What does 'green fleet' mean?

[gpssystemsnet]

im curious to know what everyone thinks of the new trend toward 'green fleets'. according to wikipedia it refers to military vehicles or a result-oriented awareness campaign to reduce carbon emissions, plant trees to guard the present, and promote new technology to protect the future.

so is green fleet the new way or is it just a fad? is it unfair to expect trucking fleets to make changes when were only a subset of the bigger carbon footprint?

or will this introduce big changes to the way fleets are operated with carbon emissions and greenhouse gas metrics enforced more tightly?

a recent case was when UPS recently added new CNG trucks referring to them as 'green trucks'. is this really green fleet or is it just a marketing exercise?

 

[boone315]

the whole 'green' movement is nothing but a marketing ploy, poor people have been 'green' from the beginning of time since they can not afford fancy product or chemicals for their homes, like my Grandmother said about 'organic' products, 'If I had only known, I'd be rich', My grandparents as most of the farmers of their day were what is today called 'organic', and the family farms still would be if the gov't had not gotten involved and forced the them into changing the way they farmed

 

[Sinister]

Why aren't the emails about the global warming figures being doctored and outright falsified being made more public so we can go back to having dolphins in our tuna and dual exhaust on our 4barrel carbs again?

Hard to believe I support wind energy with a statement like that, huh? LOL

 

[boone315]

Hey, I'll have you know I still have my Holly 4 barrel carburetor, just can't afford the gas to make it run

 

[Racer X 69]

A "green" fleet is a combination of things, vehicles using alternative fuels, hybrid powered vehicles, handling used fluids, batteries, tires, etc. in an environmentally responsible manner, careful planning to maximize equipment potential, no idle systems so trucks do not have to sit for 10 hours or more everyday just to keep the sleeper warm or cool, proper disposal of equipment when it has reached the end of it's useful life.

 

[Sinister]

HEY! Were not here for intelligent discussion!

Anyway, when I see a fleet that has "eco trailers" or is "reducing our carbon footprint" or some other such dribble, I just tend to think that the enviro wackos have finally infiltrated the trucking industry, and are now in charge of things. I think the companies that susbscribe to "some" of the green ideas are appeasing the green movement, and nothing more.

"If we put these things on the side of our trailer, we'll save fuel, but mostly, we'll appease the hippies, and maybe they'll leave us alone a little longer."

Something like that.

 

[diehard]

using ulsd is part of emissions controll. i guess thats being green.

 

[Sinister]

I have to admit, I'm actually rather ignorant on the subject. I did hear once though that ULSD puts less carbon in the air, but more sulphur...which is worse.

I don't know. You can't keep enviros happy. You just cant. They hated Nuke power in the 70's, and Crude oil, so were dependent upon OPEC at a scary level, and our nuke grid is outdated. Then, they want wind farms. Well, now you have to shut down the wind farms that are in migratory patterns of birds for parts of the year.

Next, they'll want blankets over the solar farms in the Mojave because they reflect light back into space, and might screw up their home planet or something.

How about instead of asking "How can we make trucking more green?" we ask "Where does this bullshit end with these environmentalists who somehow get to amass enough money and power to make government enact laws that strangle business and cost jobs?"

Where does the enviro bullshit end?

 

[gpssystemsnet]

good points been made, i think it just makes it clear theres 2 sides to the story really, and with some of the falsification of global warming data happening of late that the hippies halo is not as shiny as theyd like us to think it is. when changes are made just to be seen as eco-friendly its usually just for show only and doesnt have any significant impact on improving the environment.

i think the only way to try and get back to being 'nice to nature' is to incentivize with the only thing that works - the mighty dollar. by giving fleets specific metrics and rewards for good behavior it will become a lot more acceptable to the suits making the decisions.

 

[diehard]

i believe the ultra low sulphur is supposed to put less sulphur into the atmosphere. 500 parts per million or less. at least thats what it says when i load it.

I have to admit, I'm actually rather ignorant on the subject. I did hear once though that ULSD puts less carbon in the air, but more sulphur...which is worse.

I don't know. You can't keep enviros happy. You just cant. They hated Nuke power in the 70's, and Crude oil, so were dependent upon OPEC at a scary level, and our nuke grid is outdated. Then, they want wind farms. Well, now you have to shut down the wind farms that are in migratory patterns of birds for parts of the year.

Next, they'll want blankets over the solar farms in the Mojave because they reflect light back into space, and might screw up their home planet or something.

How about instead of asking "How can we make trucking more green?" we ask "Where does this bullshit end with these environmentalists who somehow get to amass enough money and power to make government enact laws that strangle business and cost jobs?"

Where does the enviro bullshit end?

 

[Sinister]

I guess that statement does look pretty stupid, now that I re-read it...LOL.

Like I said I really don't know a lot about the green movement as it relates to trucking. I only know that where green policies are instituted in other industries, they become a hindrance, eat into profits, and cost way too much.

I'm sure many people think the same thing when I say I've been a little too busy struggling to make a living to worry about any of this.

 

[diehard]

i do think some people take the green thing too extremes. obama wants to do away with coal and around here that would put everyone out of a job. and half the lights in this country would go out.

