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Fleet Owner / October 13, 2017 Stoughton Trailers announced it has released its newly designed Platinum Series Grain Trailer. According to the company, the trailers are available in 34-ft., 40-ft. and 42-ft. lengths in eight models to fit a variety of agriculture needs. All Platinum Series grain trailers come standard with a 34º hopper slope for faster and better cleanouts, the company noted. The Platinum Plus 2-stage door, constructed of corrosion resistant materials, decreases the amount of torque needed by the operator to begin emptying the load, the company added. In addition, the liner is now removable, enabling removal to service the trailer components behind the liner panels. To provide greater durability, strength and stability, Platinum Series new front wall is made of composite panels with stainless steel front corners as standard. The top divider rail is now 25% thicker to provide additional strength. Standard on all Platinum Series, aluminum subframe grain trailers have hot dipped galvanized steel supports which connect the subframe to the cross members. In combination with the aluminum subframe, this offers a more durable and corrosion resistant solution. The front upper rail and top shelf have been redesigned to improve strength. The company added that the lights on the upper rear header of the trailer now function as brake lights and turn signals. The work area lights are standard, offering a solution when unloading at night. Each hopper/trap is equipped with 3 mini LED lights, integrated into the lower trap frame to greatly reduce the chance of being damaged. The crank area is equipped with 1 mini LED light. All Platinum Series grain trailers come standard with two rows of 7 mini LED lights on 40- and 42-ft. trailer models. Optional features include: Stainless steel rear panels Electric traps Electric tarps .

Toyota’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell Truck to Run Routes in California Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / October 13, 2017 Toyota Motor North America has announced that its Project Portal Class 8 hydrogen fuel cell truck has completed initial testing and development and will begin regular drayage routes at ports in Southern California starting in late October. Project Portal has already completed more than 4,000 successful miles of testing while pulling drayage-rated cargo and will begin moving goods from select Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach terminals to surrounding rail yards and warehouses for distribution on Oct. 23. Project Portal was originally announced in April of this year as a proof of concept to determine the feasibility of fuel cell technology for heavy-duty trucks in drayage operations. With initial testing complete, the truck will log around 200 miles worth of daily trips from the twin ports. The localized, frequent route patterns are designed to test the drayage duty-cycle capabilities from the fuel cell system while capturing real-world performance data. As the study progresses, Toyota will introduce the truck to longer-haul routes. The initial feasibility study operations will be managed by the TMNA Project Portal team in collaboration with Toyota’s Service Parts Accessories Operations group and its drayage provider, Southern Counties Express. “Toyota has led the way in expanding the understanding and adoption of fuel cell technology,” said Bob Carter, TMNA executive vice president. “From the introduction of the Mirai passenger vehicle to the creation of the heavy-duty fuel cell system in Project Portal, Toyota continues to demonstrate the versatility and scalability of the zero-emission fuel cell powertrain.” Project Portal is a fully functioning heavy-duty truck concept that generates more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 lb.-ft. of torque from two Mirai fuel cell stacks and a 12kWh battery - a relatively small battery to support Class 8 load operations. The concept’s gross combined weight capacity is 80,000 pounds and its estimated driving range is more than 200 miles per fill, under normal drayage operation.

Testing trucks at Navistar's proving grounds Fleet Owner / October 12, 2017 Navistar brought a slew of its new and “enhanced” truck and tractor models – including the all-new International HV Series in a variety of vocational configurations – to its 675-acre proving grounds in New Carlisle, IN, this week as part of a ride and drive event for journalists. The facility’s three-mile, three-lane oval, and off-road "severe service" durability course gave journalists a chance to get an up-close, hands-on feel for Navistar’s product line, including trucks equipped with its proprietary 12.4-liter A26 engine. Photo gallery - http://fleetowner.com/trucks/testing-trucks-navistars-proving-grounds#slide-0-field_images-228441

U.S. unveils proposal to boost autos content in NAFTA Reuters / October 13, 2017 WASHINGTON -- The United States on Friday unveiled hotly contested proposals for higher regional autos content in the North American Free Trade Agreement, three sources said, casting further doubt on the chances of reaching a deal to modernize the pact. Washington made its move a day after insisting that NAFTA contain a sunset clause that could mean the deal expires in five years. Canada and Mexico, the two other members of the pact, strongly oppose both ideas. A Mexican source with direct knowledge of the talks called the auto content proposal "absurd." Sources familiar with the talks say the mood is bad and question whether the negotiations can be wrapped up by the end of the year as planned. President Donald Trump, who complains that NAFTA has been a disaster for the United States, is threatening to walk away from the deal unless major changes are made. The U.S. side made its auto proposal during the fourth of seven planned rounds of talks on the treaty. Ensuring that autos need more regional content to qualify for NAFTA tariff-free access is one of the Trump administration's key demands. Canada and Mexico say such a move would disrupt the highly integrated continental auto industry. One of the sources said the United States wants to increase the North American content requirement for trucks, autos and large engines to 85 percent from 62.5 percent. Furthermore, Washington insists 50 percent of content must be U.S.-made. Trump administration officials say current content rules are too lax and have allowed auto companies to bring in too many cheap parts from China and other low-wage Asian countries. They are also seeking to halt the migration of vehicle production and manufacturing jobs to Mexico from the United States. Auto industry groups say substantially increasing local content requirements would raise costs, hurt regional competitiveness and cause many companies to forego NAFTA's benefits and simply pay the 2.5 percent U.S. tariff for imported cars and many parts. Trump has made no secret that he prefers bilateral trade deals, and skeptics wonder whether the U.S. demands are part of a strategy designed to ensure the current talks fail. 'Poison pills' The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had listed the U.S. autos demands among a number of "poison pill" proposals that it said would torpedo the talks. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Thursday for talks, and later said Canada would not walk away from the table. Both men said they were committed to a "win-win-win" deal. Canadian officials say it is too soon to write off the talks. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo are due to meet in Washington on Tuesday to take stock of the negotiations. Metals verification Other people briefed on the talks told Reuters that the U.S. autos proposal would require automakers to verify the use of North American steel, aluminum, copper and plastic resins in their vehicles. A spokeswoman for Lighthizer declined to comment. Canadian and Mexican government officials were not immediately available for comment. “The NAFTA's rule of origin for autos is already the highest in any trade agreement in the world but the administration reportedly would like to raise it to 85 percent,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President for International Policy John Murphy said on Friday in a statement. “However, higher requirements for North American content would actually incentivize manufacturers to cease trading under the agreement and instead simply pay the low U.S. most-favored nation tariff (just 2.5 percent).”

The People First Warranty | Volkswagen “Rain” Commercial Volkswagen USA / October 13, 2017 .

Someone makes an intelligent post relating to the subject of the thread (my thread), and you make such a remark. You have the right to post anything you like on any thread, including mine, but I likewise have the right to stop posting the news.....and I will.....if this is going to start up again.

