Trucks at Work Blog

“Do you think that the future of propulsion lies in the modification of the internal combustion engine? I think, at least for the long term, [we] are spitting into the wind. We already have an efficient IC [internal combustion] engine. I think we should be looking at other means of propulsion.” –Steve Grantham, maintenance supervisor for Allied Waste Services, which is now mergered with waste giant Republic Services

A long time reader of this blog and a frequent, insightful commentator, Steve Grantham posed the question above in reference to my post yesterday on the joint efforts by the Dept. of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and private industry to spur vehicle innovations.

Steve’s question – submitted within a longer comment – raises a very interesting point; for all intents and purposes, has the internal combustion engine, specifically the diesel model, run its course as an efficient method for vehicle propulsion? Is it time to replace it with something else?

I don’t think so – especially where the diesel engine is concerned, even though its invention dates back over a century. The diesel, of course, takes its name from its inventor – Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel, a German engineer convinced there had to be a more efficient form of vehicle propulsion than the steam engines used by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz to power the automobile they invented in 1887.

By 1893, Rudolf (seen here at right) worked out his own engine design, one that cleverly used extremely high air compression ratios — creating over 1,000 degrees of heat — to ignite fuel injected into the cylinder.

That’s a critical feat of engineering, I might add, because it totally eliminated the need for a “spark” to light off the fuel. That also makes a diesel engine extremely versatile in that ANY type of material can be used as fuel, Glenn Lysinger, chief compliance officer for Detroit Diesel Corp., told me a couple of years ago. “It’s the quality of the fuel that is important,” he explained. “If the fuel is made correctly, is of a consistent quality so it’ll burn evenly and not leave residue, the [diesel] engine is insensitive to where it came from.”

Yet at the end of the day it boils down to efficiency – especially in terms of fuel consumption. Rudolf Diesel got out a blank sheet of paper back in the 19th century because even the very best steam engines of his day (at the time, the only major power source for vehicles) were only 10% to 15% thermodynamically efficient – meaning up to 90% of the available energy in the fuel used to produce the steam to power the vehicles got wasted.

Rudolf’s invention, of course, did much better – and engineers over the more than 100 years since the ink dried on the patent for the diesel engine have made significant improvements. But emission controls of late are sending the diesel’s efficiency numbers in reverse. A few years ago, I talked to Jules Routbort about that very issue.

A senior scientist with Argonne National Laboratories – the DOE’s research arm – and technical program manager for heavy vehicle systems, Routbort explained to me that the peak thermal efficiency of a heavy truck diesel engine reached 54% in the late 1990s, but dropped to 40% by the time EGR [exhaust gas recirculation] were introduced to control diesel pollution back in 2002 and 2007. Though OEMs using selective catalytic reduction [SCR] technologies to meet the 2010 round of emission rules say it will allow engines to gain back some of that lost efficiency, they won’t get all the way back to that 54%.

So back to Grantham’s question – what’s next? Do we scrap the diesel entirely? I just don’t think so. I mean, the diesel is so interwoven into our daily life – powering trucks, cars, backup generators, you name it – that It would be hard, if not impossible, to replace. Nothing else has the efficiency and durability of the engine (though, as Grantham mentioned, that durability and ease of maintenance is way, WAY down compared to earlier models).

Different fuels seem to offer a better path – as do some new designs. The Scuderi Group, for example, is in the midst of testing out a new thermodynamic engine process called “Firing After Top Dead Center” which (obviously) it’s dubbed the “Scuderi Cycle.” Originally conceived and designed by Carmelo Scuderi (1925-2002), the Scuderi engine is expected to produce up to 80% fewer toxins than a typical internal combustion engine while posting gains in efficiency – without all the aftertreatment systems.

In a nutshell, the Scuderi split-cycle design divides the four strokes of a conventional combustion cycle over two paired cylinders: one intake/compression cylinder and one power/exhaust cylinder. By firing after top-dead center, it produces highly efficient, cleaner combustion with one cylinder and compressed air in the other, the company noted.

Unlike conventional engines that require two crankshaft revolutions to complete a single combustion cycle, the Scuderi Engine requires just one. Besides the improvements in efficiency and emissions, studies show that the Scuderi Cycle is capable of producing more torque than conventional gasoline and diesel engines, the firm said.

Right now, the company is testing a naturally aspirated, 1-liter gasoline-powered prototype is currently which the company says is expected to reach efficiency gains of 5% to 10% more than any conventional gasoline engine on the road today. When fully developed with its turbocharged and Air-Hybrid components, Sal Scuderi (seen here at right), president of the Scuderi Group, told me the engine is expected to achieve efficiency levels of 25% to 50% percent higher.