 

[Racer X 69]

. . . . Like I said I really don't know a lot about the green movement as it relates to trucking. I only know that where green policies are instituted in other industries, they become a hindrance, eat into profits, and cost way too much. . . . . .

Well I do know that the diesel particulate filters on the 2010 trucks Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks cost &16,500.

The engineers I worked with said but yeah, you should not ever have to replace it.

Well I gotta pay for the first one when I buy the damn truck slide rule!

 

[Sinister]

Right. Exactly what I mean. These costs are passed on to the consumer (in this case the o/o or fleet) that buys the truck, but that's as far as it can be passed on! You can't recover that cost by raising your rates, can you? No sir, not in this economic climate.

So small business is then forced to eat costs it cannot recover.

Just to keep the hippies happy.

 

[Racer X 69]

Just to keep the hippies happy.

Easy there cowboy, I resemble that remark.

 

[Flatbedpete]

My green fleet does not exist. My trucks idle and burn fuel. AL Gore is a scam artist with his green crap. I ask this question. How big is the hole in the atmosphere, is it the size of Texas or the size of a bread box. Better yet how many holes do we make shooting our rockets through it. I am all for no idling. Just let me know what senators house I am going to park in front of and camp out in their plush bedroom with breakfast in the morning. They don't want us to drive over so many hours, they dont want us to work over so many hours, they don't want us to make over so much money and they want is to pay more in taxes. I think its time to start using these stupid Think cars and all this crap that isn't working to haul the freight they want. See what they get done with that. Lets make the railroads shut down the locomotives over the weekend. That will go over good. It takes a couple of days to get them running right again after that is done. No one is busting their chops for puking emissions out of them year round, Oh forgot, they are funded by the same government who wants us to all stop what we are doing, trying to make a living.

 

[Flatbedpete]

Right. Exactly what I mean. These costs are passed on to the consumer (in this case the o/o or fleet) that buys the truck, but that's as far as it can be passed on! You can't recover that cost by raising your rates, can you? No sir, not in this economic climate.

So small business is then forced to eat costs it cannot recover.

Just to keep the hippies happy.

Not the hippies, the counterfeit people we voted in office. Who force us to support dead beats and illegals

 

[Sinister]

The load I currently have pulls like a drag chute. I have loads like this a lot. The only "green" measure I can make is to not idle the truck, and run a little slower. I did that and still got 4.9 to 5.2 on this trip so far with this terrible wind all weekend.

Another question, where does the pursuit of "green" measures become a waste of time?

I could have idled my truck this trip, and it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference...

 

[gpssystemsnet]

a lot of green measures are done for show only and have no real benefit for the actual environment. the sad part is that it lulls everyone into thinking theyre doing the right thing but theyre not really helping. an example of this are all the myths around biofuel which is supposedly good for the environment, but the side effects are a whole lot worse, depriving people in developing lands of needed food and creating almost as much carbon emission during the production process as they save when burned. add to this all the damage done when third world farmers burn the native forests down to grow more biofuel crops (because they get more money for it than subsistence farming) and it exposes it all as a bit of a scam.

rather than looking for alternative fuels fleets should just look at trimming the fat, reducing unnecessary mileage by optimizing their routes - its the most simple cost effective method of going green and reducing your fuel bill.

 

[Sinister]

Optimizing a route can be a matter of opinion and practicality also. For example, taking a US highway vs. and Interstate may cut miles, but having to stop for red lights, then accelerate again may eat more fuel then just staying on the interstate.

Also, not all corn is grown for food. So saying that using it for fuel rather than food throughout the world just doesn't apply. Oh sure, ethanol spiked the price of corn for a while, but it was nothing outrageous that couldn't be corrected by free market mainstay factors such as supply and demand. Make farming for ethanol corn profitable, and more farmers will do it. Less than 5% of the CONUS landmass is developed. There's plenty of room to grow more corn.

Further, with all the bioscience we use today, I'm willing to bet a corn could have been engineered to was a fraction of the cost to produce and grow. A new seed that doesn't have to be edible by animals nor humans would have worked just fine.

Also at issue was the idea that it takes 2 gallons of crude to make one gallon of ethanol, so it was a program doomed to start. Well, if everything ran on ethanol, and it became self-perpetuating, that wouldn't really be the case for very long. The problem was, there was no market demand. When Dubya tried the ethanol push, gas hadn't yet reached 4.00 a gallon. Plus, there's other ways to make ethanol.

Wind energy is starting to see the same difficulties ethanol has had, because people cannot see the market potential. They want instant results. Selling electricity generated from wind as well as selling ethanol made from corn to developing countries could...COULD...help the US offset its deficit.

I'd like to see that. I'm no so optimistic though.

I'm not sure it's valid to tout one green measure over another, as they could all work to compliment each other. Ethanol was never meant to be a replacement for fossil fuels no more than wind was a replacement for coal and nuke and solar. Route optimization as well as aerodynamics are meant to compliment each other, while also considering practicality and time as a factor.

I mean, unless this was all a ruse to link to that site, which I'll of course have to consider spamming, you know...