Ford offers repairs to prevent exhaust leaks in 1.4 million Explorers Reuters / October 13, 2017 WASHINGTON -- Ford Motor Co. said on Friday it will offer free repairs to North American owners of more than 1.4 million Explorer SUVs to help ensure that carbon monoxide and other exhaust gases cannot get into the vehicles, following the U.S. government's decision to upgrade an investigation into the issue in July. Several U.S. police agencies have raised concerns about potentially deadly carbon monoxide gas entering the cabins of Ford Explorers that had been adapted for law enforcement uses. Federal regulators have said they are aware of more than 2,700 complaints, three crashes and 41 injuries that may be linked to exposure to carbon monoxide among police and civilian 2011-2017 Explorer vehicles. Ford said its investigation has not found "carbon monoxide levels that exceed what people are exposed to every day" in the 1.4 million civilian vehicles. There is no U.S. government standard for in-vehicle carbon monoxide levels. Ford says it believes the vehicles are safe and is making the offer, which it is not classifying as a recall, in response to customer concerns. The automaker said starting November 1, dealers will reprogram the air conditioner, replace the liftgate drain valves and inspect sealing of the rear of the vehicle. The fix covers about 1.3 million U.S. vehicles and about 100,000 in Canada and Mexico. Ford declined to comment on the potential financial impact of the service offer that will last through the end of 2018. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in July upgraded and expanded a probe into 1.33 million Ford Explorer SUVs over reports of exhaust odors in vehicle compartments and exposure to carbon monoxide. Police agencies have reported two crashes that may be linked to carbon monoxide exposure and a third incident involving injuries related to carbon monoxide exposure. NHTSA said it is evaluating preliminary testing that suggests carbon monoxide levels may be elevated in certain driving scenarios. Ford has issued four technical service bulletins related to the exhaust odor issue to address complaints from police fleets and other owners. In July, Ford said it would pay to repair police versions of its Ford Explorer SUVs to correct possible carbon monoxide leaks that may be linked to crashes and injuries after some police reports temporarily halted use of the vehicles over carbon monoxide concerns. The city of Austin, Texas, said in July it would remove all 400 of the city’s Ford Explorer SUVs from use for additional testing and repairs after the city said 20 police officers were found with elevated levels of carbon monoxide. The department returned the vehicles to service after repairs and testing. In 2016, Ford agreed to settle a U.S. class-action lawsuit involving 1 million 2011-2015 Explorer SUVs over exhaust odor complaints, including reimbursements of up to $500 for repairs. The company agreed to make repairs. That settlement was approved in June but has not taken effect because of a pending appeal.

Mystery: Did Audi ship thousands of cars with same VIN? And why? Sven Gustafson, Autoblog / August 24, 2017 Prosecutors investigating Audi's involvement in the Dieselgate scandal have stumbled onto a stranger mystery: Investigators found documents indicating that thousands of vehicles exported to China, Korea and Japan were stamped with identical vehicle identification numbers. The discovery, reported by the German business journal Handelsblatt, was made when investigators searched Audi's audit department for documents related to the Dieselgate scandal during a wide-ranging raid in March. It came after the German Transport Ministry accused the company of cheating on emissions testing for 24,000 Audi A7 and A8 diesels. According to the report, Audi's auditors had the documents about duplicate VINs because they were assessing a "risk of discovery." Audi professed ignorance, with a spokesman saying, "We are not aware of the fact the VIN numbers have been issued more than once." VIN numbers are supposed to be unique to each vehicle, with 17 digits and capital letters that identify that vehicle's DNA — including features such as where a car was built, the model year and engine specifications. They're used to track recalls, ownership histories, registrations and thefts, among other things. Under EU and German laws, VIN numbers are supposed to remain unduplicated for at least 30 years. Investigators told Handelsblatt they were puzzled as to why Audi would produce vehicles under common VIN numbers. Audi, a division of Volkswagen Group, in June issued a recall for around 24,000 A7 and A8 models built between 2009 and 2013. It later said it would update engine software blamed for the emissions cheating scandal on up to 850,000 diesel cars. But the VIN mystery adds a new wrinkle.

Green Car Congress / October 12, 2017 The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $4 million for research projects on medium- and heavy-duty natural gas engine technologies. (DE-FOA-0001813) The objective of the new FOA is to address barriers to adoption of natural gas vehicles through early-stage research on medium- and heavy-duty on-road engine technologies. The programmatic goal is to enable natural gas engines that can cost-effectively achieve diesel-like efficiency while meeting current and future emissions standards [a product already available called Westport HPDI 2.0]. A public workshop on natural gas vehicles was held at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on 25 July 2017 to identify early-stage research needs for natural gas engines. Feedback from industry participants at the workship showed interest in low-TRL-level aspects of natural gas efficiency, as well as lubricant effects and advanced modeling. Both criteria air pollutants and GHG control are of interest for NG vehicles; feedback also suggested that research needs exist for addressing the unique NG challenges of methane conversion for all combustion strategies. The workshop also identified several low- and medium-TRL research topics related to NG fuels and fuel systems which can increase the efficiency of medium- and heavy-duty NG vehicles. The DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) is seeking projects to address barriers to the adoption of natural gas vehicles through early-stage research. Projects competitively selected through this funding opportunity will complement additional early-stage research on medium- and heavy-duty natural gas engine technologies at DOE national laboratories. Specifically, this topic addresses engine efficiency improvements, fuel system enhancements, and emission after-treatment technologies, which are barriers to the adoption of natural gas engine technologies. CNG engine efficiency needs to be closer to that of diesel in order to improve the viability of natural gas fueled medium and heavy-duty trucks. There are significant barriers to achieving these efficiency levels that can be addressed with early-stage, low technology readiness level (TRL) research, including: Fundamental experiments and modeling to understand fuel mixing and combustion for improved engine design. Advanced ignition systems to enable highly-efficient dilute combustion. Fundamental catalysis research for after-treatment solutions to meet emissions standards with advanced combustion technology. Potential technologies include (but are not limited to) combustion strategies, engine subsystems, emission control systems, fuel systems, and controls. A complete engine development project is outside the scope of this effort, but engine subsystem research must have a plausible pathway to higher engine efficiency. Teams are encouraged to include medium- and heavy-duty vehicle or engine manufacturers but it is not required. DOE anticipates making approximately 2-3 awards under this FOA. Individual awards may vary between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 million. The Department’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) funds early-stage, high-risk research to generate knowledge upon which industry can develop and deploy innovative transportation energy technologies that improve efficiency, lower costs for families and businesses, and increase the use of secure, domestic energy sources.

Toyota fuel-cell Class 8 prototype to start drayage routes at Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach Green Car Congress / October 12, 2017 Unveiled earlier this year (earlier post), Toyota Motor North America’s (TMNA) “Project Portal” fuel-cell-powered Class 8 truck proof-of-concept has completed more than 4,000 successful development miles, while progressively pulling drayage rated cargo weight, and emitting nothing but water vapor. With testing and development miles completed, Project Portal will begin initial feasibility study routes, moving goods from select Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach terminals to surrounding rail yards and warehouses for distribution. Toyota estimates the truck’s daily trips will total around 200 miles (322 km). These localized, frequent route patterns are designed to test the demanding drayage duty-cycle capabilities of the fuel cell system while capturing real world performance data. As the study progresses, longer haul routes will be introduced. The initial feasibility study operations will be managed by the TMNA Project Portal team, in collaboration with Toyota’s Service Parts Accessories Operations group and its drayage provider, Southern Counties Express (SCE). Project Portal is the next step in Toyota’s effort to broaden the application of zero-emission fuel cell technology that can serve a range of industries. It is a fully functioning heavy-duty truck with the power and torque capacity to conduct port drayage operations while producing zero emissions. Heavy duty vehicles make up a significant percentage of the annual emissions output at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and the Portal feasibility study may provide another path to further reduce emissions. The Project Portal heavy-duty truck concept generates more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 lb-ft (1,797 N·m) of torque from two Mirai fuel cell stacks and a 12kWh battery—a relatively small battery to support Class 8 load operations. (Earlier post.) The concept’s gross combined weight capacity is 80,000 lbs., and its estimated driving range is more than 200 miles per fill, under normal drayage operation. .

