More travels… This week I’m in Atlanta, at the National Truck Equipment Association (NTEA) Work Truck Show. I just got out of a session called “Hybrid and Alternative Fuels Commercial Vehicle Initiatives,” and I was surprised to learn how far medium-duty and heavy-duty hybrid trucks have come along. International is already producing Class-6 and Class-7 hybrid utility trucks, and several other manufacturers are following right behind. But just wait until 2009: that’s when Mack, Volvo and Peterbilt plan to introduce hybrid Class-8 tractors, and that will be a very interesting development.

Just think about it: a Class-8 tractor that derives its torque from a combination of a diesel engine and an electric motor, so that your fuel economy gets a sizeable boost and your emissions are reduced significantly. It uses regenerative braking, transferring braking energy into additional charging for the drive batteries (some transit fleets using hybrid buses with regenerative braking report that they can go a full year between brake jobs). And the technology is transparent to drivers: in medium-duty applications, drivers don’t notice any difference in performance between hybrids and traditional trucks.

I know what you’re thinking: they’re going to be expensive. Yes, there will be incremental costs, but a lot of people at the meeting today are working hard to make sure there will be financial incentives to soften the blow.

Let’s face it: you’re going to have to change the way operate whether you like it or not. All things considered, a hybrid is a pretty attrative way to go.

It’s been two weeks now since the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) Annual Meeting & Expo in Orlando, and I’m still processing the information I gathered from technical sessions, fleet forums and private conversations.

There was one topic in particular that came up several times during the week, but, while a lot of people wanted to talk about it, just as many people did not want to talk about it, and probably will not want to talk about it for a long time.

The topic? Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF). When will they need to be removed from trucks for cleaning, and who will be responsible for cleaning them? Can they really go 250,000 miles before cleaning, as the engine OEMs claim? If you overshoot the mark, what can go wrong, and who’s to blame if it does? Who is going to own the cleaning machines, and how much will it cost to use them? Perhaps the most telling comment came from a fleet maintenance manager who said that where DPF cleaning is concerned, “We’re not really sure what ‘clean’ is.” Lots of questions, and no answers.

One interesting conversation centered around the idea of a DPF exchange program, in which you could bring your dirty DPF into an authorized cleaning center–your dealer, perhaps–turn it in and get a clean filter in exchange. In a way, it could make life easier for fleets, especially if the cleaning service has pick-up and drop-off service, but wouldn’t you always wonder where that “new” DPF has been? I mean, maintenance manages are just like everybody else–I don’t know many of them who would be comfortable taking a filter from someone else’s truck, without having any idea how that truck was maintained, and putting it on their own vehicle. How would you feel about that?

It’s been a week since I was at the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) Meeting & Expo in Orlando, and my ears are still ringing from the Fleet Talk session. For those of you who’ve never been to a TMC meeting, Fleet Talk is a special session at which fleet maintenance managers get to gripe freely about the problems they’re having with products, regulations, TMC, DOT, OSHA, you name it.

As an editor, I love these meetings, because it gives me a chance to hear the unedited, unguarded opinions of a roomful of very outspoken fleet professionals. I hear things at this meeting that I never hear anywhere else, and I love it.

Last week’s meeting started right out with a lot of complaints about ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel (ULSD): fuel economy is down, fuel filter changes are up, and gel points are up as well. None of that came as a huge shock, but what did surprise me was talk about mislabeled ULSD pumps. According to Darry Stuart, TMC’s General Chairman and moderator of the Fleet Talk meeting, 30 to 35 percent of ULSD pumps in the US are not labelled correctly.

Now, why would that be so? Well, according to some of the folks at the meeting, diesel fuel suppliers are so paranoid that a batch of ULSD will be contaminated–for whatever reason–that they are NOT labeling ULSD as ULSD. The thinking is that if they ever failed an inspection–say, for instance, a tank of what is supposed to be ULSD actually had 17 ppm of sulfur instead of the 15 allowed–they would be heavily fined. If, however, that contaminated ULSD isn’t being sold as ULSD–in other words, if there’s no ULSD label on the pump–there’s no fine. Theoretically, at least.

So, is this really happening, or is it an old wives’ tale? I’m not sure what to believe, but I know that if I were a fleet operator, I’d be having a LOT of very honest conversations with my fuel supplier.

No, it isn’t a science fiction story… I’m writing from Orlando, FL, site of the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) Annual Meeting and Expo, and the warning from the future came in the form of a technical session entitled “EPA’s 2010 Heavy-Duty Diesel On-Board Diagnostic (OBD) Requirements Present Challenges to Manufacturers and Fleets.” As you know, a new round of heavy-duty diesel emissions standards will hit again in 2010, and the new emissions systems will be accompanied by an on-board diagnostic system, to make sure that those engines are running clean day in and day out.

Because OBD and OBD-II have been around in the light-duty market for so long, the heavy-duty market can learn from the LD experience… The problem is, a lot of that experience has been bad. For starters, because of the new OBD systems, the 2010 engines will be throwing a lot more fault codes (now known as diagnostic trouble codes, or DTCs). The make matters worse, many of those new DTCs will be “symptomless.” In other words, the driver is never going to notice a thing.

The DTCs will only report conditions, not root causes. The rest will be up to your technicians. But, as one of the experts on the panel said, “It will be more difficult for technicians to find the cause of a fault.” One fleet maintenance manager in attendance had a shorter explanation: “It’s going to be a nightmare.”

Welcome to the future.