Sal also told me in an interview a few months back when testing got started that his father’s new design is definitely applicable to diesel engines, and that once testing is completed on the gasoline version, a diesel engine prototype is next.

“Preliminary test results are very encouraging,” he explained. “The pressure curves produced from the combustion process of firing after top dead center are showing excellent results and torque levels remain very strong.”

Is something like this the key to revitalizing the future of the diesel engine? At the moment, only maybe, for as we all know what works well in the lab doesn’t always perform as well on the road. But the Scuderi Cycle and other innovations – the diesel-electric hybrid powertrain, for one – seem to offer some good options for boosting the efficiency of the diesel engine, thus keeping it a viable option for future transportation needs.

“Diesel power is working for us today – in our everyday lives – in key sectors of our economy like trucking, freight rail, industrial applications, passenger transportation, construction, agriculture, back-up emergency power and emergency response. Diesel technology is working 24/7 to keep our economy strong and to enhance our quality of life.” –Allen Schaeffer, executive director, Diesel Technology Forum

This week at the Clean Diesel Technology Showcase held here in Washington D.C., Allen Schaeffer (seen below), executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum (and the main sponsor-slash-organizer of the event) put together a nice little story illustrating how the diesel engine impacts daily life here in the U.S. – using a plain loaf of Wonderbread.

Now, before we get started, for the most part I know I’m largely preaching to the choir here – most folks reading this are involved in some way with the transportation industry and understand in their bones how critical a role the diesel engine plays in everyday American life.

The problem is the diesel is taken completely for granted by almost everyone else in this great nation of ours – especially by our politicians. I can’t tell you the number of polemics I’ve seen over the years railing against “dirty” diesel power by people who obviously don’t have a clue how critical linchpin that same “dirty” engine is in their life – how everything from food distribution to trash pickup and mass transit would grind to a halt without the diesel.

That’s what I liked about Schaeffer’s story – it clearly reveals how tightly the diesel is woven into the fabric of American life. We talk a good game about “electrification” of transportation in this country and increasing the use of alternative fuels, but for now – and for the conceivable future – the diesel is the only engine that gets the job we need done across a vast slice of industries, from construction to farming, fire and rescue service, railroads, trucking, you name it. We’d literally be up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle if the diesel engine up and disappeared on us.

“Though these are vastly different applications of diesel engines, the diesel value proposition is the same: the unmatched combination of proven fuel-efficiency, power, performance, durability, reliability and versatility,” said Schaeffer. And this is where that loaf of Wonderbread comes into play.

“If you’re still wondering about the connection between all these different kinds of technology and how it could possibly fit together, consider this loaf of bread,” Schaeffer said. “It started out as a grain of wheat – and that grain of wheat, of course, began as a seed. An Iowa farmer picked up a full pallet of seed bags in his GM Chevrolet Silverado heavy duty pick-up truck powered by a Duramax diesel engine. He then planted, cultivated and harvested the wheat from a field using his diesel-powered John Deere tractor.

When he harvested the wheat, he took it to the local farmers cooperative where it joined other grain headed for a mill downriver. That river barge got pushed by a marine work boat powered by a Caterpillar diesel marine engine. From the mill, the wheat got processed into flour and shipped in a freight train hopper car pulled by a diesel-powered locomotive to a bakery.

The bakery got the wheat and other ingredients that go into making bread – even the packaging for the finished loaves – delivered by the diesel-powered truck. Though a nasty thunderstorm knocked out the electrical power, the bakery fortunately had a back-up diesel generator in place to keep production and refrigeration equipment operating.

The finished loaf of bread then went by diesel-powered tractor-trailer to a regional distribution center 500 miles away. That truck made the trip in record time because of the new highway interchange construction project finished just in the course of the last week by a new Caterpillar D7E diesel-electric hybrid-drive bulldozer and other diesel-power equipment.

The loaf of bread arrived at the regional distribution center where it was then loaded on to another diesel-powered tractor trailer and taken another 150 miles of bread to its final destination – your neighborhood grocery store.

You, of course, began your day by watching a diesel-powered recycling truck on its morning route. At breakfast, you notice you’re down to your last slice of bread so you make a note to hit the grocery store today for a loaf of bread. You see your daughter off to school, climbing aboard a diesel-electric hybrid school bus and then jump in your new Volkswagen Jetta TDI diesel sedan and head off to work; noting the fuel economy meter in the dashboard is showing 41 mpg as you drive along the highway.

Later you go out to lunch with a co-worker in her new Audi Q7 TDi diesel sedan and you both remark about the fuel economy and pick-up from both of your diesel-powered cars – and that neither of you ever imagined yourselves as driving a diesel, but you love how far you can go on a tank and how peppy it is and talk about trying biodiesel the next time you fill up.