Green Car Congress / October 13, 2017 California-based Efficient Drivetrains, Inc. (EDI - http://efficientdrivetrains.com/) has announced the expansion of its electric drive solutions portfolio into the construction industry. In partnership with Chinese truckmaker Shaanxi Automotive, the world’s tenth largest medium- and heavy-duty truck manufacturer, EDI is introducing a plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) cement mixer truck. The collaboration integrates the Efficient Drivetrains EDI PowerDrive 8000 PHEV drivetrain and EDI PowerSuite vehicle control software into a Shaanxi Automotive, Class-8, 32-ton cement mixer truck. The initial vehicle is currently in final stages of integration and testing, and will be completed for field deployment in Q4 of 2017. The immense scale of urbanization in China—the fastest in history—paired with rigorous government-led mandates to reduce emissions has created a substantial rise in the electrification of medium and heavy duty vehicles. Shaanxi Automotive has committed to new energy as part of its portfolio of vehicle offerings, and continues to lead the way in providing zero-emissions vehicles featuring electric as a primary fuel source—representing almost 50% of its market share. The collaboration between Efficient Drivetrains and Shaanxi Automotive to capture the construction industry marks the third successful initiative for the two companies, with PHEV mass transit (Class-6 and 7 city buses) and Class-8 port truck offerings available today as part of previous engagements. The modular architecture—an inline form of the EDI PowerDrive product family—has enabled Shaanxi Automotive quickly to integrate EDI’s solution offering across several industries, while providing full OEM vehicle performance expected by fleet operators. With the integration of EDI’s drivetrain and vehicle control software into the Class-8 PHEV cement mixer truck, fleet operators will benefit from significant reduction in fuel consumption, and eliminates the need for engine idle by electrifying the operation of the mixer. Truck operators will experience the expected full power vehicle performance of the OEM, while eliminating harmful emissions. The demonstration vehicle also utilizes a low-cost drivetrain system, which makes electrification of construction vehicles an affordable option for OEMs in China. EDI has a well-established market footprint in the Asia Pacific region, with multiple offices in China, as well as presence in India and Taiwan. .

We’ve played chicken with food safety … and we’ve lost The Guardian / October 13, 2017 The dirty business of chicken processing is in the spotlight, with a Guardian undercover abattoir investigation revealing dodgy practices. As supermarkets suspend sales from the factory involved and Labour promises a parliamentary inquiry, some members of the food industry are sighing at the media’s obsession with the subject of poultry hygiene. But the subject will keep coming up, however much business wishes it away, because industrial chicken is one of the defining commodities of our era. Its cheapness comes at a high price. Meat production has quintupled in my lifetime, in large part thanks to the ubiquitous skinless factory chicken breast, and chicken accounts for around half of the meat we eat. At any one time there are more than twice as many chickens on Earth as humans – around 19 billion of them, bred to put on weight at turbocharged rates and mature in record time as uniform units of production that fit abattoir machinery. We have invented food Fordism – meat for the masses from the conveyor belt, no longer a luxury but an everyday ingredient. But, for all its apparent democratising possibilities, it is a commodity fraught with inescapable dilemmas. Intensive livestock production is one of the most significant drivers of climate breakdown. It contributes nearly one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, rivalling the whole global transport sector. True, feedlot cattle leave a greater environmental footprint than poultry, but if you care about mitigating global warming, plant-based proteins are far better than intensively reared birds. Most of us in developed countries eat far more protein than we actually need for health, and most people could do more for the climate by cutting meat than giving up their car and plane journeys. As the world’s population grows, the question of how we produce enough to feed everyone becomes ever more urgent. Intensively reared livestock is an inefficient way of meeting needs. Previous calculations based on global averages from the 1970s found that farming an acre of decent land produced 20kg (45lb) of animal protein; the same acre given over to producing wheat yielded 63kg of protein. In developed countries, which use more agrochemicals, protein yields from grain are now six to eight times higher. The comparison is not direct because it does not measure livestock protein conversion efficiency per acre, but research published in 2013 looked at how much protein you get from animals per 100 grams of grain protein fed to them. The finding for chickens was 40 grams (35 for eggs, 10 for pork and 5 for beef). If the grain that is currently used to feed animals were fed directly to people, there might be just enough food to go round when population peaks. If instead we continue to spread our industrial meat habit to poorer countries, we’ll need three planets to feed the world. The ethical argument is overwhelming: we need to get back to thinking of meat as a luxury, to be enjoyed occasionally, if not entirely forsworn. The reason the sector is beset by repeated scandals is that it is economically unsustainable. Even leaving aside the big planetary questions, meat can only be this cheap if the price is paid elsewhere. The livestock revolution took off in the 1950s because of three factors: cheap energy, which allowed farmers to house animals indoors; cheap synthetic fertiliser, which produced surplus grain for concentrated feed; and the mass production of cheap drugs, particularly antibiotics – you can only keep large numbers of birds in close confinement if you have the means to control the disease that inevitably accompanies the practice. For centuries before that, farmers had been constrained in their production by how much their land could support. Chickens were fed waste and acted as scavengers of food and insects, allowed to range free so that they could eat food that would otherwise go unused, with the added advantage that they spread their manure as they went. The next leap forward for industrial chicken production came with the development of processing machinery in the 1960s – an engineering feat that automated the mass slaughter, plucking, eviscerating and cutting of birds in one continuous conveyor belt. Large numbers of workers are still needed to process chickens, but they are in low-skilled production-line jobs. All this slashed costs and allowed the populations of developed countries to consume meat in a completely new way. But now the consequences are coming home to roost. Energy is no longer cheap; nor is the grain needed for concentrated feed, despite agricultural subsidies. Some of the raw materials for fertiliser are running out globally. Frontline antibiotics needed for humans are losing their efficacy in large part because of overuse in farming. Supermarkets with their oligopolies of buying power have used cheap chicken as a weapon in their price wars and kept prices low, so that processors have to work on high volumes with low margins, despite the pressure of rising costs. The sector is highly concentrated, with just a few corporate players. Just five companies account for 90% of the birds slaughtered in Britain each week. The pressure to cut corners in factories and sweat capital-intensive machinery, leaving little time for cleaning, is intense. Food-borne illness caused by chicken is a stubborn problem. Meanwhile, if a supermarket wanted to go elsewhere to punish an errant supplier, it has little choice left. There’s plenty you could do to make it a more sustainable industry. You could slow the growing time and give birds more room on farms, using less engineered breeds that take 12 weeks, rather than just over a month to reach slaughter weight. That would help curb some of the cruellest aspects of the business, which see densely packed, overbred birds, prone to disease and bacterial infection, collapsing under their own weight. But that would cost more. In the factory you could slow the speed of the lines, so that cross-contamination of carcasses was less likely, and workers’ jobs less relentlessly tough and unpleasant, thus easing the pressure to break hygiene rules and making the sector more attractive to local staff. But that, too, would cost more. We know roughly how much more, since the top end of organic production already does these things, and a posh chicken from that sort of outlet is three to four times as expensive as a conventional supermarket one. But there are hardly votes in arguing we should pay that much for our chicken. Politicians dare not say it for fear of sounding Marie Antoinette-ish. But the price of cheap is too high, and we should probably be eating something else.

