Trucking is a much older profession than most people think. Several trucking companies in the United States are more than 100 years old, and the legacy of Canadian trucking is almost as long. Believe it or not, the oldest trucking companies still around today were formed before trucks became available. They diversified fleets of horses and early cars into trucks at the right moment, proving that innovation is key to success in the industry!
Fuel is one of, if not the largest operating expense in trucking. The amount of fuel varies per truck, but a semi-truck can hold between 800 and 1000 litres of diesel. This fuel is pumped into dual tanks that sit on either side of the tractor, giving them the name “saddle tanks.” They make sure that the weight of the amount of fuel is balanced.
If the average is roughly three kilometres per litre, it will be 3,000 kilometres before refuelling is necessary. But when you’re driving 60 hours a week over seven days, that can be a lot of refuelling. If we use an average diesel fuel price of $1.20 (the average at the time of writing), this means that it can cost more than $1200 to fuel up just once. For a large fleet, this is tens of thousands of dollars per month, so who is paying at the pump?
One of the most important parts of any diesel truck is the fuel injectors. They are sensitive pieces of a semi’s machinery, and often the starting point of many problems you might experience with the engine. But when it’s working smoothly, the fuel injector is what improves the entire truck’s performance. When it gets an upgrade, the fuel injector can give a truck’s diesel engine a higher range of power output and even improved fuel efficiency!
Trucking is the lifeblood of many Canadian industries, as just about every major store relies on it to receive new goods from distributors. The reliance on transport trucks is only going to increase, and this means that truck drivers are in big demand in Canada.
The catch? There aren’t enough new drivers joining the fleets. Unless major changes are made soon, the industry will be facing a severe driver shortage that could impact every major industry in our country.
The popularity of manual transmissions in automobiles is dropping sharply, with only about two percent of all cars sold in 2018 being manual. This shouldn’t be surprising: for manufacturers, it’s a lot simpler to put out one kind of car instead of two.
Semi-trucks are a different story, and the percentage of manual transmission trucks on the road is much, much higher. The manual transmission doesn’t have to worry about purely automatic transmissions – it has to worry about an advancement that works like an automatic in the cab, but internally is a manual. The big thing in transmissions is the automated manual transmission, and if it hasn’t already come to a fleet near you, it won’t take long.
Many drivers believe diesel engines to be easier fixes because the components of most trucks are now controlled with computers. You get the impression that because a diesel engine is computerized, the mechanic should be able to hook up a tool and see what is going on almost immediately.
Some specific engine problems are easy to diagnose, yes, but there are still many issues that require a lot of know-how and special equipment. You’ll find this special diesel diagnostic equipment in many mechanic shops, including ours!
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On April 1, 2019, the federal government imposed the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (GGPPA) on the four provinces that had not yet passed their own carbon tax laws – Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and New Brunswick. Now every province is under a carbon pricing scheme, and this will impact what trucking companies will pay at the pumps, what they’ll pay when filing taxes, and what consumers will pay at the store.
What does the future hold for the trucking industry? It’s not hard for us to slip into daydreams about what the next few decades will look like. Will our team soon be interacting with a computer system alone on the side of the road instead of a driver? Or will trucking stay as it has for the past half-century? There are many trends we have to watch very closely if we want to make accurate predictions for the future!