W.B. Mason Adds Workhorse Hybrid-Electric Step Van to Fleet

Photo courtesy of Workhorse Group

Office products dealer W.B. Mason has taken delivery of its first Workhorse electric, range-extended step van, leased through Ryder System.

The Workhorse E-Gen electric vehicle has an average range of 120 miles on a single charge and reduces vehicle emissions by 75% compared to a conventional step van, according to the company. The vehicle has a proprietary chassis design, powertrain, battery management system, and real-time Emtron telematics system.

"Adding Workhorse E-Gen electric vehicles to our fleet promotes efficiency and an even better delivery experience for our drivers and customers," Leo J. Meehan III, president and CEO of W.B. Mason.

The powertrain combines a lithium-ion battery pack and a BMW 2-cylinder gasoline engine that is used in the BMW i3 to extend the range of the vehicle. The step van will operate on electric power for the first 60 miles, and the gasoline engine can double the range to 120 miles.

Ryder is the primary distributor and provider of service and support for Workhorse's light- and medium-duty range-extended electric vehicles in North America.

"W.B. Mason is a national leader in last-mile delivery, and their sophisticated body designs demonstrate their innovation in vehicles," said Steve Burns, chief executive officer of Workhorse. "The adoption of Workhorse E-Gen step vans takes that innovation a step further with the integration of cutting-edge, sustainable electric transportation."

Related: BMW's Hybrid Tech to Power Workhorse Delivery Trucks

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Marangoni Names Armstrong VP of Business Development

Clif Armstrong Photo: Marangoni Tread North America

Marangoni Tread North America named Clif Armstrong vice president of business development.

Armstrong has an extensive background in the tire industry, working with Pirelli Industrial, Continental Tire, and Yokohama Tire. In his new role, he will be tasked with contributing to increasing Marangoni's market strength, market share, and customer satisfaction.

He served in a variety of executive functions including sales, marketing, operations, and developing a tire-company-owned commercial store network.

Marangoni Tread North America is a full-service supplier and distributes its retread products Ringtread (The Splice-Less Retread) and Unitread through a network of licensed independent tire dealers and retreaders throughout the United States and Canada.

Related: Marangoni Attacks Cheap Foreign Tires with 'Retread Instead' Campaign

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The Cyber Threat From Within

You're the operations manager of a major truckload carrier. It's Tuesday, a little after 2 p.m. The morning rush is over, the drivers and customers are all reasonably happy, and you're gearing up for the onslaught of late-afternoon messages from customers wondering where their trucks are and drivers alerting you that they can't load until tomorrow. It's a typical day — until you get a call from a driver with something out of the ordinary.

“My engine has just shut down and I'm sitting dead in the center lane of the Cross-Bronx expressway,” he says. “There were no warnings, no red or yellow lights. It just quit. Traffic was too heavy for me to get over to the shoulder, so I'm sitting here blocking traffic. What a mess.”

Then your phone chirps with a text message: “Send 25,000 in Bitcoin and you can have your truck back.”

If you're chuckling, saying, “No, that could never happen,” wipe the smile off your face. It has already happened — so far only in a lab, but it's likely to happen in real life if truck makers, regulators and fleets don't take steps to protect certain vulnerabilities in the basic electronic architecture of nearly every truck built in the past 25 years or so.

A large part of the potential threat comes from the J1939 data bus. As the Society of Automotive Engineers defines it, “J1939 is a common communication architecture that offers an open interconnect system allowing ECUs associated with different component manufacturers to communicate with each other.”

But while J1939's open design provides a great deal of efficiency to the industry, it also makes it vulnerable.

“We worked, as an industry, to develop that open architecture of J1939 so that we could have this great flexibility, as fleets and as OEMs to work collaboratively,” says Gary ...Read the rest of this story

Ozark offers new driver pay package

Ozark Motor Lines, Inc., a family-owned ground transportation services company based in Memphis, TN, is putting a new pay package in place for its drivers; increasing both cents per mile and accessorial pay.

Starting rates for linehaul drivers under the new pay package are 41 cents per mile for drivers with less than a year of experience all the way up to 46 cents per mile for drivers with five or more years of experience, with pay now topping out at 48 cents per mile.

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Anheuser-Busch, Convoy expand relationship

Anheuser-Busch announced an enhanced multi-year agreement with Convoy, making the technology start-up the “trucking service provider” for shipments.

Anheuser-Busch has already been using Convoy for some on-demand beer shipments. The companies were recently profiled on CNBC during a real-time delivery.

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InTu Mobility introduces Diesel I.O.

InTu Mobility launched its new DIESEL I.O. Intelligent Optimization solution for heavy-duty diesel engines. The launch of Diesel I.O. is taking place this week at The Risk Management Summit in Las Vegas.

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Heavy-truck sales grow in U.S., Canada

Last month, U.S. heavy-truck sales grew to 36,057 units – up 7.1% – compared with 2016's 32,357, according to WardsAuto data. In Canada, big truck sales also continued to rise – up 15.9% to 4,014 in September – for the seventh consecutive monthly year-over-year gain, according to Wards.

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