Antibiotic resistance could spell end of modern medicine, says chief medic The Guardian / October 13, 2017 England’s chief medical officer has repeated her warning of a “post-antibiotic apocalypse” as she urged world leaders to address the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. Prof Dame Sally Davies said that if antibiotics lose their effectiveness it would spell “the end of modern medicine”. Without the drugs used to fight infections, common medical interventions such as caesarean sections, cancer treatments and hip replacements would become incredibly risky and transplant medicine would be a thing of the past, she said. “We really are facing – if we don’t take action now – a dreadful post-antibiotic apocalypse. I don’t want to say to my children that I didn’t do my best to protect them and their children,” Davies said. Health experts have previously said resistance to antimicrobial drugs could cause a bigger threat to mankind than cancer. In recent years, the UK has led a drive to raise global awareness of the threat posed to modern medicine by antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Each year about 700,000 people around the world die due to drug-resistant infections including tuberculosis, HIV and malaria. If no action is taken, it has been estimated that drug-resistant infections will kill 10 million people a year by 2050. The UK government and the Wellcome Trust, along with others, have organised a call to action meeting for health officials from around the world. At the meeting in Berlin, the government will announce a new project that will map the spread of death and disease caused by drug-resistant superbugs. Davies said: “This AMR is with us now, killing people. This is a serious issue that is with us now, causing deaths. If it was anything else, people would be up in arms about it. But because it is hidden they just let it pass. “It does not really have a ‘face’ because most people who die of drug-resistant infections, their families just think they died of an uncontrolled infection. It will only get worse unless we take strong action everywhere across the globe. We need some real work on the ground to make a difference or we risk the end of modern medicine.” She added: “Not to be able to effectively treat infections means that caesarean sections, hip replacements, modern surgery, is risky. Modern cancer treatment is risky and transplant medicine becomes a thing of the past.” Davies said that if the global community did not act then the progress that had been made in Britain may be undermined. She estimated that about one in three or one in four prescriptions in UK primary care were probably not needed. “But other countries use vastly more antibiotics in the community and they need to start doing as we are, which is reducing usage,” she said. “Our latest data shows that we have reduced human consumption by 4.3% in 2014-15 from the year before.”

Q&A: 'A chicken worth eating tastes like a chicken that had a life worth living' The Guardian / October 13, 2017 Maryn McKenna is the author of Big Chicken (read our extract here): a look at how antibiotics fueled the rise of chicken from occasional treat to everyday protein source, regardless of what it does to our health. She speaks to Lucky Rock. LR: Before the 1940s, chickens were kept for egg laying and were rarely served at the dinner table. How did chicken become such a big industry? MM: The chickens we eat now are not what chickens used to be like. A whole bunch of things happened; from bringing technology to hatching eggs so that hens didn’t have to sit on eggs any more; from changing the nutrition of chickens so they could survive over the winter to changing the literal shape of chickens by crossbreeding them. To me, the most important thing that happened is that we fed them antibiotics routinely. I thought antibiotics were to treat sick humans. Why give them to chickens? It dates back to the late 1940s, the beginning of the antibiotic era. A biologist at one of the first antibiotic manufacturers discovered that if you give animals tiny doses that are far too small to cure an infection, they put weight on faster. Those tiny doses changed the mix of bacteria in the guts of chickens in such a way that it changed how they took nutrition from their food. A little while later it was discovered that slightly larger doses protected animals from infection. The first discovery leads to treating chickens as high-throughput proteins because you can move them through production faster. The second, preventative use, leads to cramming chickens together in tighter and tighter conditions because it makes it feasible to produce them in rapid and crowded quantities. So, it wasn’t a good development for the chickens? Animal welfare standards declined. Once you change the rate at which they grow by dosing them, and once you keep them in conditions that they naturally could not have withstood, it suddenly makes it more feasible to keep the birds in solid walled barns where they never see sunlight, to change their breeding such that they’re insatiably hungry and can’t stop eating; to change their shape so they have much more breast muscle. It turned out to be bad news for humans too, giving rise to deadly drug-resistant superbugs. How come? The animal gets those routine doses in their feed and water. The antibiotics go into their gut where they are fed into the gut bacteria. The bacteria become resistant and survive. They can leave the animal when we let the gut contents get on to the meat during slaughter. Or they exit with manure, which can get into groundwater and storm run-off, or dust in the wind, or on the skin and clothes of farm workers. Those resistant bacteria move away from the farm and eventually contact people who have no connection and potentially cause a drug-resistant infection in them. How long have we known about this? By the 1950s and 1960s, there are outbreaks of drug-resistant foodborne illness, from drug-resistant bacteria of the type that is in animals’ guts and cause illness when they get into humans’ systems – like E coli and salmonella. Several enterprising epidemiologists trace that chain of evidence backward and keep finding that it traces back to farms. Those outbreaks get successively larger across the decades. Then why didn’t we stop feeding animals antibiotics decades ago? The EU banned growth promoter use 11 years ago, and had introduced a partial ban in 1999. The UK government was the first to do something about this. There were some large outbreaks in the UK in the 1960s. The Swann commission reports in 1969 that growth promoters are a health hazard and should be banned and in 1971, parliament approves the measure. It almost immediately gets undermined [farmers continued to use the antibiotics, saying they were being used for prevention not growth promotion]. That happens time and time again. There’s a measure attempting to control antibiotic use, then someone finds a way around it. Can we produce enough cheap antibiotic-free meat to feed the world? We have this idea that an antibiotic-free animal has to be a happy animal gambolling on green hills. That is not necessarily the case. There are very large producers that are still raising birds in very large numbers, tens of thousands at a time, in very large barns. They are improving conditions in those. They’ve not only changed the diet, but they’re allowing the birds to exercise and they’re cutting windows in the barns so they can have natural light. So, forgoing antibiotics led them to take other welfare measures. They are the proof that it is possible to still produce animals for protein in an industrial high-throughput manner but relinquishing antibiotics. Do you eat chicken? I do. The book opens and ends with me stuffing my face with delicious (antibiotic-free) chicken. I wanted to make the point that I’m a meat-eater because one of the easiest ways to dismiss a critique or investigation of the way we produce meat is to say, “Oh, this is some kind of disguised vegan agenda.” Also, when we created the system of growing meat animals that we have, we elevated a bunch of values – efficiency, consistency and safety to some – and we completely forgot about flavour. To me, a chicken worth eating tastes like a chicken that had a life worth living, that got to move its legs, flap its wings, have some sunlight on its feathers. These things make a chicken have more texture because the muscles got used. When they get to vary their diets and not just have industrially produced soy and corn, you can taste that in the flesh too.