After work, you’re headed to the grocery store for the loaf of bread, but get delayed by a traffic accident – one where diesel-powered emergency rescue vehicles and an ambulance are on the scene, ready to quickly transport the injured to a hospital. You make it to the grocery store, get that loaf of bread, and remember to pick up your son from the nearby city bus stop, as he rides a diesel-electric hybrid transit bus to his high school every day.

As you get home and start putting away the groceries, your daughter notices the loaf of Wonderbread and asks innocently: Where does bread come from?

So here’s our loaf of bread – and it’s an example of how diesel power is working for all of us today. From farm tractors, river barges, railroads, commercial trucks, power generation, construction equipment, fire and rescue services and public and school transportation, and now your own car, diesel power – and today, it’s clean diesel power – plays an important and ongoing role in many aspects of our lives.”

That’s something worth remembering, even for those like me where the diesel is an ongoing part of daily discussion.

“Developing the new 6.7-liter Power Stroke V-8 turbocharged diesel engine was an awesome endeavor.” –Adam Gryglak, lead diesel engine manager, Ford Motor Co.

Well, it might be an awesome endeavor, and from the looks of it, Ford Motor Co.’s new diesel engine may indeed make some waves in many segments of the light- and medium-duty truck market … but the company is sure being cagey about the big important details when it comes to this product; cagey to the point where a lot of key information won’t be released until the end of this year or maybe even early 2010. And such delay might at least in the short run generate more questions than answers about Ford’s new 6.7-liter Power Stroke V-8 diesel.

Now, don’t get me wrong here: I think this engine will only add gusto to Ford’s already popular F-Series Super Duty truck line. The information revealed in a conference call with the company’s lead engineers certainly shows they’ve done their homework, combining a new materials and technology to build an engine that will not only meet the tough 2010 emission regulations, but offer fuel economy, performance, and weight saving improvements as well.

As our lead story today notes, the new 6.7-liter Power Stroke V-8 diesel weighs in at 160 pounds lighter than product it replaces (product formerly built for Ford by Navistar) using a compacted graphite iron (CGI) engine block and aluminum cylinder heads. A unique “inboard” exhaust design means the exhaust manifolds reside in the “valley” of the engine instead of outboard, with the intake outboard of the engine – leading to essentially “flipped around” cylinder heads in comparison with previous V-8 engine architectures.

Adam Gryglak (below), Ford’s lead diesel engine manager, added that this exhaust design is an “automotive-industry first” for a modern production diesel engine in the conference call late yesterday and noted it offers several advantages.

First, the overall exhaust system volume is reduced, meaning air can be fed to the single turbocharger quicker for faster spool up and reduced lag, resulting in improved throttle response for the customer. Next, the improved packaging also places components that need to be in cooler air away from hot exhaust pipes, resulting in better thermal management and, by extension, better fuel economy.

“The physical size of the system is smaller, but more importantly, the air-handling part of the system is considerably smaller and that translates directly into the responsiveness of the engine,” said Gryglak, noting that the volume of the exhaust system feeding the turbocharger is smaller by about 50% because of the inboard exhaust system architecture.

All of this is being combined with a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) aftertreatment system, so the engine complies with the tough 2010 regulations.

OK, good stuff – so good that these features represent but a few of the 111 patents Ford filed in relation to this new diesel powertrain, Gryglak said; again, clear evidence that the OEM is wringing as much power, performance, and efficiency out of the diesel engine as possible while keeping it emission-compliant. Heck, this new engine is going to come to market B20 compatible as well, so it can operate on a maximum biodiesel blended fuel made up of 20% biodiesel and 80%regular petroleum diesel. That’s a big step, as some OEMs only certify B5 biodiesel blends for use in their diesels.

And yet … what are the horsepower and torque ratings for this new engine? We don’t know – for Ford is planning to stay mum on those numbers until the official launch date for the new product early next year. What will the surcharge be to cover the cost of all the emission-control technology required to comply with the 2010 rules? We don’t know that either – Ford doesn’t plan to reveal that until the end of this year. How about warranty coverage? Again, that’s unknown, until at least the beginning of 2010.

These are the big questions in the minds of many fleets – especially when it comes to the 2010 surcharges. A lot of OEMs have already released that information in the medium-duty segment, including Navistar, Daimler Trucks North America (owned by Germany’s Daimler AG), and Toyota’s Hino Trucks.

Will waiting until the end of the year to release this information boomerang on Ford? Or not? It’ll be interesting to see how that decision to withhold such details plays out in the truck market.

Engine oil is no longer considered to be “just” engine oil in the trucking world anymore. In fact, most lubricant manufacturers believe engine oils – and the services geared to support it, such as oil analysis programs – now play an even more critical role in helping fleets keep truck productivity up, minimize downtime, as well as significantly extend the life of the engine.

