When we first embarked on Run on Less Regional, we had to define what we meant by regional haul. A much more difficult task than we thought. After some research and many conversations, we settled on operations where trucks stayed within a 300-mile radius of a base location.
Going in, we also summarized some regional haul duty cycles as:
- A-B-A, where the truck goes out to the same location and returns to base, doing this once or several times in a driving shift.
- Hub-and-spoke, which is like A-B-A, but has different B locations over a day, week or month.
- A-B-C-D-A, where there are multiple pick-ups and deliveries over the course of the route with the vehicle still returning to the same base.
Then, the Run itself showed us that we had not fully grasped the subtleties of regional haul and the various duty cycles that make it up.
In our analysis of the data for the Run on Less Regional report, we have expanded the number of duty cycles to more definitively describe this segment for product developers, fleets, governments and others.
Within the A-B-A category we have added the following duty cycles:
- Shuttles — Short multiple runs of less than 150 miles round trip
- Dedicated —150 miles to approximately 400 miles round trip
- Dedicated fast turn — A half day drive out with a round trip of about 500 miles
Within the A-B-C-D-A category we have added the following duty cycles:
- City — Multiple drops with low total daily mileage
- Diminishing load — The driver only does drop offs during his or her route
- Milk run — The driver drops off loads and later in the route picks up cargo
We saw no changes to the hub-and-spoke category. So now we have seven defined categories of regional haul operations.
But here’s the thing, we only had 10 fleets in the Run. And while 10 was a good number for the actual Run, we are concerned that we have not captured all the available duty cycles of fleets operating in regional haul. And, we are certain that some of the trucks and drivers run different cycles of the seven on different days. Is this variation making your head spin yet? It is mine.
That’s where you come in. We would love some feedback from you. First of all, we are curious if we have properly described and defined the seven duty cycles we identified from the Run. Feel free to offer a different description that you think more accurately reflects those seven duty cycles.
Beyond that, let us know what we’ve missed. We believe regional haul is going to continue to increase in importance, so we want to make sure we fully understand all the nuances. Let us know about your duty cycle and how you describe and define it.
Having as much information as we can about the various aspects of regional haul will make it easier for all of us to see how the various technologies can be leveraged to bring the best efficiency to each duty cycle.
Michael Roeth has worked in the commercial vehicle industry for nearly 30 years, most recently as executive director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency. He currently serves on the second National Academy of Sciences Committee on Technologies and Approaches for Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium and Heavy-Duty Vehicles and has held various positions in engineering, quality, sales and plant management with Navistar and Behr/Cummins.