Maryn McKenna, The Guardian / October 13, 2017 Most meat animals are raised with the assistance of daily doses of antibiotics. By 2050, antibiotic resistance will cause a staggering 10 million deaths a year Every year I spend some time in a tiny apartment in Paris, seven stories above the mayor’s offices for the 11th arrondissement. The Place de la Bastille – the spot where the French revolution sparked political change that transformed the world – is a 10-minute walk down a narrow street that threads between student nightclubs and Chinese fabric wholesalers. Twice a week, hundreds of Parisians crowd down it, heading to the marché de la Bastille, stretched out along the center island of the Boulevard Richard Lenoir. Blocks before you reach the market, you can hear it: a low hum of argument and chatter, punctuated by dollies thumping over the curbstones and vendors shouting deals. But even before you hear it, you can smell it: the funk of bruised cabbage leaves underfoot, the sharp sweetness of fruit sliced open for samples, the iodine tang of seaweed propping up rafts of scallops in broad rose-colored shells. Threaded through them is one aroma that I wait for. Burnished and herbal, salty and slightly burned, it has so much heft that it feels physical, like an arm slid around your shoulders to urge you to move a little faster. It leads to a tented booth in the middle of the market and a line of customers that wraps around the tent poles and trails down the market alley, tangling with the crowd in front of the flower seller. In the middle of the booth is a closet-size metal cabinet, propped up on iron wheels and bricks. Inside the cabinet, flattened chickens are speared on rotisserie bars that have been turning since before dawn. Every few minutes, one of the workers detaches a bar, slides off its dripping bronze contents, slips the chickens into flat foil-lined bags, and hands them to the customers who have persisted to the head of the line. I can barely wait to get my chicken home. The skin of a poulet crapaudine – named because its spatchcocked outline resembles a crapaud, a toad – shatters like mica; the flesh underneath, basted for hours by the birds dripping on to it from above, is pillowy but springy, imbued to the bone with pepper and thyme. The first time I ate it, I was stunned into happy silence, too intoxicated by the experience to process why it felt so new. The second time, I was delighted again –and then, afterward, sulky and sad. I had eaten chicken all my life: in my grandmother’s kitchen in Brooklyn, in my parents’ house in Houston, in a college dining hall, friends’ apartments, restaurants and fast food places, trendy bars in cities and old-school joints on back roads in the south. I thought I roasted a chicken pretty well myself. But none of them were ever like this, mineral and lush and direct. I thought of the chickens I’d grown up eating. They tasted like whatever the cook added to them: canned soup in my grandmother’s fricassee, her party dish; soy sauce and sesame in the stir fries my college housemate brought from her aunt’s restaurant; lemon juice when my mother worried about my father’s blood pressure and banned salt from the house. This French chicken tasted like muscle and blood and exercise and the outdoors. It tasted like something that it was too easy to pretend it was not: like an animal, like a living thing. We have made it easy not to think about what chickens were before we find them on our plates or pluck them from supermarket cold cases. I live, most of the time, less than an hour’s drive from Gainesville, Georgia, the self-described poultry capital of the world, where the modern chicken industry was born. Georgia raises 1.4bn broilers a year, making it the single biggest contributor to the almost 9bn birds raised each year in the United States; if it were an independent country, it would rank in chicken production somewhere near China and Brazil. Yet you could drive around for hours without ever knowing you were in the heart of chicken country unless you happened to get behind a truck heaped with crates of birds on their way from the remote solid-walled barns they are raised in to the gated slaughter plants where they are turned into meat. That first French market chicken opened my eyes to how invisible chickens had been for me, and after that, my job began to show me what that invisibility had masked. My house is less than two miles from the front gate of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that sends disease detectives racing to outbreaks all over the world. For more than a decade, one of my obsessions as a journalist has been following them on their investigations – and in long late-night conversations in the United States and Asia and Africa, with physicians and veterinarians and epidemiologists, I learned that the chickens that had surprised me and the epidemics that fascinated me were more closely linked than I had ever realized. I discovered that the reason American chicken tastes so different from those I ate everywhere else was that in the United States, we breed for everything but flavor: for abundance, for consistency, for speed. Many things made that transformation possible. But as I came to understand, the single biggest influence was that, consistently over decades, we have been feeding chickens, and almost every other meat animal, routine doses of antibiotics on almost every day of their lives. Antibiotics do not create blandness, but they created the conditions that allowed chicken to be bland, allowing us to turn a skittish, active backyard bird into a fast-growing, slow-moving, docile block of protein, as muscle-bound and top-heavy as a bodybuilder in a kids’ cartoon. At this moment, most meat animals, across most of the planet, are raised with the assistance of doses of antibiotics on most days of their lives: 63,151 tons of antibiotics per year, about 126 million pounds. Farmers began using the drugs because antibiotics allowed animals to convert feed to tasty muscle more efficiently; when that result made it irresistible to pack more livestock into barns, antibiotics protected animals against the likelihood of disease. Those discoveries, which began with chickens, created “what we choose to call industrialized agriculture”, a poultry historian living in Georgia proudly wrote in 1971. Chicken prices fell so low that it became the meat that Americans eat more than any other – and the meat most likely to transmit food-borne illness, and also antibiotic resistance, the greatest slow-brewing health crisis of our time. For most people, antibiotic resistance is a hidden epidemic unless they have the misfortune to contract an infection themselves or have a family member or friend unlucky enough to become infected. Drug-resistant infections have no celebrity spokespeople, negligible political support and few patients’ organizations advocating for them. If we think of resistant infections, we imagine them as something rare, occurring to people unlike us, whoever we are: people who are in nursing homes at the end of their lives, or dealing with the drain of chronic illness, or in intensive-care units after terrible trauma. But resistant infections are a vast and common problem that occur in every part of daily life: to children in daycare, athletes playing sports, teens going for piercings, people getting healthy in the gym. And though common, resistant bacteria are a grave threat and getting worse. They are responsible for at least 700,000 deaths around the world each year: 23,000 in the United States, 25,000 in Europe, more than 63,000 babies in India. Beyond those deaths, bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics cause millions of illnesses – 2 million annually in the United States alone – and cost billions in healthcare spending, lost wages and lost national productivity. It is predicted that by 2050, antibiotic resistance will cost the world $100tn and will cause a staggering 10m deaths per year. Disease organisms have been developing defenses against the antibiotics meant to kill them for as long as antibiotics have existed. Penicillin arrived in the 1940s, and resistance to it swept the world in the 1950s. Tetracycline arrived in 1948, and resistance was nibbling at its effectiveness before the 1950s ended. Erythromycin was discovered in 1952, and erythromycin resistance arrived in 1955. Methicillin, a lab-synthesized relative of penicillin, was developed in 1960 specifically to counter penicillin resistance, yet within a year, staph bacteria developed defenses against it as well, earning the bug the name MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. After MRSA, there were the ESBLs, extended-spectrum beta-lactamases, which defeated not only penicillin and its relatives but also a large family of antibiotics called cephalosporins. And after cephalosporins were undermined, new antibiotics were achieved and lost in turn. Each time pharmaceutical chemistry produced a new class of antibiotics, with a new molecular shape and a new mode of action, bacteria adapted. In fact, as the decades passed, they seemed to adapt faster than before. Their persistence threatened to inaugurate a post-antibiotic era, in which surgery could be too dangerous to attempt and ordinary health problems – scrapes, tooth extractions, broken limbs – could pose a deadly risk. For a long time, it was assumed that the extraordinary unspooling of antibiotic resistance around the world was due only to misuse of the drugs in medicine: to parents begging for the drugs even though their children had viral illnesses that antibiotics could not help; physicians prescribing antibiotics without checking to see whether the drug they chose was a good match; people stopping their prescriptions halfway through the prescribed course because they felt better, or saving some pills for friends without health insurance, or buying antibiotics over the counter, in the many countries where they are available that way and dosing themselves. But from the earliest days of the antibiotic era, the drugs have had another, parallel use: in animals that are grown to become food. Eighty percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States and more than half of those sold around the world are used in animals, not in humans. Animals destined to be meat routinely receive antibiotics in their feed and water, and most of those drugs are not given to treat diseases, which is how we use them in people. Instead, antibiotics are given to make food animals put on weight more quickly than they would otherwise, or to protect food animals from illnesses that the crowded conditions of livestock production make them vulnerable to. And nearly two-thirds of the antibiotics that are used for those purposes are compounds that are also used against human illness – which means that when resistance against the farm use of those drugs arises, it undermines the drugs’ usefulness in human medicine as well. Resistance is a defensive adaptation, an evolutionary strategy that allows bacteria to protect themselves against antibiotics’ power to kill them. It is created by subtle genetic changes that allow organisms to counter antibiotics’ attacks on them, altering their cell walls to keep drug molecules from attaching or penetrating, or forming tiny pumps that eject the drugs after they have entered the cell. What slows the emergence of resistance is using an antibiotic conservatively: at the right dose, for the right length of time, for an organism that will be vulnerable to the drug, and not for any other reason. Most antibiotic use in agriculture violates those rules. Resistant bacteria are the result. Antibiotic resistance is like climate change: it is an overwhelming threat, created over decades by millions of individual decisions and reinforced by the actions of industries. It is also like climate change in that the industrialized west and the emerging economies of the global south are at odds. One quadrant of the globe already enjoyed the cheap protein of factory farming and now regrets it; the other would like not to forgo its chance. And it is additionally like climate change because any action taken in hopes of ameliorating the problem feels inadequate, like buying a fluorescent lightbulb while watching a polar bear drown. But that it seems difficult does not mean it is not possible. The willingness to relinquish antibiotics of farmers in the Netherlands, as well as Perdue Farms and other companies in the United States, proves that industrial-scale production can be achieved without growth promoters or preventive antibiotic use. The stability of Maïsadour and Loué and White Oak Pastures shows that medium-sized and small farms can secure a place in a remixed meat economy. Whole Foods’ pivot to slower-growing chicken – birds that share some of the genetics preserved by Frank Reese – illustrates that removing antibiotics and choosing birds that do not need them returns biodiversity to poultry production. All of those achievements are signposts, pointing to where chicken, and cattle and hogs and farmed fish after them, need to go: to a mode of production where antibiotics are used as infrequently as possible – to care for sick animals, but not to fatten or protect them. That is the way antibiotics are now used in human medicine, and it is the only way that the utility of antibiotics and the risk of resistance can be adequately balanced. Excerpted from Big Chicken by Maryn McKenna published by National Geographic on 12 September 2017. .

