inbound

While driving on a highway recently, a truck trailer with an oddly shaped back end caught our eye. We pulled alongside to check it out and saw an extension attached to the back of the trailer that looked like the top of a cardboard box with its flaps partially folded inward. It was a “TrailerTail,” a patented device developed by ATDynamics that reduces low-pressure suction drag directly behind the trailer. According to the manufacturer, the attachment increases fuel efficiency by an average of 6. 6 percent at 65 mph. When the device is paired with trailer “skirts” or “wings” that hang below the vehicle’s sides, fuel savings can reach 10 percent.

The fuel savings from aerodynamic attachments are substantial, according to FPInnovations’ Performance Innovation Transport (PIT), a nonprofit engineering and research group that serves the North American trucking industry. The Montreal-based organization has been conducting tests on trailers equipped with side skirts and undercarriage aerodynamic devices for five years. In its most recent tests, PIT found that trailers with side skirts consumed 6. 69 percent less fuel on average than similar vehicles without skirts. Trailers with undercarriage aerodynamic devices consumed 1.43 percent less fuel on average than similar units without the deflectors, PIT said.

For more information about the tests, visit pit.fpinnovations.ca. ;

Truck trailers sprout
wings, tails, and skirts

It’s awfully hard to resist the siren call of a shiny new lift truck, especially the high-tech marvels that are on the market today. But not everyone needs or can afford the latest and greatest, so dealers, manufacturers, and third parties offer used trucks for sale, lease, or rent.

These days, used lift trucks are hot commodities both here and abroad. And dealers and resellers are finding it a challenge to meet demand, according to Allen C. Rawson, president and CEO of Atlas Toyota Material Handling Schiller Park, Ill. In addition to being one of the largest-volume Toyota dealers in the United States, Atlas is a wholesaler of used trucks of all makes.

“Selling them is easy,” Rawson said in an interview. “It’s buying them
that’s the challenge.”
The main reason used trucks are in short supply is that during the
Great Recession, sales of new forklifts in the United States declined by
approximately 50 percent from previous years’ levels, says Dave Moran,
vice president at Crown Equipment Corp. “This impacted the supply of
four- to five-year-old forklifts available for the used truck market
today,” he explains.

Rawson said the two years following the recession produced the lowest level of trade-ins and lease returns—the source of many of the trucks in rental fleets—he had seen in 15 years. As a result, wholesale prices of used trucks have been rising, which in turn is bumping up retail prices, he said.

That doesn’t mean the rental market has dried up, though. Rawson expects to see continuing strong demand and is actively seeking out good-quality used equipment nationwide. Other dealers and manufacturers are working to keep adequate stocks available. Crown, for one, updated its rental fleet in 2008; with the addition of lease returns, its supply of used equipment is “healthy,” Moran says. ;

Hot commodity: Used lift trucks

With so much high-speed, high-tech material handling equipment around these days, it might seem the lowly caster wouldn’t merit much attention. Not so, according to Hamilton Caster, which makes a wide variety of casters, wheels, carts, and trailers that keep things rolling in the warehouse and elsewhere. The company’s blog, aptly named “The Revolution,” shows that casters can be surprisingly interesting.

One blog entry, “Even the Statue of Liberty Runs on Hamilton Casters,” tells how the longtime food and souvenir concessioner on the island where Lady Liberty stands has relied on the company’s casters and powered carts for half a century. Recently, Hamilton replaced casters that had been in service there for 50 years.

Another, especially timely post, “ 11 Ways Hamilton Powers Football Season,” explains that Hamilton casters can be found under the Sunday Night Football mobile broadcast desk and in the Arizona Cardinals’ new scoreboard, and that they helped to carry the Lombardi Trophy onto the field after this year’s Super Bowl.