Within the lubricant world, however, there are many different ways to achieve those goals for truckers – some that are radically different from others.

Let’s start with Mark Betner, product manager for heavy-duty lubricants at Citgo Petroleum Corp. He believes thinner (read as lower viscosity) engine oils can play a tremendous role in giving fleets not only better wear protection, but also better engine “startability” in cold weather. Using 5-weight oil instead of the standard 15-weight oil used in trucking may seem way outside the box for some fleets, but Betner’s long-term field research backs him up, he believes.

Watch Betner explain his thinking as to why thinner may be better in the clip below. I’ve talked to him before on this subject and he’s got a compelling story to tell – one that could benefit fleets in several ways – so it bears repeating.

Another school of thought, though, is the use of a new and unusual additive package – Liquid titanium, now blended by ConocoPhillips into its Kendall brand of CJ-4 truck engine oil. T. Shawn Ewing, technical service coordinator-commercial lubricants for ConocoPhillips, told me liquid titanium helps improve metal-to-metal contact within the engine, alleviating wear and corrosion.

Watch and see what your impressions are in the interview with Ewing that follows.

Of course, it’s no longer just about the oil itself. Every lubricant maker has stressed to me over the years that fleets really need to add in an ongoing oil analysis program to their maintenance practices in order to make sure the oil is not only doing what it’s supposed to do, but also as a way to get an early warning if something else goes wrong.

Shell Lubricants is taking that one step further with its Video Check program, designed to augment oil analysis if a program is detected in an engine. Rather than take a truck down for a few days to perform a time-consuming and expensive partial teardown, Shell’s system uses a thin fiber-optic cable containing a high resolution digital camera to conduct a detailed interior inspection of the engine in a matter of hours, requiring only that an injector be pulled.

Dan Arcy, Shell’s OEM technical marketing manager, showed me how the system works and why it’s a beneficial “backstop” for fleets.

All of these efforts just go to show that engine oils are no longer considered simply black fluids poured in and drained out with boring repetition anymore. They play too vital a role in keeping a fleet’s trucks up, running, and making money to be taken that lightly.

“The combination of Navistar‘s truck design, development and manufacturing expertise and Caterpillar‘s worldwide distribution creates a significant advantage for global customers through the ability to offer the right vehicle for the right application.” -Dee Kapur, president, Navistar Truck Group

Hoo boy. Here we go. By the end of today, we‘ll have news stories galore all over the place detailing the just announced “memorandum of understanding” Caterpillar Inc. and Navistar International Corp. to form a strategic partnership aimed at garnering more share of the global truck business, while cooperating on a variety of engine platforms.

They intend to work together to develop, manufacture and distribute commercial trucks in select regions outside of North America - which includes a full line of medium and heavy-duty trucks in both conventional and cab over designs. Will we see those trucks come into the North American market someday in the future? If I was a betting man, I‘d wager a few bucks that they will.

Caterpillar and Navistar also plan to develop a mid-range engines for diesel applications, such as school buses and utility trucks in the U.S. This engine development would support each company‘s stated path not to utilize urea-based Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) technology.

(Are Cat’s on-highway products gone for good?)

“There are many opportunities for technology sharing and development that would result in the ability to better meet the worldwide demand for diesel engines in both on and off-highway applications,” said Jack Allen, president of Navistar‘s Engine Group.

Here‘s the big shot across the bow, however: Through this alliance, Caterpillar says it plans introduce a 2010 emission-compliant North American Cat branded heavy-duty truck for severe service applications, such as road construction, large infrastructure projects and oil and petroleum development … but WILL NOT supply EPA 2010 compliant engines to truck and other on-highway original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). In other words, no more on-highway Cat engines — period.

“Caterpillar and our dealers will continue to provide product support and service beyond 2010 for all Caterpillar on-highway engines regardless of truck brand,” said Douglas R. Oberhelman, Caterpillar‘s group president. “This new truck–targeted for 2010–will incorporate the legendary quality of Caterpillar‘s construction and mining machines and provide construction customers a one-stop solution.”

(A diesel particulate filter [DPF] Cat came up with to help its engines comply with 2007 emission regs … which may also disappear from the U.S. market too … )

In addition, with nearly 90% of its engine business being off-highway, Caterpillar plans to continue concentrating on opportunities to supply engines in the petroleum, marine, electric power generation and industrial markets–as well as produce engines for its own construction and mining equipment, Oberhelman said.

“In the past 15 years, Cat has become significantly less dependent on the sale of on-highway truck engines in the total contribution of our global engine profitability,” said Oberhelman. “Our global power systems business has grown significantly–in fact we supply approximately 400,000 diesel engines annually outside of the on-highway truck market. We intend to remain the world leader in clean diesel engines, and this collaboration is a key enabler.”