Scania Group Press Release / October 12, 2017 New truck generation chosen for cost, driver and performance appeal. Continuous performance, driver appeal and overall life costs prompted UK operator Chiltern Cold Storage to invest in new generation Scania trucks. “In this industry, driver recruitment and retention is an issue we all have to live with, but this is made so much easier by having a modern fleet with a good specification,” says Managing Director, Paul Jackson. “With Scania, the drivers just love the product. It’s a strong performer out on the road and offers a great working environment. In the new cabs it’s even more impressive.” Scania uptime and reliability are crucial Specialising in custom transport solutions for ambient, frozen and chilled distribution, Chiltern Cold Storage is heavily reliant on fleet uptime to meet the all-important time constraints that are central to these types of deliveries. Unsurprisingly, reliability plays a crucial role for the company when selecting its fleet, and Scania has proved its worth time and time again, making it the predominant brand in Chiltern’s 46-strong line-up. The latest additions, supplied by UK Scania dealer TruckEast, are two Scania R 450 Highline trucks. A real head-turner in their simplistic yet striking white and blue livery, the two new generation trucks are the first to enter Chiltern’s fleet; they will be followed by a further three before the end of this year. Last year Chiltern took delivery of 13 current generation models. The company has been a firm advocate of what it felt was already a great product, but it’s even happier now. “With the new generation, Scania has by far surpassed themselves. It’s a smoother drive, the gearbox and engine capability have improved and the noise – well that’s just another level of quiet,” states Jackson. Trucks’ impressive whole-life cost and fuel returns Pulling brand new multi-temp fridge trailers, the Scania R 450 trucks will operate nationally throughout the UK and are already reported to be achieving 23.5 litres/100 km on some trips. Paul Jackson explains “Fuel returns so far are impressive, but that’s just one element. For me it’s got to be about the whole life cost ­– the quality of the product, its reliability and the dealer back-up we get are just as important.” .

Scania Group Press Release / October 11, 2017 The Finnish postal service, Posti, has started operations with a Scania bioethanol fuelled truck. Posti is presently examining alternative fuel vehicles to select the technology best suited for its operations. Posti will assess life-cycle cost-effectiveness as well as how well vehicles meet their demanding delivery needs. “Our aim is to achieve lower fuel consumption relative to the transported payload,” says Juha Sinivuo, Head of Posti’s transport fleet. “That leads to a direct decrease in emissions and costs. In addition to alternative fuels vehicles, we are actively reducing environmental impact through the design and optimisation of transport routes as well as economical driving.” Bioethanol improves air quality The ED95 bioethanol fuel reduces CO2 emissions by up to 90 percent. Trials with heavy vehicles in Finland have demonstrated that bioethanol performs well and is reliable in Finnish climate conditions. Bioethanol is currently also in use in HSL’s buses, the Helsinki public transport company. The bioethanol fuel is supplied by the Finnish energy provider ST1. The company manufactures nearly carbon-free bioethanol from domestic waste and residue, such as animal by-products. “As an innovative company, it’s great that Posti is seeking new solutions and engage in improving air quality in cities,” says Matti Pentti, Director of Sales at St1 Oy. .

Kenworth T680 Advantage Features Special Decal Design for 53rd Annual U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Tour Kenworth Truck Co. Press Release / October 11, 2017 Whitewood Transport T680 To Carry “The People’s Tree” to Community Celebrations En Route to Washington, D.C. KIRKLAND, Wash. - A Kenworth T680 Advantage will transport the 53rd U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree from the Nov. 8 tree-cutting in the Kootenai National Forest in Montana to 15 community celebrations during the more than 2,000-mile journey en route to the tree-lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C., in early December. The Kenworth T680 Advantage’s distinctive decal design features the 2017 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree – Kootenai National Forest seal, brightly lit and colorfully adorned Christmas Tree, and the U.S. Capitol beneath a starry sky with the words “Big Sky. Big Tree. Big Journey.” The T680 also includes the logo of Billings, Montana-based Whitewood Transport. The company was selected as the hauler for this year’s tree due to its excellent reputation in Montana’s trucking industry, according to Bruce Ward, president of Choose Outdoors, a non-profit organization that assists the U.S. Forest Service with coordinating the annual tour. Whitewood Transport is a recent multiple-year recipient of the Motor Carrier of the Year, including the 2016 award, from the Motor Carriers of Montana. “It is an honor to be selected to carry the 2017 U.S. Capitol Christmas tree and to represent the great state of Montana during the tree’s journey to Washington, D.C.,” said Mike Wilson, owner of Whitewood Transport. “You can count on Whitewood Transport to deliver this special gift to the nation safely with the support of our friends at Kenworth.” Whitewood Transport’s Larry Spiekermeier, who has 1.6-million accident free miles, was selected to drive the special Kenworth T680 Advantage, which will haul a trailer specially designed for the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree Tour. The tour will make 10 stops in Montana before continuing with stops in North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri and Kentucky. “The annual lighting of the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree is a true American tradition. It’s an honor for Kenworth to help deliver the ‘The People’s Tree’ for the fourth consecutive year,” said Kurt Swihart, Kenworth marketing director. “The T680 Advantage features the PACCAR Powertrain, provides a very comfortable work environment for this year’s tour driver, and sports eye-catching graphics that thousands of people will see on the road and at the tour stops.” The fully loaded Kenworth T680 Advantage features the PACCAR Powertrain with the PACCAR MX-13 engine rated at 455-hp and 1,650 lb-ft of torque, new PACCAR 12-speed automated transmission, and PACCAR 40,000-pound tandem rear axle. The T680’s specifications include Kenworth’s TruckTech+ remote diagnostics, predictive cruise control, idle management system, driver performance center, and premium GT703 seats in addition to high-intensity discharge (HID) headlamps, Bendix® Wingman® Fusion™ driver assistance system, and tire-pressure monitoring system. The 76-inch sleeper is specified with the premium “Driver’s Studio” option package, which includes the Diamond VIT interior, 180-degree swivel passenger seat and rotating table to accommodate two people, drawer-style refrigerator, convenient space ideal for a microwave, premium audio package, and swivel TV mount for up to a 28-inch flat screen TV. The Driver’s Studio also offers a full-size wardrobe space for hanging clothes, multiple storage drawers, large storage space under the lower bunk, and 8-inch thick, luxury pocket coil mattress. For more information, including a complete tour schedule, visit the 2017 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree website (www.capitolchristmastree.com). .

Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ) / October 11, 2017 Billings, Montana-based Whitewood Transport will haul this year’s U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree on a more than 2,000 mile trek from the he Kootenai National Forest to Washington D.C. The 53rd U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree will be officially cut from the Montana forrest Nov. 8 and laid on a trailer specially designed for the tour. A Kenworth T680 Advantage will then embark on a tour of 15 community celebrations before it reaches its final destination in December. The Kenworth T680 Advantage’s distinctive decal design features the 2017 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree and the words “Big Sky. Big Tree. Big Journey.” The T680 also includes the logo of Whitewood Transport. “It is an honor to be selected to carry the 2017 U.S. Capitol Christmas tree and to represent the great state of Montana during the tree’s journey to Washington, D.C.,” said Mike Wilson, owner of Whitewood Transport. “You can count on Whitewood Transport to deliver this special gift to the nation safely with the support of our friends at Kenworth.” Whitewood Transport’s Larry Spiekermeier, who has 1.6-million accident free miles, was selected to drive the special Kenworth T680 Advantage. The tour will make 10 stops in Montana before continuing with stops in North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri and Kentucky. The fully loaded Kenworth T680 Advantage features the Paccar Powertrain with the MX-13 engine rated at 455-hp and 1,650 lb-ft of torque, new Paccar 12-speed automated transmission, and Paccar 40,000-pound tandem rear axle. The T680’s specifications include Kenworth’s TruckTech+ remote diagnostics, predictive cruise control, idle management system, driver performance center, and premium GT703 seats in addition to high-intensity discharge (HID) headlamps, Bendix(R) Wingman(R) Fusion(TM) driver assistance system, and tire-pressure monitoring system. The 76-inch sleeper is specified with the premium “Driver’s Studio” option package, which includes the Diamond VIT interior, 180-degree swivel passenger seat and rotating table to accommodate two people, drawer-style refrigerator, convenient space ideal for a microwave, premium audio package, and swivel TV mount for up to a 28-inch flat screen TV. The Driver’s Studio also offers a full-size wardrobe space for hanging clothes, multiple storage drawers, large storage space under the lower bunk, and 8-inch thick, luxury pocket coil mattress. .

Allison unveils xFE models for its 1000 Series and 2000 Series Fleet Owner / October 11, 2017 Allison Transmission announced availability of its latest fuel economy technology for its 1000 Series and 2000 Series. Referred to as xFE, designating extra fuel economy, the fully automatic bus and truck transmissions have demonstrated improvements up to 7%, according to the company. “Other than our electric hybrid products, xFE models represent the very best fuel economy technology we offer,” said John Coll, senior vice president of global marketing, sales and service for Allison Transmission. “Our goal with this expansion of the xFE portfolio is to also now achieve the best fuel economy from an automatic transmission in smaller, medium-duty buses and trucks.” The 1000 Series and 2000 Series xFE transmissions have the same space claim and ratings as current models, but incorporate a redesigned torque converter damper coupled with the FuelSense 2.0 Max package. The damper enables first range lock up, delivering more lock up operation and operating at lower engine speeds in higher ranges to further improve fuel economy, the company added. All xFE transmissions are compatible with alternative fuel engines. “The new design works to achieve enhanced fuel economy in start-stop dense, low average speed duty cycles,” said Coll. “Transit and city buses are the ideal candidates for this technology and that’s why we’ve remained focused on those applications.” First announced in 2015, xFE transmissions were exclusively available in the 3000 Series for bus applications. The new models represent the first expansion of the xFE portfolio and come standard with FuelSense 2.0.

