NACFE recently announced our fifth Run on Less demonstration. This one is called Run on Less – Messy Middle and will focus on Class 8 trucks in long-haul return-to-base and over-the-road operation.
According to NREL’s report Decarbonizing Medium- & Heavy-Duty On-Road Vehicles: Zero-Emission Vehicles Cost Analysis, this segment makes up 9% of the truck market but contributes 48% of trucking’s emissions.
In case you are not familiar with the messy middle, it is term NACFE started using in 2019. Basically, it is the time between now and when the trucking industry gets to the zero-emission movement of freight. During this time, fleets will have a host of powertrain options to choose from, including diesel, natural gas, hybrids, hydrogen internal combustion, battery electric, hydrogen fuel cells, renewable natural gas and renewable diesel.
To be clear, NACFE does not consider messy to be a bad thing, but it does complicate things. During the messy middle, it is extremely important that powertrains are matched to duty cycles. Not all technologies will work in all applications. Putting the wrong alternative powertrain in the wrong application can be costly to fleets and can derail efforts to get to zero emissions.
One thing to note, when it comes to vehicles like terminal tractors, medium-duty box trucks and vans and step vans, the messy middle is already less messy with many fleets opting for battery electric vehicles for those use cases.
We chose to make this next Run about the messy middle, because we want each Run to help answer some of the biggest questions in the market and today the market is trying to determine which powertrain options make sense in long-haul given regulations, corporate sustainability goals and pressure from stakeholder to operate in a more sustainable manner.
In a way, we are going back to the roots of our first Run on Less in 2017 and featuring only Class 8 trucks in long-haul operation. While the first time, the seven trucks in the Run were all powered by diesel, this time we will showcase trucks running on diesel but also using other fuels.
We will, of course, collect data from the trucks during the three weeks of the Run and are looking forward to once again interviewing all the participating fleets, OEMs and others but we also will be leveraging knowledge we gained from our thought leadership report, The Messy Middle: A Time for Action to inform what the Run will look like and to determine what metrics we will be including in the Run dashboard.
Our goal is to have findings from the Run help bring some clarity to the messy middle so that it becomes a little less messy in the long-haul segment.
We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and September 2025 when the Run kicks off, including adding details on the powertrains we will be looking at and the fleets that will be participating.
While the middle may be messy, it is also a time of great innovation, collaboration and cooperation, and the trucking industry will find a way to bring some clarity to all segments of the market as we shift to a more sustainable movement of goods.
