NACFE Announces 10 Drivers Participating In Its Run On Less Regional Challenge

The North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) announced the names of 10 drivers from participating fleets that will drive in its Run on Less Regional fuel efficiency study on Sept. 10. 

The Run on Less Regional event will take place over three weeks in October, beginning Oct. 7 and ending on Oct. 25. NACFE will announced the initial results of the run at the North American Commercial Vehicle Show on Oct. 28 in Atlanta.

Run on Less Regional will feature real-time monitoring of a number of features, including miles traveled, vehicle speed and fuel consumption, but will also collect new data, according to Mike Roeth, executive director of NACFE. 

"We will have a daily visual of the run for each truck so it will show where it went, where they made stops, their speed graphs, topography and a little bit about the weather," Roeth told reporters on Sept. 10. "We will also graph out some of the really important information from running regional [routes] — things like vehicle speed, so if the truck operates on the freeway for a long point in time, or did it have a lot of starts and stops where the vehicle speed was much lower," that will all be recorded.

Run on Less Regional drivers and equipment include:

• Louis Scaruffi, 42 years driving, C&S Wholesale Grocers. He is driving a 2019 Volvo VNR day cab with Volvo D13 engine;

• Mark Casey, 1 year driving, Hirschbach. He is driving a 2019 Freightliner Cascadia sleeper with Detroit DD15 engine;

• Glen Williams, 30 years driving, Hogan Transportation. He is driving a 2020 International LT day cab with Cummins X15 engine;

• Dustin Whitener, 11 years driving, J.B. Hunt. He is driving a 2019 International LT sleeper with Cummins X15 engine;

• Rita Bare, 20 years driving, Meijer. She is driving a 2019 Freightliner Cascadia with Detroit DD13 engine

• Lou Martinez, 14 years driving, PepsiCo. He is driving a 2019 Peterbilt 579 day cab with Paccar MX-11 engine;

• Travis Lauer, 4 years driving, Ploger Transportation. He is driving a 2018 Volvo VNR sleeper with Volvo D11 engine;

• Michael Tam, 2 years driving, Schneider. He is driving a 2019 Freightliner Cascadia sleeper with Detroit DD15 engine;

• Beau White, 36 years driving, Southeastern Freight Lines. He is driving a 2019 Kenworth T680 day cab with Cummins X15 engine; and 

• Darin Salgado, 32 years driving, UPS. He is driving a 2019 Kenworth T680 day cab with Westport 12G engine.

The 10 fleets participating in the regional study include three returning companies, Hirschbach, Ploger Transportation and PepsiCo, that participated in NACFE's long-haul study in 2017.

"It's clear to us as we've gotten into this that we believe that these 10 fleets are giving us a glimpse into the future and what we mean by that is how they move freight with the lightest technologies around," Roeth said.

The 10 drivers must stay within a 300-mile geofenced area and the technologies on their trucks must be readily available in the marketplace.

Shell has returned as the title sponsor. It will be joined by PepsiCo, Geotab, EPA SmartWay, LinkeDrive and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory as event sponsors.

NACFE released its latest report, More Regional Haul: An Opportunity for Trucking?, in April.

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