Ploger Transportation Pushes 10 Mpg With a Far-From-Typical Powertrain Spec
Ploger Transportation’s diverse customer base provides a mix of light and heavy loads, many multi-stop routes and high exposure to urban environments. Photos: Ploger Transportation
“>
Ploger Transportation’s diverse customer base provides a mix of light and heavy loads, many multi-stop routes and high exposure to urban environments. Photos: Ploger Transportation
“>
Right-sizing is proving to be an effective way of maximizing fuel economy with literally no performance penalty, says Joel Morrow of Bellevue, Ohio-based Ploger Transportation. The company’s director of research and development, he’s also a driver and test pilot running the same truck every day on revenue runs.
“In general freight especially, drivers and owners over-estimate their duty cycles – and not by a little bit,” he says. “They get caught believing they need 550 hp and 1,850 lb-ft or they just won’t get anywhere. We’re living proof that’s just not so.”
At Morrow’s direction, Ploger recently put a new truck into service with a very interesting spec. He drives it and sends performance reports to the company and to Volvo Trucks. As of this writing, the truck has clocked about 30,000 miles with lifetime mpg standing at 8.5. A LinkeDrive report for a weeklong period from August 11-18 (see next page) shows 10.47 mpg with 2.43% idle time over 2,398 miles.
The route to an unusual spec
Ploger is a diverse carrier hauling mostly high-cube multi-drop loads to customer retail locations in urban areas predominantly east of the Mississippi. Backhauls range from steel coils and roofing shingles to scrap paper. The trucks are usually loaded close to gross on the way home, with lighter outbound loads. A typical outbound leg would be 800-1,000 miles with seven or eight drops, with a single-stop backhaul. There’s lots of stop-and-go driving, docking, and congestion to deal with, and when he’s out on the highway Morrow unashamedly runs as close to 70 mph as he can where speed limits permit.
“We had a couple of high-speed customers with multiple pickups and drops, so we …Read the rest of this story
