Hanners noted that the improved capacity varies with tank size, scaling up with larger tanks, but tends to provide an increase of 15% – 25% compared to other approaches.
Safety can also be a nagging concern from fleets considering a conversion. That is something Worthington takes very seriously.
“Our number one priority is safety, and we pride ourselves on that each and every day,” said Hanners. “We have a 40-year history of producing tanks and we were really the pioneer in developing carbon composite fiber tanks. We have never had a tank failure in the field. You can imagine what pride we take in that with safety being our company’s number one priority.”
Hanners noted that the metal liner also enhances its safety. “The rigid metal liner supports the composite fibers and minimizes composite flexing or breaking during an impact event,” he said. “The metal liner essentially holds roughly 10 percent of the load of the carbon fiber. Worthington manufactures our tanks to above and beyond the minimal safety factor that’s required.”
KwikTrip—An Early Adopter and Leader
Lacrosse, Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip has been an aggressive promoter of commercial fueling throughout its retail footprint, and beyond that, alternative fuels to those commercial customers. CNG has been fully supported in those efforts. The company has added truck-accessible side diesel to over 125 of its locations, or about 25 percent of its stores.
“You’ve got small town stores with maybe two diesel pumps all the way up to the full-on travel center with six to eight lanes of diesel, showers, parking—all of that,” said Joel Hirschboeck, Kwik Trip’s superintendent of commercial and alternative fuels. “When you start looking at what’s the next phase in fuel, and what are the opportunities to continue to advance and gain market share, compressed natural gas really stood out as that next viable option.”
Hirschboeck noted that space for the equipment and accessibility are the major on-site hurdles, and the company’s previous efforts minimized those concerns.
“If you’re a regional delivery fleet in our footprint, you really can make it work regardless of where you need to go,” said Hirschboeck. “If they have a store nearby their home, they can always fuel at the end or beginning of a shift. Otherwise, they have opportunity to fuel en route. The other advantage that brings is that you don’t have to put so much money into tanks on the vehicle if you can accommodate a mid-day or intra-day fueling with hours of service. Every driver’s going to shut down for 30 minutes at the eight-hour mark. There’s an opportunity to stop and fuel, and take care of that. It’s starting to kind of pull together that way.”
Ryder Remains Solid on CNG
Ryder offers businesses a range of commercial truck leasing and service options. The company was an eager and early proponent of CNG for those customers with interest, and it remains so today.
“Our customers really rely on us to be looking at emerging technologies and how those may fit into their business,” said Scott Perry, Vice President of Supply Management and Global Fuel Products for the Fleet Management Solutions business segment of Ryder Systems, Inc. “It’s very much a portfolio approach. We’re still very focused on providing them with high-quality diesel through our diesel distribution network, but we also see that the technology is changing, and as emissions regulation continue to create opportunities for new technologies, we’re constantly evaluating what technologies may play a role in satisfying some of that demand. Right now we see natural gas playing the strongest role within that portfolio as an alternative to diesel. We have focused a lot of our resources around partnering with our customers, and providing them support and expertise as they’re evaluating whether it makes sense to deploy it within their fleet.”
Ryder handles everything for the fleet from the new vehicle specification and configuration to the fuel system configuration (how much fuel needs to be stored onboard the vehicle to support their distribution needs or their duty cycle). Ryder also has a number of national partners that can help a fleet evaluate whether there’s an existing retail fuel infrastructure they can leverage for their distribution needs. If there’s enough mass or a need in a specific market, a partner may be able to step in and build a station to help support fleet adoption using their fuel volume potentially as an anchor fleet.
The company also supports upkeep and maintenance. “That’s really the key value driver for us—our maintenance network and our willingness to invest in upgrading our maintenance facilities, which are fully compliant today for diesel vehicle maintenance,” Perry said. “But whenever you introduce natural gas vehicles, it triggers a completely different standard of requirements with regard to ventilation systems, methane detection systems and just the overall design and configuration of the shop. That’s an area where we’re willing to work with them and make that investment in our maintenance facility to be able to support a high degree of uptime and reliability of that technology.”
