The North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) has announced its plans for this year’s Run on Less – Messy Middle. Held this September, the event will include four different powertrain alternatives — diesel, natural gas, battery electric and hydrogen fuel cells — and will feature trucks from three different fleets in each of the powertrain categories.
“We chose to focus this Run on the messy middle and specifically on long-haul, return-to-base and over-the-road duty cycles because it is the largest emitting market segment and there is confusion surrounding it,” says, Mike Roeth, executive director. “By having trucks with a variety of powertrains, we will be able to capture real-world data and bring some clarity to the long-haul portion of the messy middle.”
NACFE is talking to fleets to find the right combination of participants in order to have an accurate representation of what is currently happening in the trucking industry and will announce fleet participants in the spring, visiting each of the 12 fleet locations shortly thereafter.
As in the past, each truck in the Run will be outfitted with Geotab telematics devices, the official data partner for the 2025 Run on Less – Messy Middle. In addition, the Run on Less website will be updated with fleet profiles, stories from the Run videos and a dashboard that will track various metrics. Information from the previous four Runs will be accessible from the Run on Less – Messy Middle website.
Educational Bootcamp to be Part of the Run
Beginning in February, NACFE will conduct a 13-session Run on Less – Messy Middle Bootcamp webinar series in coordination with ACT News. Three sessions will focus on diesel and natural gas vehicles, battery electric vehicles and hydrogen and will feature a unit recap workshop after each set of technology sessions and a close out session at the end that will focus on other fuel-efficiency technologies.
“The NACFE team has been hard at work over the last few months putting together stellar programming for the Run on Less – Messy Middle Bootcamp, and I’m excited to unveil it to our audience,” says Rachel Ellenberger, industry engagement manager. “Over the years, NACFE has set the bar high for providing timely, educational, and innovative content to the Run on Less Bootcamps and this year, we’re excited to go a little further. This year’s Bootcamp will include the educational sessions we all know and love along with workshops designed to be more conversational and encourage further audience participation. The agenda is set, and we’re excited to continue to recruit engaging speakers who are talented storytellers in their corner of the industry.”
The first Bootcamp session will be held Tuesday, February 11, at 1 pm ET/10am PST and subsequent bootcamp sessions are every other week. Bootcamp registration is open now and you can register here. As in past years, ACT News, published by TRC Companies, is assisting NACFE with the mechanics of the Bootcamp.
Initial Sponsors Announced
NACFE also is pleased to announce that Cummins and Shell have signed on as title sponsors for this Run. To date, event sponsors include Chevron, Clean Energy, The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Eaton, ExxonMobil, FlowBelow, Geotab, PepsiCo, Prologis and TeraWatt.
“We are grateful to the title and event sponsors that have stepped up so early in the process to help sponsor Run on Less – Messy Middle,” Roeth says. “The Run is not possible without industry support, and we still need Executive, Title, Event and Supporter Sponsors. This is our fifth Run, and we are very excited to take a deep dive into what fleets are doing in the messy middle as the trucking industry strives to deliver goods in a more sustainable manner. This will be a must-follow event.”