Caterpillar has long faced problems adapting its engines to the emission mandates being put in place for commercial trucks, you know. One reason it did not follow the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) pathway every other truck engine maker did was because that technology didn‘t work in the construction, mining, and other engine markets Caterpillar served - forcing it to forge a different route to emission control.

It’s also not surprising Caterpillar made this decision to get out of the on-highway market - especially as two of the largest users of its on-highway models, Peterbilt and Kenworth, are going to get their own proprietary engines starting in 2010.

In early 2007, Paccar announced it would build a $400-million engine plant in Missouri to manufacture 12.9-liter and 9.2-liter engines for its Peterbilt and Kenworth Class 8 trucks for the North American and global markets. These engines are based off what the company is building in Europe via its DAF and Leyland operations.

“The…facility…positions Paccar to capitalize on growing opportunities in North America, Europe and Asia,” said Mark Pigott, Paccar chairman & CEO. “It will provide the flexibility to supply products and components to Paccar facilities and customers on a global basis.”

This is the trend Caterpillar hopes to navigate with its Navistar partnership, for to comply with emission standards that differ by country as well as to keep production costs in check, many diesel engine manufacturers are tying their global network of factories together more tightly enabling them to use a single engine platform to meet worldwide needs. It’s a topic I’ve written about many times, so I’ll share some of that thinking gained from other engine makers over the last few months here.

“Engines are an international business nowadays,” said Lothar Lemmermeier, head of supplier management and assistant general manager for Daimler AG‘s engine plant and foundry in Mannheim, Germany.

(Detroit Diesel’s new DD15 is built on a global engine platform used throughout the world by its parent company, Daimler AG.)

“There‘s fierce competition in the engine market, added to the demands of emissions compliance,” he noted. “As a result, we‘re trying to better optimize our global production flow - standardizing processes across all our plants, worldwide, while maximizing the benefits of scale.”

To accomplish that, Daimler is creating a “synchronous factory” design to manage its far-flung network of factories - coordinating production and support between the Mannheim plant and Detroit Diesel Corp.‘s facility in Redford, MI and Mitsubishi Fuso‘s engine plant in Kawasaki, Japan, along with Daimler‘s foundries in Capetown, South Africa and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Daimler‘s new HDEP global engine platform is being built via this new “synchronous” approach, said Lemmermeier - allowing the company to build just a single engine product line that can be “tweaked” to meet specific market needs, from emission standards to power ratings.

Under this new program, components are built to be shared among all the factories, rather than have each plant build entire engines specific to the markets they serve, he noted. “For example, our Atlantis foundry in South Africa supplies 14.8 and 12.8 liter engine blocks to Redford, with Mannheim supplying camshafts and head liners for the 12. 8 unit,” Lemmermeier noted. “Redford builds the piston heads, liners, and camrods for the 14.8 liter engine - and supplies camrods to Mannheim for our 10.8 liter engine.”

Other engine makers are also engaging in similar global manufacturing strategies - especially Navistar, which partnered with MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG, based in Munich, Germany to forge a “strategic agreement” back in 2004 to collaborate on the design, development, sourcing and manufacturing of components and systems for commercial trucks. That deal resulted in the new big bore line of MaxxForce engines for International highway trucks.

(Navistar is still going to equip its on-highway products with MaxxForce engines … no Cat need apply.)

How that deal gets affected by the new one with Caterpillar we can‘t say right now - we‘ll learn more later. But it‘s safe to say that Cat-Navistar partnerhsip is going to create a large seismic shift in the truck engine market, meaning fleets and owner-operators alike will again see spec‘ing options they used to enjoy in the past disappear completely in the near future.

“This is an important step for Caterpillar and we look forward to working with Navistar for the continued benefit of our customers, ” said Jim Owens, Caterpillar‘s chairman and CEO.

“This relationship is a perfect example of Navistar‘s strategy of growth through leveraging our own assets and those that others have built,” added Daniel C. Ustian, Navistar‘s chairman, president and CEO. “In partnership with Caterpillar we intend to extend our leading-edge product focus that we have in North America into the rest of the world.”

Needless to say, this is a deal that‘s going to create some interesting reactions in the truck and engine market in the U.S., I can assure you of that.

Talked with Mark Betner recently, manager of heavy-duty lubricants for Citgo, at the Technology & Maintenance Council‘s annual meeting down in Florida (And NO, there won‘t be any video of me flapping my gums this time - which I‘m sure is a relief to many out there).

