counterbalanced trucks at the shipping and receiving
docks, and five sit-down three-wheel trucks for the freezer
and cooler operations. Those are battery-operated trucks
that will be converted to fuel cells early next year. In the
meantime, the batteries are being managed with Sackett
Systems’ Hydra-Handler battery handling system, which
will be removed when the conversion is completed.
Central Grocers has outsourced fleet maintenance to Yale
Equipment & Services, which has been a vendor to the grocer for more than 40 years. That includes maintaining the
fuel cell units under a full maintenance contract.
hydrogen fueling stations located at strategic locations
throughout the facility. Two more will be added when the
other trucks are converted early next year.
In addition, Coari said, trucks operating on hydrogen fuel
cells are more like internal-combustion vehicles than battery trucks in that they operate at close to full power
throughout the shift. With battery-operated trucks (
particularly those powered by direct-current batteries), voltage
drops as the day wears on, making the vehicles sluggish.
Finally, eliminating the need for a battery room has
meant a more productive use of DC floor space.
PHOTO COURTESY OF YALE EQUIPMENT & SERVICES
No more lines
Despite the higher startup costs, Coari is confident that
using fuel cells will yield long-term savings for Central
Grocers. “Plug Power made it very attractive to go with
them,” he said. “The initial cost is higher, but we will make
up the difference in labor savings.”
In particular, labor productivity will improve, he
explained, by eliminating the time workers take to exchange
batteries in a traditional battery room operation. Typically,
he said, a battery exchange takes between five and 15 minutes, and it’s not unusual to have several operators waiting
in line to switch out batteries. Refueling at hydrogen stations will take no more than five minutes, and sometimes as
little as two minutes. The new DC currently has three
Delayed gratification
All told, Central Grocers expects the savings to add up to
$1.5 million over 10 years, most of that in the last five
years.
Despite those impressive savings, the technology is not
for everyone. For one thing, the initial acquisition cost is
substantially higher for fuel cells than for battery-operated
trucks, Anglewicz says, which means the technology probably won’t benefit small-scale operations. “From our perspective, you probably need a minimum of 50 to 75 trucks
and a two-shift operation,” he says. But for large fleets in
operations that are willing to wait for a payback, fuel cells
offer benefits in fast fueling times, operating efficiency, and
perhaps reduced maintenance costs.