Jack Roberts, Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / October 11, 2017 Germany's Volkswagen Truck and Bus Group laid out its long-term plans for shaping the future of transportation this week at its Innovation Day Summit, held in Hamburg, Germany. Andreas Renschler, member of the board of management for Volkswagen AG and chief executive officer of Volkswagen Truck and Bus GmbH, made extensive opening remarks at the conference, laying out VW’s vision for what it identifies as the three key areas crucial for the future of trucking, logistics and transporation: autonomous vehicles, connected vehicles, and clean transportation. Renschler began by noting that Volkswagen Truck and Bus began as a startup just two years ago, with a goal of creating a climate of cooperation among VW’s various brands competing in various transportation and logistics markets, including MAN, Scania, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Volkswagen Brazil, and Rio. According to Renschler, the effort by VW to coordinate the technological development paths of these brands occurred at “just the right time to shape the future of transportation as a group.” He added that the company’s research and development group, based in Sweden, was now coordinating and moderating each brand’s technological development efforts to coordinate and synchronize those projects across brands, companies, and countries with notable success. “We all know that logistics and transportation is changing massively,” Renschler added. “We must consider the needs of our customers – and their customers – as well as environmental issues, technology and infrastructure and the competitive landscape if we are to shape these changes. This challenges us to rethink our business and pursue the fast development of information technology and data processing, which offer us completely new worlds of possibilities. Ten years ago, our business was very much focused on truck hardware. Today, we are focused on both hardware and software solutions. By joining forces and brand competencies in focused areas, we look to massively increase efficiencies not only for our customers, but for the entire transportation system as well as for society as a whole and our environment.” Renschler said trucking remains a highly inefficient business today, with high shares of empty backhauls for trucks as well as “sub-optimal utilization” of assets. “Only 50% of overall vehicle capacity is actually used for transporting goods today,” he said. “But using very little data from connected vehicles will allow real-time capacity planning and bring supply and demand closer together. If other digital services are added into the equation, it could lead to capacity increases of up to 80%.” At the same time, Renschler said, connected and automated vehicle technologies would reduce truck-related accidents and corresponding fatalities in Europe. According to the VW executive, the automated driving “roap map” for VW will center on a “step by step” basis and said that various pilot cases from Level 1 to Level 5 automation were currently being carried out by the company. “We are gaining experience from these projects and will be ready to scale up what we’ve learned as soon as the appropriate regulations are in place,” he said. Looking ahead, Renschler said that VW would be ready to scale up autonomous vehicles for industrial applications in the next 18 to 24 months, with additional applications such as airport snow-plow trucks ready by 2025. Platooning will be the first step for long-haul autonomous applications, Renschler said, with mixed platoons running next year and VW autopilot systems in common use as early as 2022. “There is no question this technology will be a huge step forward in making our cities cleaner, safer and less congested,” he added. Urban applications for autonomous vehicles are more complex, Renschler said. Yet VW expects to have its first urban bus trials running at the “beginning of the next decade,” and sees the development of urban truck platoons transporting goods in specialized corridors as a realistic solution in the short-term future. “Much has to be done by policymakers to make these technically feasible projects become reality,” Renschler cautioned. “We will need new regulations relating to driver intervention rules and modified driver resting times as different levels of automation dictate different demands from drivers.” At the same time, Renschler called for accelerated development of road communication systems that are harmonized to communicate more efficiently alongside the increased efforts in vehicle communication systems. Renschler said that VW now has 300,000 fully connected trucks on the road in Europe and that the “vast majority” of trucks on the road will be connected by 2020. “To that end, we are now ready to rock the industry with our common, open, cloud-based platform developed jointly by MAN and Rio,” Renschler said. “Our strategic partner in America, Navistar, announced last week at the North American Commercial Vehicle Show in Atlanta that connectivity, including hardware and software solutions will be the next major area of cooperation based on the Rio platform," he continued. "The first step will be the adoption of the in-cab connecting hardware device. This will serve as a major step toward creating a global platform that will connect 650,000 vehicles worldwide. That will make it the largest ecosystem for connected vehicles worldwide, once that migration is complete.” As these systems come on line, Renschler said cloud-based solutions will create opportunities for fleets and logistics companies in terms of new revenue pools based on data-driven business models, such as dynamic routing and capacity-as-a-service solutions. Looking at the clean transportation aspect of VW’s future, Renschler said the company was pursuing a wide range of fuel and powertrain options based on local availabilities, social demands, and customer requirements. He urged policymakers to adopt a “technology neutral” approach to future emissions regulations based on that strategy. Renschler said electrification would likely be key for last mile and city applications in the future, and said he expects the demand for bio-fuels and other alternative fuels to increase in long-haul applications. “But,” he cautioned, “there is no silver bullet that will work for all vehicles and applications. This means a broader and more complex approach must be taken by our businesses that serve these markets.” He noted that MAN’s EDrive powertrain system would be the “backbone” of a new Navistar medium-duty electric delivery truck in the near future. He also said he expects to see increased use of diesel-electric drivetrains in heavy-duty market segments in common use by 2025. However, Renschler added, given the demands of heavy duty and long-haul market segments, he expects to see internal combustion diesel engines remain the dominate powertrain in these applications for a “long time to come.”

Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / October 11, 2017 The first solar-powered transport refrigeration unit on a city delivery truck has been successfully tested over five months in California's San Joachin Valley, according to eNow, which supplied solar panels for the test. Compared to a diesel truck reefer unit, the "Rayfrigeration" reduced nitrous oxide by 98%, carbon dioxide by 86%, and particulate matter by 97%, said Jeff Flath, president & CEO of eNow. The 1,800-watt eNow solar system provided more than enough energy to maintain proper temperature throughout a typical day of opening and closing the doors while the refrigerated truck delivered fresh dairy products in California's summer heat. The Rayfrigeration system worked on a Johnson Truck Bodies refrigeration unit and an Emerson high-efficency compressor. The unit's cold plates and batteries are initially charged from utility power overnight, but while on a delivery route, power is provided by eNow's solar photovoltaic (PV) panels mounted on the truck's roof. The eNow team calculated that average emissions of CO2 were reduced from 2,525 lbs/week to 159 lbs. Nitrous Oxide emissions were reduced from 7162 grams to 1. This is after adjusting for the emissions from the power plant supplying grid electricity overnight; missions from solar are 0. In addition to eliminating emissions, the Rayfrigeration unit is projected to reduce operations costs by up to 90%, Flath said.. The savings are achieved through eliminating diesel fuel and maintenance costs, and an increased battery life thanks to consistent charge maintenance by eNow solar. "Rayfrigeration is an important step forward in reducing emissions while maintaining the highest levels of efficiency and customer satisfaction for companies delivering perishable goods," he said. "eNow's solar technology is powerful, reliable, and efficient, and provides emissions-free energy for critical tasks such as refrigeration. We are proud to be part of this important project." The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District funded the Rayfrigeration initiative through its Technology Advancement Program. Flath said eNow designs and sells solar-powered idle-reduction systems that reduce fuel and maintenance costs, save energy, and reduce emissions. More information is at www.enowenergy.com

Trump uses truckers to elevate tax reform push Neil Abt, Fleet Owner / October 11, 2017 President Trump promised a group of truckers during a speech in Pennsylvania that his plan to lower taxes will provide financial relief to their businesses and families. “America first means putting America’s truckers first,” said Trump, speaking in front of a tractor-trailer decorated with the slogans “I Love Trucks” and “Truckers for Tax Reform.” Trump made frequent references to the heroic and underappreciated role that truckers play in America’s economy. He promised to keep fuel prices low and advance a $1 billion infrastructure package “with a special focus on roadways and highways.” The central theme of the speech, however, was on his previously announced framework to modernize the “outdated, complex, and extremely burdensome tax code.” The result for truckers will be that “you will have so much money to spend,” he said. Among the highlighted items of the framework were reducing the number of tax brackets, lowering tax rates, boosting credits for child and elderly care, and making it easier for companies to bring back overseas profits. Trump also pledged that companies will be able to write-off 100% of new equipment in the same year it is purchased, and to cut the marginal tax rate for small and mid-sized businesses to the “lowest level in more than 80 years.” Trump recognized Kevin Burch, president of Jet Express and chairman of American Trucking Associations (ATA), who said he would “be able to invest in new equipment and additional training for workers” if tax legislation is passed. Additionally, Trump called for the permanent end to the estate tax, often referred to as the death tax. Trump cited Calvin Ewell, president of trucking fleet H.R. Ewell, as an example of a business owner who could struggle to pass down his family-owned business if that tax is not repealed. “While trucking sustains the vitality of the U.S. economy, we also carry a heavy tax burden, paying the highest corporate tax rate of any transportation mode,” said ATA president and CEO Chris Spear. “That is why we joined President Trump at today’s event, in support of his plan to reform our tax code. We urge Congress to follow the president’s lead and pass tax reform by year’s end." One day before Trump’s speech, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed during her daily briefing there was not yet any actual tax reform legislation. “Our priorities remain the same. But the final piece of legislation hasn’t been finalized, so this is a time of negotiation. But the principles and the priorities that we’ve laid out are not up for negotiation,” she said. Ahead of the speech, Daseke Inc. CEO Don Daseke told Fleet Owner he was optimistic Trump would be able to lower tax rates, bring back overseas corporate profits, and boost economic growth at home. “We, like all business executives, are in favor of all of those things,” said Daseke, whose company is a flatbed and specialized freight specialist. In response to a question, Daseke said he believes Trump’s tax plan will benefit all truck drivers, including the 1,000 owner-operators his company utilizes. “If it is good for the American economy, it is good for largest trucking company and the smallest trucking company,” he said of the tax proposal. He also suggested that including truckers as part of the tax speech would help keep the focus on the desperate need for a new federal infrastructure plan.