Betner‘s been a longtime advocate that the U.S. trucking industry needs to switch to a lighter weight for its engine oils - dropping to a 5W-40 grade from the 15W-40 standard almost all heavy-duty truck owners now use. His contention, backed by long experience in the European market, is that heavier-weight oil doesn‘t provide extra protection, which is a widely held belief among truckers.

(Mark Betner, Citgo’s manager of heavy-duty lubricants)

In fact, lightweight 5W-40 oil can provide even better protection, as it offers a much wider temperature range (down to minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit) of operating effectiveness. That thinner viscosity is good in another way, said Betner, as it means there‘s less fluid for the engine to “work” through - and if the engine doesn‘t have to work as hard, fuel economy can improve.

“Europe‘s been a far stronger advocate of lightweight viscosity engine oil grades because their fuel coats are almost double ours,” Betner explained to me. “And we‘re just now recognizing that lighter viscosity grades can give you a fuel economy advantage. In fact, Eaton just did a study showing that lighter weight synthetic lubricants can translate into fuel efficiency gains.”

On-highway tests conducted by Roadranger - a marketing partnership between Eaton and Dana Corp. - indicates that using synthetic lubricant in both components can translate into fuel economy gains of more than 1%.

The tests - comparing new Roadranger Synthetic Lubricants to traditional synthetic blends and semi-synthetic blends - involved two U.S. linehaul fleets, with a third conducted by an independent research facility. The tests - using an SAE Type III 1526 test, a TMC/SAE J1321 test, along with a modified J1376 test - showed both linehaul carriers on average improved fuel economy 1.029%, with the independent research facility generating fuel savings of 1.112%.

“This is a significant finding when you take into account that every 1% improvement amounts to about $500 in annual fuel savings per truck,” commented Rick Muth, lubricants manager for Roadranger. “Our previous Roadranger lubricant blends were already producing fuel saving benefits of 2% and 4% over mineral-based lubricants, so the additional savings is a further bonus.”

Citgo‘s Betner told me that while a 1% fuel efficiency improvement may not sound like much, when you extrapolate that gain out across a fleet of 100 trucks operating in typically longhaul on-highway applications, you‘re talking about saving $80,000 a year in fuel costs. “Three dollar-plus diesel has changed everything,” Betner said.

Will thinner, lightweight engine oils gain traction in the U.S. market? The jury is still out for now on that. One thing is for certain, though: as fuel continues to get more costly, fleets are going to look at everything and anything to try and improve fuel efficiency - and that includes what grade of engine oil they use, I suspect.

“Kick the hell out of the status quo.” -Motto of Ed Cole, master automotive engineer

If you are a car enthusiast, you know who Edward Nicholas Cole is - the man who directed the invention of the small-block V8 engine to power the 1955 Chevy passenger car. We‘re not just talking about some one-off racing engine either, or something relevant only to halcyon automotive age of the 1950s. Oh no.

According to Larry Carley, blogger and car fanatic, Chevrolet has produced about 90 million small block V8s since 1955 - following an evolutionary arc that took it from 265 cubic inches and 110 horsepower in 1955 to 427 cubic inches (7.0 liters) and more than 500 horsepower for today‘s smokin‘ Corvette LS7. “That‘s a huge number of engines, probably more than any other engine that’s ever been built - an amazing record of longevity,” said Carley.

Think about this for minute. Cole - killed tragically in a light plane crash in 1977 while flying solo in the rain and fog on his approach to an airport in Mendon, Michigan - single-handedly revolutionized the design of the V8 automotive engine on the one hand while also creating a platform that could be improved upon for decades to come. Quite an accomplishment for a Michigan native born on a farm in 1909 who originally wanted to be a lawyer, yet found his instinctive - some say obsessive - need to tinker with things drove him into vehicle engineering.

I bring Cole up because I wonder where the trucking version of him exists today - indeed, where a near-aproximation of him might be found anywhere in the automotive world of the 21st century. I mean, he‘s the “classic” engineer, if you ask me: a guy so consumed with building something new, something better, something that breaks the mold, that he kept a prototype of the ‘55 Chevy and his V8 in his garage at home, tinkering with it endlessly on weekends and at night.

Back then, GM‘s executives were all in his corner, too, giving him almost carte blanche to create an engine that would blow the doors off the competition. The ranks of Chevrolet‘s engineers ballooned from 850 to 3,000 between 1952 and 1954 as Cole directed the creation of the small block V8 (a process vividly chronicled in the late, great David Halberstam‘s book “The Fifties.”)

That kind of engineering derring-do is needed today, I think, as trucking grapples with the need to lower emissions, improve fuel economy, maintain power and performance, while in many cases burning non-petroleum fuels. That‘s a tall order, but one I think the Cole‘s of the world would relish and, perhaps, achieve.

