tracked conducting short-haul routes.
- Purolator’s Richmond, British Columbia, hub — a Class 6 Motiv step van and a Ford E-Transit will be tracked in business and residential package delivery.
- Schneider’s South El Monte, California, location — two Freightliner eCascadias operating in slip-seated drayage will be tracked.
- UPS in Compton, California — a Freightliner Custom Chassis MT50e last mile step van and a Freightliner eCascadia in a middle mile duty cycle will both be tracked.
- US Foods in La Mirada, California — two Freightliner eCascadias will be tracked in food delivery applications.
- WattEV’s Long Beach, California, location — a BYD 8TT tractor and a Nikola Tre BEV tractor operating at the Port of Long Beach will be tracked.
In preparation for this year’s Run, NACFE and RMI worked with ACT News to produce the Run on Less – Electric DEPOT Bootcamp webinar series as a follow-up to the successful 2021 Bootcamp webinar series. The webinars featured more than 40 experts focused on helping the entire electric truck ecosystem understand what it takes to accelerate the deployment of EVs, covering utility-fleet relationships, grants and incentives, electric truck developments, fast charging challenges, electricity resiliency and availability, current and future regulations, cost-effective charging, scaling infrastructure, and depot site planning and construction.
The NACFE team also visited all 10 depots and performed more than 100 interviews about each fleet’s experiences with electric trucks, which are posted on the Run on Less website and will be supplemented by Stories from the Run videos that will look at some of the main issues surrounding the electrification of fleets.