Cole proved a classic in other ways, too - a break-the-rules, bull-in-the-china shop type of personality, totally focused on building great cars … and then fighting on to make them better. And then there‘s the sad epilogue to his GM career - the 1959 Corvair, a “small car” project that got hamstrung by the same GM brass that once backed his engineering efforts to the hilt. For these executives in many ways become focused solely on profits and stock prices, not good products.

“The issue … was nothing less than the entire purpose of American industry: whether it was to make the best product possible or whether it was merely to make the maximum profit possible each year,” Halberstam wrote. “The two, as it turned out, were not compatible - not by a longshot.”

Cost cutting condemned Cole‘s Corvair design, as the car‘s power overwhelmed the suspension system. He wanted to add a stabilizing system to the rear end - something that would‘ve cost a mere $14 to $15 more per car back then - but GM nixed it. The car — though now considered a classic — proved disastrous for GM.

GM executive Harlow Curtice‘s comments to Cole about the Corvair sums up, I think, why American automotive engineering went off track - and would take a generation or two to fully recover. “This is amazing - there‘s as much headroom in here as a Buick,” Curtice said. Then, according to Halberstam, he paused for a long moment. “Take some of the headroom out. We can‘t have a little car like this with as much room as a big car.”

Cole‘s iron will didn‘t help matters, either, as he forged ahead with the Corvair despite major engineering compromises that made it difficult to handle, especially at high speeds and around sharp turns. Ralph Nader, as we all know, used the Corvair to humble GM and put product safety on the map, but GM learned the wrong lesson from this experience, said Halberstam, “convinced that their great mistake had not been in trying to do the car too cheaply, thus making it a dangerous vehicle, but in bothering to produce a small car in the first place.”

Still, the engineering acumen of Cole - despite his flaws - would be well used today, I think. And who knows? Maybe there is indeed a later-day Cole (make or female, I stress) waiting in the wings out there to lead the industry in new and perhaps surprising directions.

Animal fat - the nasty gloop that clogs up our arteries, yet makes fried chicken just so scrumptious! - has long been consider a source material to make fuel for diesel-powered cars and trucks, though its typically blended with traditional diesel. Now a company is making engine oil from such fats - but sans petroleum altogether.

Green Earth Technologies (GET) rolled out “G-OIL” late last year (around November to be precise), touted as a totally biodegradable motor oil guaranteed to protect engines - in this case both gasoline and diesel models - just as well as petroleum-based brands, but without the environmental hazards or dependence on foreign oil.

G-OIL is manufactured from tallow - culled from beef and once used to make animal feed and soap - that it buys from American farmers (note the stress on “American” here: they don‘t miss a chance to tout that fact). The company uses nanotechnology to convert tallow from a solid raw material into completely biodegradable motor oil - making roughly one barrel of G-OIL from one barrel of animal tallow, as compared to the three barrels of petroleum needed to make one barrel of traditional engine oil.

This “green oil” product is currently undergoing a program of testing being conducted by an independent third party testing facility that uses (reportedly) testing procedures & guidelines established by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). Thus far, the company says its product has successfully completed fiterability, ball bearing rust, sulfur, calcium, zinc and phosphorus tests, with the 10W-30 G-OIL‘s results so far showing to be comparable to published data for synthetic and crude oil based motor oils.

Obviously, if this stuff works - and that’s a very BIG if … I have not yet found a fleet that uses it, let me stress - it could be a major deal. I mean, the U.S. market for motor oil - cars and trucks combined - is just north of $7 billion a year. Imagine if we didn‘t need to use petroleum to make one drop of engine oil, yet get all the wear protection and viscosity a long-haul commercial truck demands?

And imagine also if this stuff congealed into gloop similar to what clogs up our arteries, only in your engine cylinders? That would spell disaster in a hurry. So yes, this stuff needs to be tested as rigorously as any new product, in this case against Society of Automotive Engineer and Technology & Maintenance Council standards.

But still … wouldn‘t it be great if this worked? If wasted animal fast could be recycled into engine oil? It‘s an enticing possibility. We‘ll have to see if it comes to fruition here down the road.

It’s a study in contrasts, the truck engine production process today. On the one hand you have the foundry: the dark, smokey place where metal is melted in giant pots to create all the components that going into making an engine. On the other is the production process itself — today a place where robots increasingly hold sway, where the light is soft, the air clean, and the floor scrubbed to high polished sheen.

Rapidly disapearing are the clangs and clashes, shouts and yells, all the sounds that represent the controlled chaos of the old production line. Now automated guided vehicles — AGVs for short — silently but surefootedly take each engine from station to station where humans use computer controls to guide them in the construction process. The milling of engine blocks, too, has changed, with humans only monitoring the robot’s progress from outside a sound-dampening protective box that also serves to keep the air free of pollution.

These are the contrasts of engine factories today that I’ve seen, from Volvo’s powertrain facility in Hagerstown, Maryland, and Detroit Diesel’s factory in Redford, Michigan all the way across the pond into Daimler AG’s truck engine plant in Mannheim, Germany.

And these factories produce ever larger quantities of goods with fewer and fewer people. Take Mannheim, for example: it spat out 410,000 engines and 107,000 tonnes worth of castings in 2006 and should equal that tally in 2007. Yet it only needed some 4,400 people to do it. And these are workers that are no mere cogs on the production line anymore, more number than name. They submitted 19,000 suggestions in 2006 — roughly 3.7 per person — of which about 55% were adopted. The savings from those suggestions? About 5.3 million Euros — nearly $10 million in U.S. at today’s exchange rate. That’s pretty impressive if you ask me and it’s not surprising, either, when you learn that employees get a cut of those savings in the form of bonuses for their suggestions.

Still, it’s an almost otherworldly collision of milieu when you tour engine foundries and production lines. In the foundries, you still feel like you’ve stumbled through a crack in time and space into Mordor in Middle Earth, with the heat, sparks, and rank smells assaulting your senses. You can almost see Orcs amid the haze, laboring over this almost unearthly alchemy that turns solid metal into bright orange fiery liquid, then into the common engine parts truckers use day in and day out.

And then you leap forward into the future — something right out of an Arthur C. Clarke novel — on the production line, where robots do most of the work. They spare the humans the tiresome and at times physically wearying chore of routine component installation — something that must done right every single time with exact precision so the end user gets an engine that delivers power, fuel economy, and long durable life.

It’s an interesting mix of the old and new, but one designed purposefully to extract the utmost in efficiency, capability, and longevity from what was once hunks of inert ore sitting under the earth. And its one where the tools and techniques to do it will only get refined with an even sharper edge in the years ahead.

That seems to be the big question today as engine makers focus on the 2010 emission standards: do you incorporate selective catalytic reduction (SCR) into your emission solution … or not?

International Truck & Engine Corp. joined Cummins Engine Co. in the ‘No SCR’ catergory today, announcing that it won’t use SCR at least for its highway products. Cummins said Sept. 24 that it would use SCR only for its medium-duty engines, not its big bore units. Meanwhile, Volvo and Detroit Diesel Corp. are both adopting SCR to meet 2010 emission regulations — and may be joined by Paccar, which is bringing its European-built MX heavy-duty engine line to the U.S. sometime in 2009, after it opens a new $400 million engine plant in Missouri.

Paccar’s MX line uses SCR to meet European truck emission regulations, as do Volvo and DDC’s products, so it’s a no-brainer to do the same in the U.S. as all three build “global engine platforms” designed to be tweaked only slightly for the specific regions of world they are sold in. For example, DDC — which unveiled its new DD15 in mid-October — said only 10% of the components in its new global engine platform change from market to market; the rest remains the same.

Though Caterpillar as yet hasn’t committed to a 2010 solution, it’s already on-record against SCR. In 2005, J. Parker — then-VP at Caterpillar Power Systems Marketing — issues a statement urging the on-highway market to keep the technology options open regarding 2010 emissions. “Several engine manufacturers have indicated that SCR is the only viable path for meeting the 2010 EPA standard–however, our research indicates SCR might not be the best choice for on-highway applications,” he said two years ago.

What’s the hang up with SCR? Basically, it’s an emissions after-treatment technology that relies on injecting urea — an amonia compound — into the exhaust stream to reduce NOx emissions. Not only does such a system require its own complex array of sensors and electronic controls, it needs a tank or urea solution on board that must be refilled as the truck travels down the highway. Dan Ustian, chairman, president nand CEO of Navistar (International’s parent company) said that means North America’s highways would need a urea distribution infrastructure to be operationally mature when 2010 vehicles hit the road.

Also, while International found SCR to be a way to effectively meet 2010 emissions standards, it adds to the cost and complexity of use of commercial vehicles for truck and bus fleet operators. I’ve heard that “extra cost” could be another $10,000 above what truckers are paying for 2007-compliant engines, but I caution that this is only an estimate. Urea itself is a cheap chemical compound and requires no special storage — a simple plastic tank will do. Even if it freezes, it’s still good — once it thaws and becomes liquid again, it’s ready for use. And DDC and Volvo both believe using SCR can help boost fuel economy, recovering MPG lost to the technology demands of 2007.

The upshot is that 2010 is already looking very different that 2007, as the engine makers are going to be offering different emission compliance solutions — something that didn’t happen this year. How that affects trucking’s bottom line, however, remains to be seen.